Thread by @SenWhitehouse

One of the many problems with vain and arrogant Supreme Court justices pulling a redo on whole areas of our constitution and laws, is that they get stuff wrong.

They see the result they (and their billionaires) want, and lurch for it.

Wreckage results... 🧵

Look at the pretense in Citizens United that all the massive special-interest spending they unleashed would be “transparent.” Multiple billions spent since in dark money proved that wildly wrong, but in their arrogance and cupidity, do they care? Not one bit.

The Trump immunity case is a similar wrecking ball, to a long-standing, orderly constitutional framework.

The six FedSoccers just blew it up, making up out of whole cloth untested and unprecedented new doctrine — which got them the result they wanted.

Sotomayor’s dissent takes apart the FedSoccers’ phony methodology, and their violation of their own supposed principles like “textualism,” “originalism,” and “restraint.” It’s worth reading.

The “Great Dissenter” Harlan would be proud.

But think about treason. 

At its most dangerous, treason is done from the inside. 

A treasonous president would use his official powers, and work through treasonous collaborators in his administration, to sell us out to an enemy.

Like Trump to Putin. Trump would sell us out for a real estate concession in Russia. And he’d do it through Trump administration officials in on the conspiracy.

And he’d walk away scot-free, under this new immunity decision, because it would be “official.”

The Constitution limits courts to deciding individual cases or controversies, not writing “decisions for the ages,” to keep unaccountable judicial power in check. And because steady progression in the law creates less error than grand lurches.

Think about the door the Court’s far-right bloc just opened for a criminal president, who would commit treason for the right price, to commit treason. Think about the arrogance of their grand pronouncement, and the folly.

Treason, made legal.

Same crew won’t follow an ethics code, accepts billionaire freebies, cheats on disclosures, and — alone in government — won’t allow independent fact-finding about their own misconduct.

That’s the crew that just made presidential treason legal.

PS: In the Constitution, there is limited immunity, under the “Speech in Debate” Clause, for legislators (not for president) — not as broad as what the justices just created for the president, but it’s in the Constitution — with a specific exception for: Treason.