The U.S. Supreme Court just tossed aside its last scrap of legitimacy. You don’t have to have gone to law school or practiced law to know that the argument that Trump is “immune” from criminal charges is legally hogwash.
A basic tenet of a democracy is that no one is above the law and that certainly applies in the case of a grifter who tried to hang onto the presidency after he lost the election and now wants to be dictator.
If you want the legal arguments, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made it abundantly clear in its ruling. You can read that here.
All the Supreme Court had to do was say no and let the D.C. Circuit ruling stand. Instead, they set it for argument two months out. Even if at least five of them come to their senses and rule against Trump, the trial on his actions in the January 6 insurrection will be pushed off until the fall, with the presidential election looming in November.
I note that Brazil has taken much more concrete action against Jair Bolsonaro, who used similar tactics when he was defeated in their 2022 election. His supporters stormed government buildings in January 2023; by June 2023 the Brazilian courts had blocked him from running for office again until 2030.
It was only in 2023 that prosecutors finally got around to indicting Trump for his actions in 2021, and now our Supreme Court is helping him delay trial.
I once would not have expected Brazil to do a better job of dealing with wannabe dictators than the United States, but the last few years have cured me of any belief in American exceptionalism.
They’ve also cured me of believing in the Supreme Court.
Continue reading “The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Supreme Court”…