“This is B.S.—you were doing this as a dilatory tactic to help your political friend,” says Rachel Maddow on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the Trump immunity argument, delaying his coup trial. “And for you to say that this is something that the Court needs to decide because it’s something that’s unclear in the law is just flagrant, flagrant bullpucky.”
Doesn’t really matter though. No one thinks the court will allow immunity. What turnip has been after is delay, and the court just signaled that they have his back. Adding almost 3 more months of delay (the 2+ weeks while waiting for them to accept the case and the almost 2 months before even hearing arguments, and that’s ignoring the time it will take to render a decision). So, the “best” possible outcome is still a benefit to him, and it only gets better for him from there.
The fix is in.
Right. This is not a difficult question. OK, so the Supremes want to put their stamp on the fact that Presidents are not absolutely immune because it’s not something that’s come before them in the past. Fine.
What they could have done is lifted the stay that’s stopping the trials from going forward. Then things move on in parallel and there’s no need to ramp things up again when the decision inevitably comes out as a no for Trump. Doing it this way means the obvious decision is still made, but Trump gets the delay he was looking for.
Actually I think there’s a substantial chance that the court will allow immunity for only official acts. That’s really the only question before them, because the trial judge didn’t rule on whether or not these were official acts, only that there’s no immunity whatsoever.
If they do it’ll get kicked back down to the district court where the judge will quite obviously say these were not official acts. Then that will be appealed. It’ll go nowhere but will waste time. Unless SCOTUS rules immediately after the oral arguments it’ll be pushed past the election for sure. It likely will anyway tbh.
I always think Biden should take this asa sign the court is too small. 9 justices apparently isn’t enough to handle the caseload and the court needs to expand.