Justice Samuel Alito Questions if Criminal Prosecution of Former President ‘Destabilizes the Functioning of Our Country’Hannah Knudsen 26 Apr 2024
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday questioned if the criminal prosecution of an incumbent — who narrowly lost an election — could lead to the destabilization of the country as a whole as opposed to the incumbent knowing he could leave office peacefully.
Alito made the remark on Thursday, as the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It appears, during the arguments, that a majority of Supreme Court justices agreed with former President Donald Trump’s attorneys’ arguments.
“If a president has the authority to pardon himself before leaving office and the D.C. Circuit is right that there is no immunity from prosecution, won’t the predictable result be that presidents on the last couple of days of office are going to pardon themselves from anything that they might have been conceivably charged with committing?” Alito asked the government’s Michael Dreeben.
Dreeben said he doubted that, asserting that it “presupposes a regime that we have never had except for President Nixon and as alleged in the indictment here.”
“Presidents who are conscious of having engaged in wrongdoing and seeking to shield themselves, I think the political consequences of a president who asserted a right of self-pardon that has never been recognized, that seems to contradict a bedrock principle of our law that no person shall be the judge in their own case. Those are adequate deterrents, I think, so that this kind of dystopian regime is not going to evolve,” he continued, prompting Alito to pose the following question regarding the consequences of not allowing the departing president to exit office peacefully.
“Let me end — end with just a question about what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want,” Alito said.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/26/justice-samuel-alito-questions-criminal-prosecution-former-president-destabilizes-functioning-country/
