There have been so many issues that occurred yesterday within the Supreme Court docket’s listening to on presidential immunity that it’s laborious to know the place to start out. However one half that captured it for me was Sam Alito’s line of argument that presidential immunity may be essential to make it doable for presidents to go away workplace voluntarily, or that not having some broad grant of immunity would make refusal to go away workplace extra probably. Right here’s one of many quotes: “If an incumbent who loses a really shut, hotly contested election is aware of that an actual chance after leaving workplace just isn’t that the president is gonna be capable to go off to a peaceable retirement, however that the president could also be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us right into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our nation as a democracy? And we will look all over the world and discover nations the place we have now seen this course of, the place the loser will get thrown in jail.”
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