The Republican Justices Do Not Want to Talk About Donald Trump's Coup Attempt

[In It to Win It]

Balls & Strikes

On Thursday, the Supreme Court convened for its final oral argument of the term, ostensibly to decide whether a President Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In all likelihood, Trump v. United States—both the case’s name and also an apt description of U.S. politics right now—is the last chance to prosecute Trump between now and November, when Americans return to the polls to decide if a guy who once tried to overthrow the government is worthy of leading it.

If, however, you were unfamiliar with the particulars of the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s role in facilitating the events that led to it, the bulk of oral argument would have felt dry, boring, and academic. Throughout, the Republican justices worked diligently to frame the case as a series of abstractions—as fodder for an erudite discussion of constitutional theory that only tangentially and coincidentally implicates the electoral future of their preferred candidate. The calculus was pretty simple: The more time they spend discussing things that are not Donald Trump’s real-world criminality, the less attention Donald Trump’s real-world criminality gets.

A Department of Justice-appointed special counsel has charged Trump with, among other things, conspiracy to defraud the United States. The statutory language is pretty broad, but as the government’s lawyer, Michael Dreeben, explained to the Court on Thursday, the law is “designed to protect the functions” of the federal government. “It’s difficult to think of a more critical ‘function’ than the certification of who won the election,” Dreeben said.

Yet even this oblique reference to what Trump actually did was too much for Justice Samuel Alito, who quickly jumped in. “As I said, I’m not talking about the particular facts of this case,” he told Dreeben. Instead, Alito spent much of his allotted time discussing the outer limits of presidential criminality, repeatedly invoking the dangers of a too-lenient test that could allow bad-faith prosecutors to bring groundless actions against hypothetical ex-presidents at some undefined point in the future.

[UTUSN]

1. Also are very familiar with their own de facto total immunity and seem not-stingy about

sharing it with Drumpf, just him, not with all us nefarious ones. I say "near total" because their dicta are final, the only way to get them out is by impeachment which is impossible for all practical purposes. So yes, they har-de-har-harred their way around the topic of immunity and will probably spread it around to Drumpf at least a bit.

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Yes, because anyone who considers January 6 sees Trump is GUILTY OF INSURRECTION.

And that might jeopardize their conspiracy to obstruct justice on behalf of Trump.

[Irish_Dem]

3. I thought judges were supposed to stick with the facts of the case in front of them.

Not go off on tangents.
Or hypotheticals.