In politically charged cases, “[t]he tendency is strong to emphasize transient results … and lose sight of enduring consequences upon the balanced power structure of our Republic.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 634 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring).
The Constitution does not erect “a hermetic division among the Branches,” but “a carefully crafted system of checked and balanced power within each Branch.” Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 381 (1989); see also, e.g., Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 635 (Jackson, J., concurring); Perez v. Mortg.
Respondent also overlooks the inevitable “distortion of the Executive’s ‘decisionmaking process’ with respect to official acts,” Trump v. Vance, 140 S. Ct. 2412, 2426 (2020), and the “atmosphere of intimidation that would conflict with [his] resolve to perform [his] designated functions in a principled fashion,” Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 693 (1997) (citation omitted).
Respondent quotes The Federalist No. 77, Resp.Br.14, but there, Hamilton wrote that the President is “at all times liable to impeachment, trial, dismission from office, incapacity to serve in any other, and to forfeiture of life and estate by subsequent prosecution in the common course of law” (emphasis added).
Moreover, “the ideas and themes discussed in explaining why the Senate was superior to the Supreme Court in passing public judgment upon the conduct of the President apply, a fortiori, to a single prosecutor attempting to do so.” Kavanaugh, 86 GEO.