SCOTUS justice appointed by Trump has already argued ex-presidents can be jailed

Former President Donald Trump is hoping that the United States Supreme Court, which features three justices he appointed, will rescue him from criminal charges by buying his argument that what he's accused of were official acts by a president of the United States, and thus immune from prosecution.

However, Paul Rosenzweig, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at DHS during the George W. Bush administration, writes in The Bulwark that Trump could wind up disappointed with at least one of his own justices.

In particular, Rosenzweig points to past writings by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicating that he doesn't believe such a broad immunity applies to American presidents.

At the time, Kavanaugh was contemplating the potential criminal prosecution of then-President Bill Clinton, who was impeached for committing perjury when he lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

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Essentially, Kavanaugh agreed that the Department of Justice should not pursue charges against Clinton while he was still in office, as that would prove too disruptive to government operations.

Instead, he believed that a remedy to a criminal president was impeachment and removal by Congress — and only after that should he face criminal charges.

"The Framers thus appeared to anticipate that a President who commits serious wrongdoing should be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate — and then prosecuted thereafter," wrote Kavanaugh in 1998, before he even became a judge.

"There is simply no danger that such crimes would go criminally unpunished; the only question is when they can be punished."

In other words, if Kavanaugh still holds this view today, it appears that he's a likely vote against Trump on his presidential immunity claims.