(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
This morning Donald Trump got sentenced to a big old NOTHING, and boy is he mad about it.
After wresting three postponements from the court, including one in September because it would be “political interference” to sentence him while people were voting, Trump immediately pivoted and claimed it would be “political interference” to sentence the president-elect.
His lawyers John Sauer (the future solicitor general) and Todd Blanche (the future deputy AG) made bizarre claims of “president-elect privilege” that attaches during the transition.
Sitting-President immunity extends into the brief transition period during which the President-elect prepares to assume the Executive Power of the United States, and the courts thus lack authority to adjudicate criminal claims against him.
They demanded an immediate stay to appeal the denial of their motion to disappear the verdict because it was secured using official acts evidence. And they spent the past week racing from court to court in an effort to stop their client from facing a modicum of responsibility.
But they got out-maneuvered by Justice Juan Merchan, who made the sentencing so un-burdensome that they had functionally nothing to complain about. The promised punishment of unconditional release, along with a dispensation to appear virtually, cut the legs out from under their claim that wasting even a second of Trump’s precious time during the transition compromised national security.
Sentencing a President during his transition “creates a constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security and America’s vital interests.” And if anything is to be taken from the trial court’s decision to let President Trump appear virtually and its indication that it will not incarcerate him, it is that everyone agrees there are such risks. But letting the sentencing go forward sets the precedent that those are permissible risks.
Trump filed emergency motions with the First Judicial Department and the New York Court of Appeals, before finally belly flopping onto the steps at One First Street demanding that his pals bail him out. But just this once, the answer was “no” … barely.
The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of “unconditional discharge” after a brief virtual hearing. Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.
(Did Justice Kavanaugh also get some personal attention from the president-elect, or was that just Alito?)
And so the once and future president whined and sighed his way through the sentencing hearing this morning, complaining that all the legal scholars at Fox know the charges were bullshit, and no one had ever been treated as badly as him. WITCH HUNT!
And then the once and future President Crimetime loped off to take comfort in all the Republican governors who trooped down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring.