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It kind of seems like you're just making your rhetoric more aggressive without really responding to my comment.
I think my last paragraph is responsive? To be clear: I do not think Presidents having this level of immunity to criminal prosecution in office is necessary or desirable. I especially do not think it is necessary in order to have a peaceful transfer of power, given the ~200 years or so of peaceful transfers of power America has had without anything like this. I think the risk is much greater that Presidents abuse their office than that they face superfluous criminal charges.
Nobody tried charging an ex-President before. An ex-vice-president, yes, but not for acts in office. The last time it looked likely, Gerald Ford took care of the problem. I am sure the Supreme Court would rather have not taken this case -- you can put that squarely on the Biden Administration.
Just because someone charged one ex-President doesn't mean we can reliably predict what future practice will look like. To me, this looks like a legitimate slippery-slope fallacy. We have a clear and demonstrated history of Presidential abuse of authority, and up to n=1 history of legal harassment.
As mentioned in part of the oral arguments in the case, would you like to look up impeachment through history and how quickly political parties will play tit for tat?
Ok.
The first Presidential impeachment was of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, in 1868. There was no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Republican successor, Ulysses S Grant.
The second Presidential impeachment was of Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in 1998. There was no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Republican successor, George W Bush.
The third and fourth Presidential impeachments were of Donald Trump, a Republican, in 2019 and 2021. There has so far been no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Democratic successor Joe Biden, and it does not appear that there will be.
What's your point again?
There was an impeachment of Mayorkos and of course an impeachment probe into Joe.
Ok, so? If we're expanding it to impeachment probes that go nowhere and impeachments of non-presidents, then the historical examples abound. The longest gap between impeachments of Federal officials was 50 years between Halstead Ritter in 1936 and Harry Claiborne in 1986. Fifteen Presidents have faced impeachment efforts with varying degrees of failure, including Jefferson, Tyler, Hoover, Cleveland, Reagan, and Grant. I still fail to see the point.
There were two other official impeachment inquiries. Couple that with the impeachment of Mayorkos and it is clear there was much more use of the impeachment here.
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