I don’t watch horror movies – they’re just too scary for me.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid former president/insurrectionist/sexual assaulter/tax fraudster Donald Trump’s foray into the legal system, what with his four criminal indictments and all.
The terrifying part is what we’re seeing in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol and its accompanying fake electors scheme.
That day was scary enough, but the prospect of Trump prevailing in a case before our corrupt U.S. Supreme Court in which he claims to have immunity for any criminal acts he committed while in office should send you into alternating fits of rage and terror. Does it?
The well-worn example of complete presidential immunity that’s been going around is that a president could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent, and he couldn’t be charged in the killing, even after leaving office, because it would be an “official act.”
I know, that’s absurd. But, as Adam Liptak writes in an analysis piece in the New York Times, during oral arguments “members of the court’s conservative majority treated Mr. Trump’s assertion that he could not face charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election as a weighty and difficult question.”
“What struck me most about the case was the relentless efforts by several of the justices on the conservative side not to focus on, consider, or even acknowledge the facts of the actual case in front of them,” said Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford
In other words, they’re trying to find a way to yes. They’re trying to concoct a reason for giving Trump a pass for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
Hard-core Right-winger Justice Samuel Alito actually said, “I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” offering that a grant of immunity “is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want.”
First, what the hell is he talking about? A requirement for a stable democratic society is a president’s ability to overturn a stable democratic society and make it an autocracy?
And second, a stable democratic society is not “something that we all want.” One person who doesn’t want it is Ginny Thomas, wife of that bastion of corruption, Justice Clarence Thomas, who has refused to recuse himself from any cases dealing with Jan. 6 despite his wife’s documented support of the coup attempt.
These clowns are just too much.
The conservative counter argument is that instead of worrying about a criminal president, we should instead worry that an honest president might be unjustly charged with crimes in a political vendetta after he leaves office.
Forget the fact that we have a criminal justice system in which a president, like any defendant, is entitled to due process. Department of Justice policy is a president can’t be charged with a crime while in office, and if the court grants him blanket immunity, he can’t be held accountable after he’s out of the White House, either.
Does that make sense?
Leave it to one of the honest justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson – to bring common sense to the conversation.
“If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office?” she asked.
Absolutely.
The oral arguments featured “some jaw-dropping moments,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor.
It’s the argument of Trump’s lawyers that a president can only be charged criminally if he’s impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, which we know is virtually impossible -- mainly because of the Republican Party’s embrace of corruption under Trump.
A decision is expected sometime between now and early July. Liptak said it appears that the court will subject at least some of Trump’s conduct as part of his official duties, meaning he’s immune from prosecution for those specific actions.
Liptak thinks that if that happens it will probably return the case to Judge Tanya Chutkan – who by all appearances is an honest judge, unlike some of the justices – for further proceedings. This would be a continuation of the Supreme Court’s attempt to help Trump delay his trial until after the upcoming election.
Their blatantly transparent actions include initially turning down Smith’s request to take up the immunity issue before it went through the appeals process, killing two weeks after a pair of federal courts ruled that Trump has no immunity in this case before deciding to take a look at it themselves, deciding to wait seven more weeks to hear the matter, and, to add insult to injury, prohibiting any trail preparations to continue while we await their decision.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Keep that clock running.
Sending the case back to the trial judge “to distill out the official from the private acts in some kind of granular detail essentially gives Trump everything he wants, whether the court calls it immunity or not,” Karlan said.
You can read Liptak’s analysis here.
How far will it go? Will this historically corrupt court allow Trump to walk for his part in the Jan. 6 attack? Could this possibility happen?
I don’t know, but if it does, we have to do something as a country. I don’t know what, but it has to be a real haymaker. For starters we have to make the recent college protests over the war between Israel and Hamas look like a peaceful walk in the park.
If Trump can’t be held accountable for a blatant coup attempt, then the rule of law in this country is means nothing. Oh, they’ll use it against us, to keep us in line, but not against a criminal president or his criminal underlings.
Nice democracy there if you can keep it.
We’ll see if we can.
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