Alan Raul in The Hill
Board Secretary Alan Raul authored a new op-ed in The Hill, “Jack Smith is prosecuting candidate Trump, not President Trump.” He writes:
A president’s campaign to reelect himself is never official business no matter what form it takes. And, by the way, the fact the president flies Air Force One to political rallies and fundraisers or is driven to them by the Secret Service, for security reasons, does not convert such campaign events into official ones.
The Supreme Court’s obtuseness to the obviously political nature of Jan. 6 contrasts starkly with its approach in an earlier case involving alleged Trump administration malfeasance. In a decision about why a “citizenship” question was being added to the 2020 census, Chief Justice Roberts observed, poignantly, that the court is “not required to exhibit a naïveté from which ordinary citizens are free.”
Yet, in its immunity decision, the majority was blind to what anyone else could plainly see, that Trump’s attempted subversion of the election was “entirely political.” The fact he co-opted some government officials to collude with him on staying in office did not convert his office-seeking into official activity any more than relying on the Secret Service to drive him to the Ellipse or pressuring them to take him to the Capitol.
Judge Chutkan now, like the Supreme Court in the census case, need not be naïve. While the court’s near blanket immunity for presidents was improvidently granted, Jack Smith’s indictment concerns “entirely political” conduct. It should easily pass muster under the narrow legal accountability the court preserved for presidents.
When a Chutkan decision against Trump is ultimately appealed to the court, one hopes the justices may avail themselves of the opportunity to rein in immunity and assure a sterner dose of constitutional checks and balances to the most powerful person in the world, the U.S. president.