Gary Sargent on The Plum Line is looking forward to a Kavanaugh ruling on a subpoena of President Trump’s testimony:
The battle over whether President Trump will sit for an interview with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III could end up running headlong into the confirmation fight over Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, that’s set for this fall. …
What this means is that, in advance of Kavanaugh’s hearing, we may already know that Kavanaugh could end up being the deciding vote on the question of whether a president (Trump) can be compelled to testify to a grand jury. Now, it is possible that the current court could rule on such a matter sooner (the eight justices might deadlock, defaulting to a lower court). But it’s also perfectly plausible, depending on how long Trump’s team takes to make a decision and what happens in the courts afterward, that this could be headed for a showdown in front of a high court with Kavanaugh on it.
But this presumes the conservative SCOTUS justices will automatically vote for President Trump’s interests. But that’s not their job. Their job is to interpret the Constitution’s statements on cases brought before them, and if the Constitution does not forbid the subpoena of a President, then they should permit it unless they can come up with some overwhelming national reason to not do so.
In other words, they have a job to do and, while I don’t much care for some decisions made by the Court, I think that most or all of the Justices do vote in accordance with their understanding of that job.
The conservative faction of the Court is not, in any reasonable manner, dependent on the good graces of President Trump. They are politically independent of the whims of the electorate, just as the Founding Fathers intended.
Let’s assume the Court does rule the President must submit to such a subpoena. Then watch the storm arise for the selection of Justices through the popular vote. The conservative media will raise a firestorm in its relentless urge to politicize everything.
And, I suspect, the left will join them in the call. Ideologues hate that which is out of their control.
And that’ll become an issue of national, if understated, importance.
