Colonel Sanders
Senior Member
The Constitution (Article II, Section 2) is very clear:
[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges of the Supreme Court.
"The Barrack" can and shall nominate to the Supreme Court, including in his last year. But "the Barrack" can and shall only nominate, not necessarily appoint. The Constitution states that to “appoint” he has to have the actual consent of the Senate...
I wish I had more time to argue this in depth. But what I will say is that a straight reading of the U.S. Constitution tends to skip across the surface of how it is and can be interpreted. For example, the President has the duty to uphold the laws of the nation and the Senate could be seen as purposely preventing him from doing so while at the same time interfering with the judiciary's power to function. Right there you have serious separation of powers issue coupled with seditious conspiracy, which is clearly unlawful.
Just for kicker here's this:
Justice Scalia's first explication of his views concerning the Appointments Clause came in Morrison v. Olson. Scalia expressed his view that the United States Supreme Court's appointments and removal jurisprudence was rooted clearly in separation of powers.181 In his view, because the Constitution gives the “executive Power” to the President, he must be allowed to exercise not only “some of the executive power, but all of the executive power. Justice Scalia excoriated the Court for its analysis that the President had “some” control and that was enough. In his opinion, the Court exaggerated the amount of power the President had...
That's just off the top of my head and with more time can come up with something better.