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Ever since the elevation to the presidency of Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, the Democrat Party, national and state, has been trumpeting itself as the principal defender of democracy. For eight years, the Democrat Party has energetically pointed to Trump’s imagined disposition to bring the American Republic to an ignominious end in favor of a Stalinist authoritarianism.
When the Supreme Court ruled, largely for administrative reasons, that partial immunity must be extended to presidents – all presidents, Republican and Democrat -- if a president is acting within his official capacity as president, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut erupted in a following July 2024 press release: “The Supreme Court has put lawbreaking presidents like Donald Trump above the law. This cravenly political decision to shield President Trump grants him a legal armor that no other citizen enjoys [emphasis mine]. The net effect is not only to delay Trump’s criminal trial, but bestow an unwise and unjust broad shield for him and other presidents who flout and flagrantly abuse their office. This is a license for authoritarianism.”
“My stomach turns with fear and anger that our democracy can be so endangered by an out-of-control Court. The members of Court’s conservative majority will now be rightly perceived by the American people as extreme and nakedly partisan hacks – politicians in robes.”
Blumenthal’s stomach usually turns on a political pivot, especially during presidential election years. The senator lacks the intestinal fortitude to put all his political cards on the table. It is quite true that presidents granted partial immunity may seem to be vested with “a legal armor that no other citizen enjoys.” It is true that “no other citizen” enjoys the partial immunity the high court and decades of history have extended to presidents -- because not all citizens are presidents. It should not take a Harvard degree in jurisprudence to grasp such fundamental and necessary distinctions.
Blumenthal conveniently glosses over necessary distinctions because his attention during election years is easily diverted from justice, in every sense of the word, to politicking.
The editor of the Harvard Crimson while in college, Blumenthal knows a thing or two about journalism. But any seasoned journalist -- there are a few left in Connecticut – will understand from Blumenthal’s formulation what he is not saying. He is not saying that the immunity provided to Trump grants Trump “a legal armor [a partial dispensation from disabling suits] that no other president enjoys,” because such a statement would be manifestly untrue. The court’s sensible and pragmatic decision extends to all presidents. And it is based on the quite reasonable assumption that if presidents were to be frequently sued while performing duties in their official capacity as president, partisan barracuda lawyers would be able to bring the administrations of all such presidents – not only Trump – to a grinding halt.
Blumenthal, a Harvard educated lawyer, doubtless knows that the US appeals process is part of the “rule of law.” Democrats have been loudly proclaiming from the political rooftops for many years that no one – not even presidents – are above the law. It is well worth remembering from time to time that neither are presidents below the law. Trump has been found guilty by a New York jury in a case on appeal that likely will be settled by a Supreme Court that Democrat Party defenders of democracy like Blumenthal have expressed an interest in packing with justices more to their liking.
Blumenthal’s tendentious denunciations of so called “conservative” justices appointed to the high court by Trump are political claptrap. Neil Gorsuch, who wrote a lucid decision bringing gay employment under the protection federal laws, has been one of Blumenthal’s bête noirs. Blumenthal’s opposition to the Gorsuch nomination to the high court was partisan, temperamental and unjust.
Gorsuch’s decision delivered in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia was an opinion, CNN noted, “that will change how more than 7 million LGBTQ individuals will live and work in the United States. It is a watershed moment from an unlikely author that means gay, lesbian and transgender workers are protected by federal civil rights law.”
Blumenthal may be an indifferent and politically partisan assessor of the law, but he is a suburb politician of a sort described by Otto von Bismarck, who told us in a moment of extreme candor, “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”
