Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law. More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — marks a second sort of American Revolution. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.

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Persons: Donald Trump’s, It’s, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson’s Organizations: Supreme, Federalists, Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans, Trump Locations: United States