Gor­such steers Supreme Court in Trump immu­ni­ty case: ‘We’re writ­ing a rule for the ages’

Jus­tice Neil Gor­such on Thurs­day took con­trol of the debate at the Supreme Court in a case brought by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on whether he enjoys immu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.
Dur­ing Thursday’s argu­ments over Trump’s bid to have total pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty against spe­cial coun­sel Jack Smith‘s four-count elec­tion sub­ver­sion indict­ment, Gor­such sug­gest­ed that for­mer pres­i­dents like Trump must have immu­ni­ty or else future pres­i­dents could be tar­get­ed for pros­e­cu­tion and could there­fore seek to par­don them­selves before leav­ing office.

“We’ve nev­er answered whether a pres­i­dent can do that; hap­pi­ly, it’s nev­er been pre­sent­ed to us,” Gor­such said of whether a pres­i­dent can par­don him­self. Gor­such indi­cat­ed that he dreads the idea of hav­ing to decide whether pres­i­dents can use such author­i­ty on them­selves.
Gor­such, Trump’s first of three appointees to the high court, under­scored the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the for­mer president’s case and the Supreme Court’s even­tu­al rul­ing on the mat­ter of pres­i­den­tial immun …