U.S. Supreme Court tightens noose around Trump
Accepts Special Counsel Smith's motion for expedited consideration of Trump's fantasy that the Constitution made him a king above the law
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court granted the Special Counsel’s motion for expedited review of Trump’s “divine-right-of-kings” claim that he is constitutionally immune from criminal prosecution for orchestrating the January 6 attack on the Capitol to prevent Vice President Mike Pence from performing his constitutional duty to “count” state-certified electoral votes that had survived 61 Trump-sponsored judicial challenges under the Twelfth Amendment and Electoral Count Act.
It was altogether fitting and proper for the Supreme Court to have done this. The Court acted equally swiftly in ruling that President Harry Truman was constitutionally powerless to seize a steel mill during the Korean War in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952), and in ordering President Richard Nixon to surrender Watergate-related White House tapes to special prosecutor Jaworski in United States v. Nixon (1974).
Donald Trump is a leading presidential candidate for 2024 notwithstanding his promise to act as a “dictator” on the first day of any new Trump administration. A trial and verdict on Trump’s involvement in the January 6th attack well before balloting in November 2024 is necessary for informed voting, including Trump’s demand on the morning of January 6 that Pence choose between him and “the Constitution” in counting state-certified electoral votes and watching the attack for 187 minutes on television without lifting a finger to summon law enforcement or to protect Pence and his family from murder.
Depend upon it. Well before Trump’s scheduled March 4, 2024, trial date before District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Supreme Court will have unanimously repudiated Trump’s argument that “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do anything I want as president,” in part because to endorse that Caesar-like boast would reduce the judicial branch to a scarecrow.
Trump will be convicted like the hundreds of his “Stop the Steal” ruffians including for seditious conspiracy and sentences of up to 18 years in prison. Mr. Trump was the chief January 6 culprit. It is unthinkable that the law would treat him more leniently than his underlings following his express or implied orders.
Mr. Trump would be trembling over his fate if he knew that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever. But Trump is not a Bible reader. He conflates Second Corinthians with 2 Corinthians, and honors the Ten Commandments in the breach rather than in the observance. O Justice, thou art mighty yet!