The U.S. Supreme Court has made a lot of interesting and important rulings lately.  Some are good for liberty, such as the recent ruling involving Chevron deference.  This could be a long-term blow to the administrative state where bureaucracies make enforceable laws just because they were supposedly delegated the power from Congress.

Some rulings are not so good.  The Supreme Court basically punted on the question of whether it was appropriate for the federal government to pressure social media companies to censor content, which seems in clear violation of the First Amendment or the Tenth Amendment.  Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch – the three best justices for liberty – dissented on that one.

We also have the recent ruling regarding Donald Trump and his legal woes.  The Supreme Court ruled that the former president has partial presidential immunity if it involves actions related to his presidential duties.

I have my opinions about this case, but I am not really upset or happy about it one way or the other.  I think the ruling was a way to provide some justice to Donald Trump, whether that is right or wrong.

To be sure, the cases against Donald Trump are garbage.  In most cases, he didn’t actually commit any crimes.  For certain things, he may have committed a technical crime, but they shouldn’t be crimes and he is purposely being singled out for enforcement because of pure political reasons.  With that said, it is another question of whether the Supreme Court should have gotten involved.

I know that some Trump haters have gone to the narrative that it means the president can do whatever he wants.  Of course, in some ways, that was already true long before the court ruling.  They say that Biden could just order a hit on Trump and then claim presidential immunity.  But it would be hard to claim that he was acting as part of his presidential duties.  I think that’s why there was some nuance with the Supreme Court decision.

They wanted to provide some justice and immunity for Trump, but they also didn’t want to make it sound like they were giving dictatorial powers to the office of the president.

There is Already Immunity

It’s amazing how so many political issues and cases have gotten to the core of libertarianism in recent years.  This one case seems to be no exception.

Isn’t this one of the main complaints of libertarians?  Politicians can essentially do whatever they want as long as they don’t completely set public opinion against them.  They can do things that ordinary people can’t get away with.

This is even more true with the president.  The president can just murder people, and there is almost no chance there will ever be a prosecution.

If Trump could be legitimately charged with anything, it would be for war crimes.  He ordered the bombing of Syria.  He ordered the assassination of an Iranian official.  The same can be said for most other presidents through history, especially within the last 100 years.

Biden is helping to fund mass murder in Gaza.  He is funding the tyrannical regime in Ukraine and contributing to tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians needlessly dying.  When Obama was president, he had people assassinated, including Americans overseas.

But the powers-that-be will never prosecute Trump for war crimes.  They approve of these things.  If they went after Trump for any of this, then that would expose past and future presidents for their war crimes.

There was already presidential immunity.  This has been the precedent for a long time.  They get away with things that we can’t.

Perhaps this was part of the reasoning for the more pro liberty justices to rule in Trump’s favor.  The system is already corrupt and flawed, so we might as well stop the political persecutions of Trump.

Anyway, this is why I am not getting worked up over this particular case.  There is nothing new to see here.  Presidents get away with crimes all the time.  If anything, maybe this case will just waken a few more people up to this fact.