Will the Supreme Court try to slow-walk democracy to death? Will history call the Supreme Court not the Roberts Court but instead the Trump Court? Will the Supreme Court be just another legislative body like the current House's majority under the fearful spell and control of Donald Trump? Will it ever be viewed again as a respected final word by learned justices determining compliance with the intent, lower court rulings, or interpretation of the Constitution? That is the danger the current Supreme Court faces: total loss of credibility and respect as an independent arbiter, the last word in critical decisions about governing.
Trump's argument that he could not be an effective president without it is absurd. We have had 44 presidents before him who functioned without blanket immunity. Now, when we got 45, and the aftermath was indictments for numerous crimes, he said he needed immunity. Why? To avoid the indictments from going to court and trial? To give him the power he needs to break laws to become a dictator if he is elected in November? Note: He is the only president to be indicted for crimes and the only president impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors.
My take on the April 25 Supreme Court hearings on Trump's demand for blanket immunity is that he will not get blanket immunity, but there will be attempted a kind of carveout engineered by the Trump justices for "official duties." They are inventing this concept since the Constitution has no provisions for such actions. The Constituion does require the chief executive to faithfully execute the laws. Committing a crime to execute the laws, to violate the laws, could not fit the definition of "faithfully" in this layperson's understanding of those terms.
The purpose of such a maneuver is to give an excuse to send it back to the appeals court to define what is and what is not official duties and private acts so that he can get immunity for official duties that may or may not be carried out by crimes. This was revealed in questioning that even Trump's attorney admitted most of the January 6 indictment concerned private acts. It is no more than a BS stall tactic by the Trump loyal justices to put the January 6 trial on ice until after the November elections. The trial time clock is running out soon, and the Supreme Court has already added months by scheduling, delaying the hearing of the issue for months. If Roberts agrees to this tactic and/or the Trump justices hold firm, the Supreme Court will deserve the title of the Trump Court and not the Roberts Court.
More follows:
What is at stake in the presidential immunity case is whether this country will continue as a democracy or not. 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 Trump himself an admitted wannabe dictator, cover for committing crimes if he ever gets into the White House again. He could ignore any laws that would block his ambitions to seize power and/or to personally benefit him. That is the travesty against democracy now being committed by some justices on Trump's behalf, which is happening before our eyes.
I explain below why I think democracy is at stake and that some justices were using the hearing as a tactic to protect Trump.
An excellent non-partisan summary of the April 25 hearing on the immunity issue. https://www.yahoo.com/news/
tt appears to other observers and me, that the Trump Court majority is attempting to bury the coup case and keep it from the eyes of the public, who need the information to make a rational decision. It is a political tactic by political actors in the guise of justice. It appears to me that the Trump Court majority is attempting to bury the coup case and keep it from the eyes of the public, some still who need the information to make a rational decision. They might be enough to swing the vote to Biden by either those baililng on Trump voting for Biden or sitting on their hands. (Recent CNN SSRS poll: 3/4 of those Trump supporters say they will support Trump even if he is found guilty of a crime, and the other 1/4 would consider not supporting him. 12% of total voters would not support Trump if he is found guilty of a crime). No wonder Trump's legal team strategy is to engineer delay all trials until after the November election, where either Trump wins and deep-sixes any of the federal cases (state cases would continue) or the federal cases would continue. It is clear, at least, that even the Supreme Court justices would not give him the blanket immunity from criminal prosecution Trump seeks, so the Trump-friendly justices now seek to tie up the process in knots by ping pong in the decisions between lower courts, engineering the sought after delay. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/politics/cnn-poll-trump-trial/index.html
What is not clear is whether American voters understand there is a link between "blanket immunity" and the continuation of democracy. In December, a YouGov poll revealed that when asked if they supported a dictatorship over democracy, the result was that only a small percentage agreed with having a dictatorship. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48238-most-americans-support-democracy-and-oppose-dictatorship However, by February, Trump embraced the concept of being a dictator and his loyalists fell in line. Trump's own promise he "would be a dictatorship for a day" was ok for 3/4 of those who identified themselves as Republicans. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4453457-74-percent-of-republicans-say-its-fine-for-trump-to-be-dictator-for-a-day/ What a bunch of fools If Trump had immunity from committing crimes, he could run rampant over existing laws that restrict presidential power, from bribery to assassination of rivals to oppressing press freedom to putting down any peaceful protests and gatherings. In one day, he could sign the documents already prepared by the Heritage Foundation to allow him to fire thousands of federal employees and replace them with his loyalists, as well as replace those heading regulatory agencies with his sycophants such as licensing media outlets and protect consumers from environmental catastrophes, dangerous products, unfair business practices, and loan sharks. withdraw the US from NATO and throw the economy into a tailspin by sabotaging the only institution that could control inflation, the Federal Reserve. He has already promised to do all of this. and the Heritage Foundation, with millions in the bank, is already at work lining up those replacement loyalists to Trump. The lists will be ready to go on day one. With a Trump Supreme Court, forget the guardrails of the justice system, and with such power of appointments, a jubilant business community and any GOP opposition to Trump will be hailing "the boss" if they want to have any political power. The raised clenched fist palms forward will be the 2025 version of the old nazi salute.
Listening to the hearings and the loaded question the Court's majority ordered the two parties address in advance of the Trump/January 6/immunity hearings, it was already clear a pro-Trump "conservative" block of justices was 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 suspicions that the hearing was about a political tactic as the Trump justices tried to construct an argument on an issue that was originally supposed to answer the question of whether Trump was totally immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed while he was in office. Instead, the Trump justices twisted the question to become if he could be immune in special instances and what were they? Let's focus on that issue, whether or not it was related to the case they were hearing, they urged, as if they wanted to create a new law to review. If successful, the Trump majority would deprive Americans of the critical information needed to make a rational judgment of the guilt 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 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 trials of the century or not before they mark their ballots.
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 as his defense in this particular case. We saw 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 Constitutional relevance or application.
What happened in the Justice's question period is that one of their own conservative justices, a Trump appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barette, brought the hearing down to the earth to consider the actual case before them. She read off some key charges in Smith's case, including whether Trump's alleged participation in the fake elector scheme and asked whether these were public or private acts..What Trump's attorneys had to admit was they were 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 is that referring the case back to the appeals court to make that judgment call, will likely delay the chance the public will ever get a jury verdict or hear the elements before the November election. The possibility is that Smith could drop the other "official acts" accusations or split the case into two and just go forward with those elements Trump's lawyers admitted were private...or the appeals court judge could quickly hold a simple process and quickly rule. (Opinion of some attorneys on media opined a full-blown hearing before the appeals judges to define any difference in terms to carve out exemptions and define official acts was not needed. It could shortcut their review process.) /www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/supreme-court-trump-immunity-04-25-24/h_74e0277f76c2d77793d748c5b87f60c5
Criminal acts can be committed while doing both public acts (as some of the justices noted) and private ones, and the president does not have immunity in either case. In fact, what separates whether any act is a crime depends on the prosecutor proving the defendant's 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 an "official act". That conclusion seemed logical. While I am not a lawyer, just a layperson, I sensed 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 of crimes must of 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 hearing about a specific, historic case over presidential immunity, it is not the only example of how a Supreme Court could contribute to democracy's demise., slow-walking it to death and tying it in knots on side arguments, but there are examples of how the justices, now swinging the lopsided balance to the conservative side, has already done so.. Below, excerpts from some of my other blog postings March 13 on the subject folded into this new updated post..
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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