In Win for Trump, Supreme Court Sabotages January 6 Trial
Mar 4 2024It was thought that the Supreme Court would decline to even hear the case, so comprehensive and convincing was the unanimous decision by the three judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals. That would have let stand the lower court's finding that Trump cannot claim immunity from prosecution for acts committed while president.
The appeals court ruling was on February 6th. Delaying a decision that could have been announced a couple of days later and that should have returned the case to Judge Tanya Chutkan's D.C. Circuit Court for the 
trial to begin, the Supreme Court ran the clock for three weeks before saying it would, after all, hear the case it had earlier declined. They put the case on the docket for the week of April 22nd, on the final days of the last week the Court will hear arguments this term.
Another two months will have passed. And it means we will not hear from the Court whether Trump is or is not immune until the end of the Court's term, the final week of June. And, we will bet, it will even be the last decision announced.
This for a case whose trial date had been set for March 4th and which the Court has pushed so far down the calendar that the trial now will almost certainly not go forward before the election. At least four justices — the number of votes needed to decide to hear a case — have decided to put their thumbs on the scale to make sure of that. America has a justice system that permits a stream of appeals and motions meant only to delay, which the Trump legal team has exploited masterfully.
The Court has awarded delay tactics with a victory and joined in with its own contributions to the technique.
helping trumpBy delaying what will now become an irrelevant decision of whether or not Trump has immunity, the Court has conferred on Trump de facto immunity. Making a trial impossible before the election clears the path for the man who engaged in the most treasonous act in our history by his attempt to overthrow the government to keep himself in power. If he wins the election, he will have his Justice Department wipe the slate clean of all federal indictments. One can hardly blame attorney and political commentator Elie Mystal for saying of the justices, "They're trying to make Trump win."
Not true? Let's rewind the clock. The Colorado Supreme Court ordered Trump's removal from the state's ballots on December 19th of last year. The U.S. Supreme Court heard that case within 45 days on February 8 th, which is high speed in the Court's perception of time. As it is a sure thing they will rule against Colorado and say states don't have the power to remove federal candidates for office or nit-pick the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, that's a win for Trump that will get him on all ballots nationally and quickly.
But the Court's timing for the January 6th case runs differently. Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court in December to take up Judge Chutkan's denial of immunity directly, bypassing the appeals court. But the High Court would not oblige and deflected to the appeals court. That they would not let even that court's well-argued unanimous opinion stand made it apparent that they intended all along to take the case they could have accepted at the outset. But we nw know that they wanted to burn time, and then choose a date for hearing arguments way down the calendar.
So, 45 days to take up and certainly quash a state court's ruling that would have hurt Trump, versus over half a year from Smith's plea in early December to the end of June to head off the trial that could hurt Trump.
Michael Luttig, a conservative and former federal appeals court judge, said, "There was no reason in this world for the Supreme Court to take this case". An obviously disgusted Neal Katyal, who has argued more than fifty cases before the Court, one of them on a different matter the same day of the April 22 announcement, said,
"It's always just a big shell game and it always adds up to the same thing: Donald Trump evades the law. Unfortunately, today, the Supreme Court [is] saying, Donald Trump, we're going to help you evade the law."
The case is to decide that Trump is either immune or he isn't — the trial goes forward or it doesn't — having no bearing on the evidence, the testimony, the substance of the case, and yet the Court has even issued a stay that requires Smith and Chutkan to do nothing to advance trial preparations in parallel while the justices ruminate, a loss of four months until the Court reaches its verdict, a corrupt move by a partisan court's three justices nominated by Trump and three justices connected to business figures who would profit by Trump's return.
the outer perimeterInstead of the narrower question of whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for the attack on the Capitol, the question sent to the lawyers on both sides shows they want to handle the larger question of presidential immunity in general. They show no urgency, no awareness that a highly consequential election awaits us in November, no concern that the people of the United States want and deserve answers. The question the lawyers are to be prepared to answer is:
"Whether the doctrine of absolute presidential immunity includes immunity from criminal prosecution for a President's official acts, i.e, those performed within the 'outer perimeter' of his official responsibility."
The Justice Department is of course saying that Trump, in seeking through violence and legislative tampering to keep power for another four years, was acting outside the 'outer perimeter' and not in the least faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States. But the question posed to attorneys will see the justices raise all sorts of hypotheticals that hearken back to the Trump lawyer claiming to the appeals court that his client could not be prosecuted for ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Mason University often seen on Fox News, sees the Court veering far from the single case of Donald Trump.
"Now that they've accepted this case, they're going to have to make some kind of delineation for future presidents of when they can count on immunity and I have the feeling that at least four of these justices did not feel like the lower court's decision did that… Now that they're going to review it, they're going to have to lay down some new law here"
If in June the Court says presidents are immune and beyond the law, no matter their criminal acts, then we will have a monarchy, not a presidency. Otherwise, that it is preposterous in this country for anyone to be immune from prosecution for a crime, it will have been a pointless exercise with a foregone conclusion and proof enough that the real and dishonest objective was to prevent a trial before the election.
squeeze playThe logistics are dismaying. Judge Chutkan had already said that 88 days would be allowed for attorneys to prepare for trial, and Smith expects the trial to take three months. These spans are absurd. Set in motion July 1, the moment the Supreme Court rules, the trial would conclude until the end of November. Surely Jack Smith needs no time at all; he was pressing for a March 4th trial start. The 88 days accorded the Trump lawyers says January 6 must come as news to them. Smith's three months suggests he would plod through scores of redundant witnesses and see a jury tune out — as will the public if it drags on that long. Both should trim these spans considerably.
But then there's the Justice Department rule — it's not a law — not to have trials within a couple of months of an election, never mind that could mean a criminal becoming president. Oh, yes, alleged, sorry — except we all watched what happened on television. Waiving that policy rests with Main Justice, not Smith, and we can easily imagine what timid, risk-averse Attorney General Merrick Garland will say to that.
Trump will have months to rant that he is immune, that this is election interference, that the indictment is a shame, that he did nothing wrong, whereas it is the practice of federal prosecutors to stay mum. Only a trial can correct that imbalance, showing the largely ignorant American public in detail what happened in the weeks leading up to and on January 6, 2021. Without it, they will go on knowing only the Big Lie of Donald Trump telling them he was simply trying to reverse a stolen election. Only a trial can rescue America from a justice system that is proving to be a fraud for never delivering justice.
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