(Photo
by
Jabin
Botsford
–
Pool/Getty
Images)
Chief
Justice
Roberts
is
confounded.
He
is
shaken.
He
is
weary.
As
the
Supreme
Court
begins
its
October
term,
CNN’s
woman
inside
the
beltway,
Joan
Biskupic,
paints
a
picture
of
a
man
simultaneously
obsessed
with
public
perception
of
the
Court
and
utterly
unable
to
see
how
his
rulings
undermine
its
legitimacy.
“Roberts
was
shaken
by
the
adverse
public
reaction
to
his
decision affording
Trump
substantial
immunity
from
criminal
prosecution,”
Biskupic
writes.
“His
protestations
that
the
case
concerned
the
presidency,
not
Trump,
held
little
currency.”
How
could
Americans
not
see
that
he
was
just
calling
balls
and
strikes
when
he
ruled
that
presidents
can
do
crimes?
What
is
wrong
with
you
people?
The
article
quotes
various
former
Roberts
clerks
“defend[ing]
him
to
varying
degrees.”
Erin
Murphy,
a
renowned
federal
appellate
lawyer,
adopted
her
former
boss’s
spin
that
the
case
was
about
protecting
the
institution
of
the
presidency
and
ensuring
that
successive
administrations
wouldn’t
be
“coming
after
previous
presidents”
in
an
endless
round
of
tit
for
tat.
This
is
an
odd
way
to
describe
an
opinion
that
bars
the
prosecution
of
a
sitting
president
for
any
official
action,
up
to
and
including
directing
the
Justice
Department
to
target
his
enemies
—
something
Trump
has
promised
to
do!
Roman
Martinez,
also
a
federal
appellate
lawyer,
if
you
can
even
believe
it,
praised
Roberts’s
immunity
ruling
for
its
“ambiguity
as
to
the
scope
of
the
immunity.”
“There’s
sorta
question
marks
across
different
aspects
of
the
opinion
on
what
it
means,”
he
told
Biskupic.
“We
haven’t
seen
the
ending
yet.”
Oh,
you
thought
the
drafting
was
a
weaselly
way
to
get
around
the
fact
that
it
invented
a
constitutional
doctrine
out
of
whole
cloth?
Can’t
you
see
what
a
stroke
of
genius
it
was
for
the
Chief
to
yaddayaddayadda
over
whether
official
acts
outside
the
“core”
presidential
duties
(whatever
that
means)
are
entitled
to
absolute
or
presumptive
immunity?
But
the
apologetics
prize
goes
to
HLS
professor
Richard
Lazarus,
“a
longtime
friend
of
Roberts
[who]
spent
time
with
him
in
July
immediately
after
the
Trump
decision
was
issued.”
Writing
in
the
Washington
Post
in
August,
he
described
the
immunity
ruling
as
“leaving
plenty
of
room
for
Trump’s
conviction
on
multiple
felony
counts.”
The
opinion
directs
the
trial
court
to
conduct
a
fact-intensive
inquiry
to
determine
whether
Trump’s
shitposts
summoning
a
mob
to
DC
and
his
pressure
campaign
to
force
the
Georgia
secretary
of
state
to
“find
11,780
votes”
were
official
acts,
and
then
pass
it
up
to
the
Supreme
Court
to
let
Sam
Alito
take
a
Sharpie
to
it.
This
provides
“a
surprisingly
clear
road
map
for
the
successful
felony
prosecution
of
Trump,”
Lazarus
insists.
The
professor
shrugs
off
the
fact
that
his
buddy
suggested
but
refused
to
conclude
that
the
pressure
campaign
to
get
Mike
Pence
to
toss
out
the
votes
of
20
million
Americans
was
part
of
Trump’s
job
and
thus
immune
from
prosecution:
Yes,
the
court
was
more
doubtful
about
whether
Trump’s
discussions
with
Pence
were
likewise
outside
the
scope
of
presidential
immunity.
But,
while
that
presents
an
intriguing
legal
issue,
it
has
little
practical
importance
for
the
fundamental
question
of
whether
Trump
can
be
prosecuted
and
convicted
of
federal
felony
offenses.
At
some
point,
additional
evidence
or
felony
offenses
just
become
piling
on.
At
the
risk
of
piling
on
Biskupic
for
accurately
reporting
on
the
view
from
inside
One
First
Street,
this
profile
ignores
the
inherent
contradiction
between
Roberts’s
fixation
on
his
own
legacy
and
his
insistence
that
the
Court
is
a
nonpartisan
edifice
of
American
society,
far
above
the
fray.
Because
you
can’t
claim
to
be
committed
to
the
principles
of
stare
decisis
when
you
utterly
disregard
precedent
the
second
you
have
the
votes.
You
can’t
claim
to
be
clinging
to
an
“original”
approach
to
the
Constitution
while
inventing
a
right
to
wander
around
the
streets
with
a
machine
gun.
You
can’t
demand
that
the
citizens
revere
you
when
you
use
your
power
to
thwart
their
express
wishes
at
every
turn.
And
you
can’t
claim
to
be
confounded
by
Trump
while
inventing
new
rules
expressly
designed
to
empower
him
and
ensure
he
never
faces
a
reckoning
for
attempting
to
overthrow
the
government.
Biskupic
quotes
the
Chief
Justice
in
2010
addressing
a
group
of
law
students:
“You
wonder
if
you’re
going
to
be
John
Marshall
or
you’re
going
to
be
Roger
Taney.
The
answer
is,
of
course,
you
are
certainly
not
going
to
be
John
Marshall.
But
you
want
to
avoid
the
danger
of
being
Roger
Taney.”
Perhaps
in
2010
the
answer
to
that
question
was
unclear.
Today
it
is
not.
Cue
1,000
former
law
clerks
turned
appellate
lawyers
to
explain
how actually
he’s
just
a
misunderstood
genius
…
Analysis:
John
Roberts
remains
confounded
by
Donald
Trump
as
election
approaches
[CNN]
Liz
Dye lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos substack and podcast.