We’ve known for many months that this day was coming. It was inevitable that the MAGA-infested Supreme Court would concoct the requisite flowery language to help Trump weasel out of his criminal predicament prior to the ’24 balloting. And now it has done so.
With today’s ruling, it’s now official: Thanks to Trump’s six accomplices, there’s virtually no possibility, pre-election, that a federal jury will have the opportunity to decide whether he’s guilty of fomenting the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, of trying to overturn his ’20 election loss, and of plotting to sabotage the peaceful transfer of power. Indeed, it’s now highly unlikely that the long-in-limbo federal trial will even get off the ground.
As expected, the MAGA majority has decreed that a president has “absolute immunity” for all “official” acts while in office – perhaps even pressuring one’s vice president to refuse to certify election results. The majority does admit, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts,” but since it’s left unclear where the line should be drawn between “official” and “unofficial,” the MAGA judges have predictably kicked that issue back to the trial court – which now “must carefully analyze the indictment’s remaining allegations to determine whether they too involve conduct for which a President must be immune from prosecution.”
That’s exactly what Trump and his lawyers were hoping for – a friendly ruling that throws a wrench in the machinery and slows the clock to a crawl, ensuring that voters will cast their ballots without full knowledge of what Trump has done to sabotage democracy, without hearing from witnesses and sifting evidence presented in open court. The MAGA lawyers and prosecutors will now tangle, in a blizzard of motions, over what’s “official” and “non-official” – Jack Smith will surely contend that pressuring state officials and abetting the fake electors scam were “non-official” acts – but whatever is decided will likely be appealed, and the machinery will grind to a halt again when that happens.
Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge in the now-sandbagged trial, had trashed Trump’s immunity claim in a ruling last December: “By definition, the president’s duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ does not grant special latitude to violate them.” A few months later, a federal appeals court rejected Trump as well. Seasoned jurists of all stripes mocked Trump’s bid to escape accountability; former federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig, a renowned conservative, warned earlier this year: “If a president cannot be held accountable under the Constitution for having attempted to overturn an election that he lost fair and square, remain in power, and all the while preventing the peaceful transfer of power, then that is to cut the heart and soul out of America’s democracy and the rule of law.”
But now the high court’s MAGAts have cut the heart and soul out of our democracy.
They’ve crafted the conditions that will quite likely help Trump get off scot-free for his trampling of the Constitution. It is not hyperbolic – as it once was – to state the obvious, that we’re being goose-stepped in slow motion toward home-grown fascism.
That’s hard for many Americans to fathom, especially naifs who think we’re magically immune from human nature’s darkest impulses. But the potential consequences of today’s predictably treacherous ruling are indeed obvious. If Trump wins in November, he’ll cancel the federal trial-in-limbo.
And then he’ll be free to do whatever he wants. He can gut the U.S. Civil Service, replace those workers with MAGA flunkies, and be immune from punishment because it’s an “official” act. He can send in the military to shoot peaceful protestors and be immune from punishment because it’s an “official” act. He can jail critics because it’s an “official” act. Read the ruling: “Nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
Here’s a passage from Justice Sotomayor’s clear-eyed dissent, for what it’s worth: “When (a president) uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders a Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold on to power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
If you’re old enough, you may remember what Richard Nixon said a few years after the Watergate scandal compelled him to quit in disgrace. He insisted: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” He was widely mocked for saying such a thing. Now this runaway Supreme Court has blessed it.
What’s next, DT armbands?
I’ll close with another question. It’s directed at all the liberals and Dems who stayed home in 2016 because they thought Hillary Clinton was insufficiently perfect, or that she wasn’t Bernie, or that her voice was shrill, or But Her Emails, or whatever:
Happy now?