"If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?"
Sam Alito has lost his damn mind. Whats the incentive for any President to obey the law if there is no threat of prosecution for it. Why wouldnt this immunity extend to candidates who lost but were never President. Its okay for a "bitter political opponent" to prosecute the losing candidate so long as that candidate wasnt an incumbent President? Why couldnt Joe Biden just violate all kinds of campaign finance laws and take illegal donations for political favors since he cant be prosecuted when leaving office under Alito's theory? Based on this the President is basically on the honor system to not break any laws.
On another note I think a lot of Republicans like Alito are finally admitting a truth they have long refused to admit but are kind of no selling it. Tge justice system is broke, and it is broken on purpose. Republicans used to say "well they will have their day in court and if they are innocent they got nothing to worry about". Now they fully admit that just the act of prosecuting someone is damaging to them. If they think its bad for a rich person like Trump or Biden what do they think it does to a poor person? The court doesnt have a problem with forcing a poor person to sit in jail for months if not years in order to get a public defender. And if that person is innocent but spent all that time in jail over BS these same justices say thats the justice system working. A cop walks into a mans home and murders him in cold blood and spends 30 minutes in jail to be processed. I get arrested for an unpaid traffic ticket and spend 16 hours in jail to get processed. All the same Republicans bitching and moaning about the justice system were the ones in favor of it being broke. They said if we fix it criminals will go free. Now they have done a 180, but they dont want to actually fix it, they just want their people given special treatment. And the worst part is the Democrats are so stupid they go crazy in the opposite direction wanting to let people who commit violent crimes off the hook. So theres really no one to vote for who wants a sensible justice system.
