Nancy Jones wrote what I consider a must-read article on SCOTUS damning us to an imperial presidency for the sake of keeping their dear Trumpty safe from EVER facing the consequences of his actions (linked below):
The Supreme Court decided to give Donald Trump immunity before they crafted their opinion
I was already working on this when I stopped to read Nancy’s take — be sure give it look. I did before continuing with this rant.
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So. I also watched the Youtube of Michael Popok’s interview of former 4th Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig on that execrable immunity decision, and noticed right away, both Popok and Luttig looked absolutely sick at the implications around what SCOTUS did, before I was 2 minutes in — and nothing I heard was reassuring.
Before I go on, I want to say that I find Judge Luttig terribly, terribly conservative, makes-my-teeth-hurt-and-my-cheeks-twitch conservative, but at the same time, his reasoning on legal/constitutional issues is something I find absolutely unassailable, possibly flawless. Short version: he is FAIR and REASONED. Painfully so. Something SCOTUS wasn’t even CLOSE to being. So you can hear the detailed discussion, here’s a link to the clip — do go and hear it first.
Judge Luttig On Supreme Court Immunity Ruling
I felt sick, too, as they kept digging into the details. Judge Luttig knows the constitution as well as anyone does, and never have I seen him look so defeated, even as he acknowledged he rather expected SCOTUS to go this way but still hoped they would stick to constitution and legal norms … and of course, they didn’t.
And Luttig seems to be right in his assessment — SCOTUS made a decision to support Trump’s arguments and save his bacon, then looked for a way to build an opinion to give him what he wanted regardless of the law or his crimes. Enter in the “hypothetical argument”.
SCOTUS embraced, as Judge Luttig stated, all of Trump’s specious arguments, ignored the issues and evidence in the case, threw away the DC circuit ruling without comment, all to make sure TRUMP can NEVER be brought to justice or held to account. And the throwaway comment to the effect of “… of course, no man is above the law ...” at the end of that bag-of-poo opinion was the ultimate insult to the American people, and the three dissenting justices — as well as a smug FU to Congress.
All that was missing was “nudge-nudge-wink-wink-know what I mean” at the end … oh, wait. See that “no man is above the law” comment — Roberts should have added a snark tag.
SCOTUS has now basically anointed Donald Trump a king — established the imperial presidency — to make sure Trump’s never brought to justice for what he’s done, can never be checked or gainsaid again IF he gets back into office, then fixed it so there’s no choice but to throw out all the evidence on the other cases — something Aileen “I love me some Trump” Cannon is DEFINITELY going to take advantage of to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago documents case ASAP. And Jack Smith will never be able to get it back on track as long as the Roberts court exists in its current iteration. That’s if he isn’t summarily dismissed on Thomas’ say-so …
Clearly, Roberts & Co meant to make it as easy as possible for Trump to get back to the WH unimpeded so he can finish destroying the country and burn the Constitution like their Federalist Society minders & billionaire donors want. No one — and I mean NO ONE — can check him. Not now. We must be mindful of that going forward.
It also seems clear to me that they don’t expect Biden to take advantage of what they’ve done to make things right and save the country before November (which he could do now), before it’s too late (neither do I, sadly). They are counting on his honesty and goodness to hold him back from using the now-unitary presidency, with its expanded powers, to stop the final corruption of the law, the Constitution, and the sidelining of the Court system.
Damn them. Damn Roberts. Damn Thomas. And Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett as well, even though she technically found a way to straddle the fence by agreeing only in part.
Bottom line, we can no longer stop the traitor/grifter-in-chief — so we gotta get busy and FIGHT for every vote, every where. .