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Listening to the hearings and the loaded question the Court's majority ordered the two parties address in advance of the hearings, it was already clear they were trying to ship the question down to the purgatory of the lower court to delay any decision until after the November election.The hearings revealed the tactic. If successful, the Trump majority would deprive Americans of the critical information needed to make a rational judgment of the guilt or not of Donald Trump in the attempted January 6 coup and the fake elector's scheme that led to that fateful day. The indictment papers of the Department of Justice special prosecutor are not enough to convince fence sitters when they have to cast a ballot.. The final word should be the from the jury of Trump's peers and whether voters will ever have a chance to hear both sides of the issue aired in the trial of the century or not before they mark their ballots.
What it appears to me is that the Trump Court majority is attempting to bury the coup case and keep it from the eyes of public who need the information to make a rational decision. Trump himself is not only trying to divert attention from the relevant case that could likely judge him a criminal and with evidence exposed to the public in the middle of the campaign, but also to give himself cover for committing crimes if he ever gets into the White House again. That is the travesty being committed by the Trump justices on Trump's behalf that is happening before our very eyes.
What was asked of the Court by Jack Smith was a simple question: Does Donald Trump have absolute immunity as Trump had claimed in his defense or not in this particular case. What we saw were three Trump loyal justices quibbling over hypothetical theories that any president in the future would have immunity while doing "official acts,". They rudely cut short any attempt by non-Trump justices to apply their decision to the case at hand. It was a Trump supporting campaign tactic, not a Court considering the Constituional relevance or application.
What happened in the Justice's question period is that one of their own conservative justices, a Trump appointee,Amay Coney Barette brought the hearing down to the earth to consider the actual case before them. She read off some of key charges in Smith's case and asked whether these were public or private acts..What Trump attorneys had to admit they were nearly all private acts.If that's the case, why quibble over the public vs private debate when it is virtually irrelevant to this particular case? The obvious answer, it will delay the chance the public will ever get a jury verdict or hear the elements before the November election by referring their 'questions" back to the appeals court.
Criminal acts can be committed while doing public acts and private one and the president does not have immunity in either case. In fact,what separates whether any act is a crime depends of the prosecutor proving defendants intent to break the law,, not whether it is done in an official capacity or a private one. In short, while committing an official act, a crime can also be committed. There is or should be no cover to commit a crime by calling it 'official act". But I am not a lawyer, just a lay person, but I sense that there is a partisan tactic to muddy the waters and delay, delay any jury hearing the case and deciding guilt or innocence. . What is forgotten in the quibbling is that for a defendant to be found guilty crimes mustof a crime, the test is not whether it was a public or private act,but a jury needs to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt that there was proof of intent to break the law, whether or not it was committed while doing an official act or a private one.
This April 26 hearing about a specific, historic case, it is not the only an example of how a Supreme Court could contribute to democracy's demise., but there are examples of how it has already done so.. Below, excerpts from some of my other blog postings on the subject.
How the Supreme Court has unintentionally contributed to a feared democracy's demise is disturbing for those of us who love our country both when we win politically and when we lose. The three most US Supreme Court acts or inactions in my mind are the Citizens United ruling that permitted dark and secret campaign contributions, the ruling overturning the recent Colorado ballot case that inadvertently gave a permission slip for any failed insurrectionist or civil war participant to run for federal office, plus the Court greenlighting political gerrymandering by declining to restrict it, making legislative compromises nearly impossible and empowering extremists.
The recent Colorado ballot decision gave the green light for any candidate who loses a civil war or an insurrection to come back as an elected office and abuse, and sabotage institutions that stood in the wannabe tyrant's way. The US Supreme Court claimed political gerrymandering was not in their ability to rule, unlike race-based gerrymandering which they could. In so doing, the Supreme Court permitted the pernicious practice of drawing legislative and congressional district lines to give one or the other political party to carve out safe districts stacked for their party. This, in turn, ensures only the most hardliners and party loyalists get to go to a general election and to avoid being "primaried", the threat most elected officials fear the most. It is party discipline gone berserk and it ensures compromises are never reached, giving voters in a general election a choice between usually two extreme candidates.
When in conversations with my European friends and relatives they mention how corrupt our elections system is because of the money pouring into it, making elected officials appear to be for sale to the highest bidder. Once upon a time, I had an answer. Yes, thanks to our election laws, who contributes is public information so it becomes another element contributing to making decisions for whom we vote. That is no longer true. The Citizens United decision changed that by permitting corporations to contribute and to do it in the disguise of supporting some fine-sounding single-cause political action committee. That is the "dark money" reference we hear about. We no longer have a way to know which piper is playing whose tune.
The recent Supreme Court decision was another serious blow to democracy in the Colorado ballot case. Claiming it was a federal matter, as the court did, was not the problem. What the Court did was to tell Congress they would have to pass laws to enforce the clause. of the 14th Amendment that kept insurrections from running for public office. Hell will probably freeze over before that happens since Trump would benefit as would any similar power-hungry revolutionist from the left. Colorado's decision to define Trump as an insurrectionist upheld by the State of Colorado's supreme court decision was left untouched by the US Supreme Court. The original court case was decided with due process to make the case, fairly., that Trump was an insurrectionist in trying to overturn the 2020 election he lost. In short, the US Supreme Court tossed the ball into a trash can of political self-serving dealing. It paved the way for anyone (including Trump) to lead a civil war or a more or less obvious insurrection to run for federal office, to be elected to office, and to continue his insurrection by other means, including undermining the institutions that get in his way by only appointing loyalists to him instead of to the rule of law.
The next dastardly anti-democracy, anti-voter rights step by the US Supreme Court would be to uphold in full and in part to agree that all presidents would have immunity from being prosecuted for crimes they commit while in office. That would clearly be a license to kill opponents and to cheat and steal taxpayer money to feather their own nests of power and wealth. Be aware of what you wish because what is good for the goose will be for the gander. If democracy survives a second term of Trump. and wins immunity from being charged with crimes after his term for breaking the law while in office, any other future president from the left or the right will also have that immunity claim and protection.
In the meantime, anyone who tags Trump as an insurrectionist can now point to one court of law that defined him as one after a civil due process trial and appeals: the Colorado Supreme Court. Colorado could not enforce the federal constitutional 14th Amendment, per the US Supreme Court, but anyone who calls Trump an insurrectionist now has a basis in law to attack him with that designation.
The remedies are now left to Congress, to require political districts to be drawn by independent commissions in each state, to reverse those contribution provisions in Citizens United by requiring all political PACs to disclose their contributors and to define who, what, and how the 14th amendment clause concerning insurrectionists are to be enforced. Do not hold your breath.
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