The bouncing ball of Trump's legal arguments

Asha Rangappa is a lawyer and former FBI agent.  

Weird. In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article specifically contemplating criminal prosecutions for Presidents after they leave office, and noting that this possibility provides a check on a “bad-behaving or law-breaking” President. I guess he just changed his mind for some… pic.twitter.com/6zY7QIuDn8

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) April 27, 2024

Contra Rangappa, he would have changed his mind in 2024 if in 2009 he had been serious about providing a check on a law-breaking president. To wit ... 

Commonsensically this should make no difference but it does in LawThink: Kavanaugh wrote that only an "impeached and removed President is still subject to criminal prosecution afterwards."

Thus a 100-mile-long-crooked president acquitted by a partisan Senate would be off the hook for criminal acts committed as he was malgoverning the nation.    

Kavanaugh's soft-on-crime reasoning is now also the official legal position of a certain 100-mile-long-crooked ex-president. Has it always been so? (Have I ever asked a more ludicrous question?) 

As the Bulwark's Andrew Egger reminded us last week: "Here’s a guy who, during his second impeachment, explicitly argued that prosecuting an ex-president was the role of the criminal courts: 'a president who left office is not in any way above the law,' his lawyers argued, 'as the Constitution states he or she is like any other citizen and can be tried in a court of law.'"

"Any other citizen" could not have been impeached and removed from whatever job he or she held, and so Trump's lawyer was also explicitly arguing that those congressional actions would be irrelevant to the criminal prosecution of an ex-president.

But that was then. That was Team Trump's resolutely embraced principle at the time. But to Trump and his teams, legal or political, resolutely embraced principles are oddly slippery things. Boy they can just get away from you before you know it.

They'll faithfully, God-fearingly hug the new one like there's no tomorrow — unless of course tomorrow calls for some slight variation in their resolutely embraced principle, like, oh I don't know, doing a 180⁰?