Next week, the Supreme Court will hear lawyers argue the president's claim that he has absolute immunity while in office, write law professors Claire Finkelstein and Richard Painter. NOTE: Spanish version here. Thanks Ed Charles!
"What is at stake is no less than the accountability of a president to the rule of law... If the justices endorse this extreme view, they will make it impossible to hold this president, and all future presidents, answerable in courts for their actions."
Donald Trump's lawyers have introduced a novel argument -- that the president should not be distracted from attention to the Covid-19 crisis. (As if he has bothered to manage it at all, short of sacrificing thousands of lives to the health of the stock market.)
The president has availed himself of John Yoo's "unitary executive theory," declaring himself the "chief law enforcement officer" of the country, "asserting a right to ignore the traditional independence of the Justice Department."
