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With barbecues, fireworks and a long weekend away, the United States will once again celebrate Independence Day in style on Thursday. But progressive Americans are fine with this July 4th The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday on ex-president Donald Trump’s request to protect himself from criminal charges is partially overshadowed. The court granted him partial immunity. And 248 years after the British monarchy broke away from colonialism, the American Republic would now have a “king”: a president.
At least that was the position of a minority of three progressive members of the court in the case brought by Trump in connection with the federal indictment against him for his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The president and the people he serves have been irrevocably changed,” wrote the left-leaning senior judge Sonia Sotomayor. “The president is now a king above the law in every exercise of power.”
That “America has a king again” was a recurring argument Monday in left-wing criticism of the landmark immunity ruling. “This country was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Democratic President Joe Biden said in a five-minute televised speech. “Everyone, everyone is equal before the law. Nobody, nobody is above the law. Not even the president.”
A statement with major implications
Michael Waldman of the respected legal information center Brennan Center for Justice also came to this conclusion. The court grants the president immunity “only” for acts performed within his constitutional authority and not for “unofficial” acts outside of his role as president. “But it did not make clear that blocking a constitutional transfer of power is not an official act.” Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in early 2021 in an attempt to ultimately sabotage the confirmation of Biden’s election victory.
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The damage that the court has delayed for weeks with that decision, Waldman said, far exceeds its crucial time for Trump in his race back to the White House. For example, the court ruled that judges may not consider the president’s motives when distinguishing between official and unofficial actions.
Nor should the jury hear other elements of the criminal conspiracy if official actions by the President were part of it. The latter even went too far for conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (a Trump appointee): the context of the criminal act must, of course, be taken into account, she said in a dissenting partial judgment.
In fact, Waldman argues, the court agrees with Richard Nixon’s infamous defense during the Watergate scandal: “If the president does it, it can’t be illegal.” Half a century ago, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon on this point (and forced him to turn over his tapes from the Oval Office, sealing his fate). The 1970s was a time when both parties wanted to reduce the president’s power that had grown over the decades.
The current court reverses this trend. For example, Sotomayor’s minority opinion listed examples where the president would no longer have to fear criminal charges. “An elite unit of Marines is executed by a political rival? Immune. A military coup is staged to retain power? Immune. Taking a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
The original chapter of the Constitution
The American left’s distrust of the “supermajority” of six conservative high-ranking justices appointed by Republican presidents was already growing before Monday. During his first – and so far only – term of office (2017-2021), Trump (78) was lucky to get three the courts could replace those appointed for life in the United States. In a long-term opinion poll conducted by Gallup, only 41 percent of respondents said they appreciated the court’s work in September of last year – a historic low.
Conservative chief justices could continue to move the United States to the right for decades to come on all sorts of issues, from free gun ownership to decentralization of federal agencies
In recent years, the court has made several ground-breaking decisions that go against the political and social consensus. For many Americans, Matal’s point was the destruction of the federal constitutional right to abortion in June 2022. Leaving the matter back to the individual states, abortion care has been severely restricted or almost completely banned in twenty conservative states.
In these and other controversial decisions, however, conservative justices rely on the most literal interpretation of the Constitution. With that “original” interpretation of the Constitution, they can steer the United States to the right for decades to come in every area: from free gun ownership to de-powering federal agencies.
Scandals, flags and women
The two most obvious “originals‘ are Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. And they have come under fire in recent years for alleged conflicts of interest. It turned out that they had been entertained with candy trips, the child’s tuition fees or a dubious real estate transaction by billionaires who also had cases in court. At the end of last year, the court adopted new ethics rules in response to these revelations, but there is no mechanism to enforce them.
Both right-wing heroes also fell into disrepute through their wives. Thomas’ wife, Ginny, an ardent Trump supporter, appeared to be texting the president’s chief of staff in the run-up to the Capitol storming about ways to overturn the election results. During those same frenetic weeks of transition, Alito’s wife Martha-Ann fought a political dispute between neighbors by hanging the American flag upside down as an SOS signal now that Trump had not been re-elected.
Both judges ignored calls from the left to recuse themselves in the Trump immunity case because of these private cases. But even if they had avenged themselves, Monday’s verdict would still have been 4-3.
The shadowy power behind the throne
Leftist America is now panicking that another cornerstone of their republic is rapidly crumbling: Trias politica. Three progressive senior justices wrote in a minority opinion Monday that the immunity ruling not only limits Congress’s legislative power and expands the president’s executive power, but that the Supreme Court also increases its own judicial power. Joy Reid, a commentator on the left-leaning MSNBC news channel, likened the court to the “hand of the king,” a powerful adviser behind the throne known from the popular TV series. Game of Thrones.
That shadow power is personified by Leonard Leo. This powerful lobbyist, along with his ultra-Catholic Federalist Society, has been the driving force behind the appointment of hundreds of conservative judges at both the federal and state levels in recent decades.
According to revelations by a ProPublica reporter, Leo is said to have been involved in partying billionaire Chief Justice Alito on a luxury fishing trip to Alaska. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have already launched an investigation into the matter and subpoenaed Leo to testify. He refuses it. If this case ends up in the Supreme Court, Leo can rest assured: five of the Supreme Court justices have ties to his Federalist Association.