signalmankenneth
Verified User
Public outrage continues this week in response to the disturbing New York Times report that, in the days after the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, a symbol of support for the insurrection was displayed at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The justice has half-heartedly tried to deflect blame onto his wife with some convoluted tale involving her bickering with the neighbors, but in the end, there's no real evading the conclusion: The Alitos publicly hat-tipped the fascist effort to overthrow democracy because they backed Donald Trump's attempted coup. Now there's a growing chorus of people, including Senate Democrats, calling on Alito to recuse himself from all coup-related cases, including one involving Trump's claims to be "immune" from prosecution for his attempts to steal the 2020 election.
Like Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own wife was intimately involved in the attempted coup plot, Alito is almost certainly going to blow off all the criticism. Chief Justice John Roberts, for his part, will likely allow it. This is for one simple reason: The entire GOP majority on the court is complicit with Trump's designs to end democracy.
The other Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court may not all be as loud and proud about it as Alito and Thomas, but that's more of an aesthetic difference than a material one. When it gets down to brass tacks, the Republican majority is cooperating fully these days with Trump's seditious plans. We know this for two reasons: First, the supposedly "originalist" conservative justices ignored the plain text of the Constitution — which explicitly forbids politicians who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding future office — to rule that Trump can still run for president. Second, they are currently blocking Trump from being tried for his efforts to steal the 2020 election, using transparently disingenuous methods.
The timing is especially telling here. The justices were practically tripping over their robes in their haste to issue their illegitimate decision in the ballot case. They heard oral arguments on February 8 and issued their unconstitutional, pro-Trump ruling less than a month later. But on the immunity claims, they are taking a luxurious amount of time. They pushed oral arguments nearly two months after Trump's trial in his Jan. 6 case was supposed to start. It's been nearly a month since then, and still no sign of a ruling. And that's despite every good faith legal scholar pointing out that this case should have never even made it to the Supreme Court. The D.C. circuit already issued a rock solid, common sense ruling that presidents don't get to just attempt coups without consequences.
Even if some conservative justices, as they seemed to indicate during arguments, aren't keen on ruling that a president is forever above the law, it may not matter. By taking up the case in the first place and taking their sweet time ruling on it, they likely doomed any chance that special prosecutor Jack Smith could actually bring Trump to court to answer to a jury before the election. And that's assuming the court issues a straightforward affirmation of the D.C. decision. Odds are they create a bunch of new, nonsense legal tests, forcing the lower courts to tinker with this case for months, if not years — and if Trump wins the election, he will kill the case anyway.
If the Supreme Court continues to delay Trump's Jan. 6 trial, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post writes, it's proof that the fascist sympathies of Alito and Thomas "have thoroughly corrupted the court." Sure, it's possible Roberts hears her and, within a week, we have a Supreme Court ruling that allows the federal trial to start this summer. It's also possible, theoretically, that a massive asteroid decimates planet Earth and ends our collective misery in one glorious swoop. But neither will realistically happen. The latter we know because NASA would have detected such an anomaly. The former we know because the Roberts court is run by a bunch of partisan hacks. If it weren't, they would have already kicked Trump off the ballot, as the Constitution requires, while also inviting the Justice Department to try him with the swiftness the public deserves.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-courts-samuel-alito-problem-100006229.html
Like Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own wife was intimately involved in the attempted coup plot, Alito is almost certainly going to blow off all the criticism. Chief Justice John Roberts, for his part, will likely allow it. This is for one simple reason: The entire GOP majority on the court is complicit with Trump's designs to end democracy.
The other Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court may not all be as loud and proud about it as Alito and Thomas, but that's more of an aesthetic difference than a material one. When it gets down to brass tacks, the Republican majority is cooperating fully these days with Trump's seditious plans. We know this for two reasons: First, the supposedly "originalist" conservative justices ignored the plain text of the Constitution — which explicitly forbids politicians who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding future office — to rule that Trump can still run for president. Second, they are currently blocking Trump from being tried for his efforts to steal the 2020 election, using transparently disingenuous methods.
The timing is especially telling here. The justices were practically tripping over their robes in their haste to issue their illegitimate decision in the ballot case. They heard oral arguments on February 8 and issued their unconstitutional, pro-Trump ruling less than a month later. But on the immunity claims, they are taking a luxurious amount of time. They pushed oral arguments nearly two months after Trump's trial in his Jan. 6 case was supposed to start. It's been nearly a month since then, and still no sign of a ruling. And that's despite every good faith legal scholar pointing out that this case should have never even made it to the Supreme Court. The D.C. circuit already issued a rock solid, common sense ruling that presidents don't get to just attempt coups without consequences.
Even if some conservative justices, as they seemed to indicate during arguments, aren't keen on ruling that a president is forever above the law, it may not matter. By taking up the case in the first place and taking their sweet time ruling on it, they likely doomed any chance that special prosecutor Jack Smith could actually bring Trump to court to answer to a jury before the election. And that's assuming the court issues a straightforward affirmation of the D.C. decision. Odds are they create a bunch of new, nonsense legal tests, forcing the lower courts to tinker with this case for months, if not years — and if Trump wins the election, he will kill the case anyway.
If the Supreme Court continues to delay Trump's Jan. 6 trial, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post writes, it's proof that the fascist sympathies of Alito and Thomas "have thoroughly corrupted the court." Sure, it's possible Roberts hears her and, within a week, we have a Supreme Court ruling that allows the federal trial to start this summer. It's also possible, theoretically, that a massive asteroid decimates planet Earth and ends our collective misery in one glorious swoop. But neither will realistically happen. The latter we know because NASA would have detected such an anomaly. The former we know because the Roberts court is run by a bunch of partisan hacks. If it weren't, they would have already kicked Trump off the ballot, as the Constitution requires, while also inviting the Justice Department to try him with the swiftness the public deserves.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-courts-samuel-alito-problem-100006229.html
