If there is even an outside chance that Donald Trump can avoid consequences for his actions during the 2016 election — requesting and receiving help from Russia in the form of both computer hacking and “dirt” on his opponent Hillary Clinton — he will jump at it. If it means discrediting his own Department of Justice, he will do it. If it means obstructing justice even more himself, consider it done.
He’s already proven all of that.
But there may be another way that Trump could skirt any accountability or legal consequences, and it’s been making the rounds on Twitter the last few days — without a lot of explanation.
Upcoming before the US Supreme Court is a case known as Gamble vs United States, Docket Number 17-646. It involves a man named Terance Gamble who, in 2008, was charged and convicted in the state of Alabama of second-degree robbery, a felony. Because the crime was more than a misdemeanor, Gamble was subsequently prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm. Seven years later, Gamble was once again arrested, this time during a traffic stop, and found to be in possession of marijuana, the equipment one might use to sell the marijuana, and a nine-millimeter handgun.
That’s where the case begins.
Gamble was charged with and convicted of the illegal gun possession by, once again, the state of Alabama. But this time the federal government also charged Gamble with the gun possession, convicted him, and tacked on the time to his existing sentence.
Gamble has petitioned to have that charge thrown out, owing to the “double jeopardy” clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
Setting aside for a moment the inequality in a justice system that specifically sought to lengthen Mr. Gamble’s sentence over a relatively minor possession charge against a backdrop of white criminals who perpetrate much more heinous crimes and are never pursued in such a way by both state and federal authorities, this seems like a simple case: The Double Jeopardy Clause should prevent this from happening.
But there is another force at work here called the dual-sovereignty doctrine, which allows for the federal government to charge additionally in cases where a state has already charged. That law is 150 years old, and the important context here pertains to current events, so let’s have an example.
As we’ve written about here at DC Tribune, under existing law, the individual states could charge, say, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort with crimes that he had already been acquitted of in federal court, thereby negating the lure of a pardon from the President to entice Manafort not to testify against him — because the President can only pardon for federal crimes, state charges would be immune to Trump’s interference.
You can see, then, why Utah Senator Orrin Hatch would try to help his pal Donald Trump get a friendly Supreme Court justice confirmed: If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were shot down, erasing 150 years of settled case law, the Russia probe could take on an entirely different tenor.
Of course, even this is subject to interpretation, which is a nuance that much of the chatter on social media seems to miss. If the law regarding pardons is interpreted as “explicitly limited in the text of the Constitution to pardons for ‘offenses against the United States'” only, says Paul Rosenzweig, former senior counsel in the Whitewater case, it could mean no such luck for Donald Trump in terms of excusing his associates from subsequent state charges.
Either way, the possibility of Brett Kavanaugh being part of any court that decides either the Gamble case or the interpretation of pardon power under the Constitution makes his confirmation far more high-stakes than anyone has let on thus far.
Featured image via screen capture
