The Day That Justice Died
I don’t mean to tell you that I told you so, but, man, I freakin’ told you so. When Republicans literally stole a Supreme Court seat in the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s passing, I told you that it would have vast, wide-ranging implications for decades to come. I told you that we couldn’t just allow a party that has won the popular vote in only one presidential election since I graduated high school in 1989 to nominate six of the nine justices to the Supreme Court and not have dire implications for our country and its democracy. I told you that permitting the politicisation of the highest court in the land by means of backhanded schemes would only lead to an erosion of the public faith in the institution of the court itself and of our government as a whole. And I told you that such a conservative super majority could only serve to advance an activist agenda that stripped Americans of their basic constitutional freedoms and push us further and further from reflecting the values echoed by the prevailing majority of American citizens. But did any of you listen? Well, some of you may have, but we didn’t do enough about it. And now we are left with this: a cesspool of corruption that undermines the very principles of democracy in order to do the bidding of the man who put them there.
Of course I could go on and on about the heinous nature of the Dobbs decision and the reversal of decades of hard-earned protection of women bodily autonomy. So too could I go after the Bruen case where Justice Clarence Thomas mysteriously invoked the British Common Law case of Sir John Knight to deprive states of the right to pass even the most basic and overwhelmingly supported common sense gun legislation. Or I could, as many have done in recent days, expose the glaring moral hypocrisy and shameless influence peddling that grifters like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have been ensnared in for years now, all while failing to recuse themselves from cases in which they had invested personal or financial interests. But what I am here to focus on in this edition of TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less is simply the deplorable tactics the court has engaged in by playing to their boy, Donald Trump.
I’m not even mad about the court’s recent ruling against allowing states like Colorado to remove Trump from their presidential ballots because he violated the provision of the 14th amendment that states that no one can hold federal public office after engaging in an insurrection. Yes, by the letter of the law, Trump should be kicked off ballots in every state because if storming the Capitol, shifting on the Speaker’s desk, and trying to hang the Vice President isn’t an insurrection, then I just don’t know what the hell that term even means anymore. But I can actually see where the court was going on this one. If we start opening this up to the whims of the state, that slippery slope is just going to lead to wing nut conservative states trying to politicise that move as well and removing Democratic candidates from their ballots, not dissimilarly to how Trump was impeached twice for the genuine purposes the founders put impeachment into the Constitution in the first place just to have off-the-rails Republicans like Boebert and Marjory Taylor Greene weaponising the process to impeach Joe Biden. Besides, the only states that were genuinely going to remove Trump from the ballot weren’t going to places he could win anyways. It’s not like a court in Alabama was going to kick him off the ballot, so that tactic was always a fool’s errand in the first place.
No, it is the court’s decision to hear arguments on Trump’s potential immunity in his federal criminal trial for inciting an insurrection that has removed the last semblances of respect I may have had for this once venerable institution. Back in the day, I, myself went to law school at George Washington University in the heart of Washington DC and sat in on oral arguments made before the Supreme Court. I remember thinking that in a world of political polarisation and gamesmanship, that this was the last of the ivory towers of impartial justice and governance left standing on the hill, that this was the last government institution that maintained the impartial integrity Americans deserved. But alas, with the court agreeing to hear this, and thus significantly impacting the timing of Trump’s adjudication, that integrity and impartiality are no more as they become mere wishful thinking of an bygone era still filled with hope for an America that lived up to its lofty ideals.
I actually do believe that the court will inevitably find in the people’s favor and uphold the circuit ruling that found Trump could be held liable for the crimes he has perpetrated against the American people. After all, even the Supreme Court has to acknowledge the floodgates of harrowing corruption and tyranny they would be opening by granting former presidents unlimited immunity in their conduct while in office. But that’s not even the point here. That’s not why they took this case. They already knew where they were coming down on this one. No, this whole ruse is nothing more than yet another Trump-conccocted, shady-as-hell scheme to delay his criminal trial until after the election.
That conservative majority on the court knows all too well that polls show that Trump has no chance of winning if he is convicted of a crime prior to the election. Their job isn’t to absolve him of his crimes, to make the charges go away altogether. Rather, they have summoned merely to delay it long enough that he wins back the job in November. And then he can take care of the rest of it himself.
Those sounds you hear? Those are just the death knells tolling for our democracy…
Steven Craig is the author of the best-selling novel WAITING FOR TODAY, as well as numerous published poems, short stories, and dramatic works. Read his blog TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less every THURSDAY at www.waitingfortoday.com
I have a tiny bit more faith in SCOTUS. I think that there was some horse trading behind the scenes in which they kick the can down the road to hear oral arguments in exchange for them to make a prompt ruling. This would allow the trial to take place in the late summer/early fall. even if it’s held later than that, Trump’s campaign would have a hard time fighting against the negative publicity if Election Day falls in the midst of a high profile case.
The Special Prosecutor and the District Court are both eager to get on with the trial.
Best case for you and your ilk is that my prediction comes true. Worst case is that the trial begins November 6.
Imagine this- Trump wins the election, goes to trial, gets convicted, and attempts to pardon himself. I don’t think SCOTUS wants to be put in a position to decide in what would cause domestic collapse no matter the ruling.
As always, I very much appreciate your thoughts here. But I am dubious about this trial now starting before the election, and I am afraid that was very much a premeditated move by SCOTUS. Why else would they interject themselves here? The ruling is fairly obvious. Of course we can’t give presidents utter immunity from criminal conduct. Just think about the implications. Suddenly, we become Russia with political dissidents falling out of windows. That was the circuit court ruling and they could have just let it stand. No, this is clearly a case of trying to run out the clock to get Trump elected.
As to faith in SCOTUS, just take a look at how 1/3 of SCOTUS got there in the first place. 3 seats went to a one-term president who never even won the popular vote. Republicans literally stole one of those seats by refusing to hear Merrick Garland’s nomination for over 6 months before the 2016 election, but then heard ACB’s nomination just weeks before the 2020 election. This goes beyond mere gamesmanship and politics. This is a concerted effort to subvert the will of the American people. The result? Overturning Roe and stripping millions of American women of the right to bodily autonomy even though a vast majority of Americans believe in legal abortion rights. Then you have Thomas and Alito taking in millions in undisclosed gifts and payments, refusing to recuse themselves from cases where they clearly should have, including Thomas not recusing himself on the 2020 election fraud case even though his wife Ginny was one of the craziest conspiracy theorists out there and he became the sole vote in Trump’s favour. Sorry, I would love to still have faith in this once venerable institution, but I and 82% of the American public now believe that this current iteration has sullied it beyond repair.