WASHINGTON – ”We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch intoned as the Supreme Court on Thursday took on one of the most important questions a democracy can face: Can a former president be held criminally accountable for their actions in office?
More than 300 miles away, at a less-imposing, sometimes grubby courthouse in lower Manhattan, the former publisher of a supermarket tabloid testified about a former president’s efforts to quash damaging tales of extramarital trysts with a porn star and a nude model in a case based on $130,000 in hush money payments.
At the center of both: The same ex-president, Donald Trump.
Even by the frequently chaotic standards of Trumpworld, Thursday’s proceedings in Washington, D.C., and New York were notable, presenting a stark, real time split screen of a nation’s Constitutional law and a billionaire businessman’s dirty laundry.
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“What a day!” said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. “Blanket arguments on behalf of presidential immunity being advanced at the Supreme Court are running simultaneously with state criminal proceedings against Trump for hush money payments made to a porn actress in the 2016 election—all while Trump and Biden square off in an incredibly divisive presidential election.”
Lofty arguments in Washington, tawdry details in New York
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, currently faces four separate criminal indictments and says the charges against him are a political witch hunt by Democrats in New York, Georgia and the federal government.
But there was no mistaking the elevated tone of the Supreme Court proceedings, nor the lowlife nature of the testimony in New York.
“You have this great, abstract, almost law school argument at the Supreme Court, and this pretty tawdry case where the rubber hits the road,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College.
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Stormy Daniels and George Washington
At the Supreme Court on Thursday, a lawyer for Trump argued that the former president shouldn’t face federal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
“Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it,” D. John Sauer told the high court. “For 234 years of American history, no president was ever prosecuted for his official acts.”
With Trump watching closely, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, told a jury of 12 Manhattanites about the former president’s moves to cover up purported affairs with porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal before the 2016 election.
Trump is charged with doctoring business records to obscure the true purpose of payments he made to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, after Cohen bought Daniels’ silence with a $130,000 check. He says the payments were accurately recorded as legal fees.
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‘This is happening in real time’
For author and historian David Nasaw, the most striking thing about Thursday’s proceedings – and the New York trial overall – is the fact that Trump’s alleged trysts were exposed while he’s still a powerful figure.
While indiscretions by presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower didn’t come to light until after their deaths, Nasaw said, “this is happening in real time. Nothing has been as sleazy as this – Playboy models and porn stars.”
By Thursday afternoon, it appeared the Supreme Court might ask a lower court to more closely examine which of Trump’s moves in the election interference case could be interpreted as official actions – delaying a trial and possibly narrowing the charges he faces.
At least a few justices seemed to look favorably on some kind of immunity for presidents both in and out of office.
“It’s a bizarre contrast with events in New York,” Rudalevige said. “The reason President Trump is in court is because he was indicted for trying to overthrow a presidential election. There is no reason to buffer him from it.”
“I can’t count how many judges – some of whom are now sitting on the Supreme Court – have said no man is above the law,” he added. “And yet here we are.”
Contributing: Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY
