NEW YORK — It’s often said that Donald Trump gets what he wants by wearing people down: through obfuscation, delay, bluster, muddying the waters — whatever tires people out.
Continue reading “‘Standard Operating Procedure’: Trump Tries To Bury DA’s First Witness Under Heap Of Cynicism”Peering into the Corrupt Court’s Pretensions and Corruption
There were so many things that happened yesterday in the Supreme Court’s hearing on presidential immunity that it’s hard to know where to start. But one part that captured it for me was Sam Alito’s line of argument that presidential immunity might be necessary to make it possible for presidents to leave office voluntarily, or that not having some broad grant of immunity would make refusal to leave office more likely. Here’s one of the quotes: “If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is gonna be able to go off to a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
Continue reading “Peering into the Corrupt Court’s Pretensions and Corruption”Trump Trial Coverage Continues
Josh Kovensky is back at the courthouse in Lower Manhattan this morning and, while we likely won’t have a liveblog today, you can expect some longer dispatches from him as the proceedings move forward, identifying big themes in the trial as well as bringing us breaking news.
The liveblog will be back periodically throughout, during important moments when things are moving particularly quickly.
So check back regularly.
Rogue Supreme Court Abandons Democracy In Her Hour Of Greatest Need
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‘Because We Destroyed Our Democracy On Our Own’
For long moments during yesterday’s Supreme Court oral argument on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, the clock stopped and the outside world ceased to be and all I was left with was the blood rushing in my ears and a sinking feeling in my stomach.
When Justice Samuel Alito, the most villainous political figure in my lifetime, asserted without any irony that prosecuting a president for refusing to relinquish power after losing an election might encourage future presidents to hold on even more firmly to their office, any remaining optimism I could muster about American democracy and its institutional ability to defend itself against tyranny drained away.
I don’t say that lightly or for effect, and I don’t want to make my personal feelings the point here. But when I woke up this morning and saw the news coverage writ large, it didn’t reflect what happened yesterday. We slid over the edge of a cliff, and we won’t stop now until we hit bottom.
For the second time this year, the Supreme Court encountered a Jan. 6 case and barely talked about Jan. 6, which would be amazing under any circumstance but is astounding considering the court’s own proximity to the riot. The auto-coup attempt happened right across the street from the Supreme Court building. As TPM first reported and was later confirmed by an IG report, the planners of the Jan. 6 Ellipse rally had also planned a second culminating rally for that afternoon on the steps of the Supreme Court itself. The only reason it didn’t happen was that the growing riot at the Capitol blocked access to the Supreme Court. As long as the guillotine falls on another’s neck, I suppose?
As I’ve said here many times, the legal system can’t seem to appreciate the existential threat to itself that Trump and the MAGA movement represent. The hypotheticals batted around yesterday only confirmed that. Whether it was bribery or political assassinations or even another coup, Trump argued that he would be immune from criminal prosecution unless and until he was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.
But those and other hypotheticals presupposed for no obvious reason that there would still be a Congress around to impeach him and a court system to try him. Why would he tolerate an insolent Congress and a meddlesome Supreme Court in the first place? And if he had been so short-sighted as to leave the other two branches intact, why would a lawless president immune from criminal prosecution for official acts leave the White House after an impeachment conviction? Who’s gonna make him leave? Who’s gonna stop him? Certainly not this Supreme Court, we learned yesterday.
While the ultimate ruling in this case may soften some of the worst of what the justices said yesterday, even a “compromise” decision that allows the Jan. 6 trial of Trump to go forward is likely to lead to considerable delay – setting up the preposterous scenario in which the president who engaged in sedition against the United States gets to run for the office again before he is ever prosecuted for his first coup.
The conservative justices had an opportunity to rally to the defense of democracy, to gird the system against further attack, to righteously defend the rule of law, and to protect its own prerogatives and powers against a wannabe tyrant who is counting on them to be his supplicants. They could have drawn a sharp line. They could have summoned indignation and outrage. They could have overlooked their partisan priors in favor of principle – or more cravenly in favor of self-preservation. With the possible and limited exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, they did none of that.
They failed in the worst possible way at the most crucial time.
The Best Of The Best
No one captured my experience of the day yesterday as well as Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern:
For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. …
On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States, the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act
The Irrepressible Ketanji Brown Jackson
So smart, so confident, and so direct. I came out of my seat when she asked Trump’s attorney: “What was up with the pardon for President Nixon? If everybody thought that presidents couldn’t be prosecuted, then what was that about?” What was up indeed.
Quote Of The Day
In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, during oral argument in Trump v. United States
Have A Cute Weekend!
Let’s not end the week on a glum note:
Quick story: When my first child was born, I had a 100-pound German Shepherd who I was super concerned about bringing a baby home to. So I read all the things about how to socialize a GSD to the new member of the pack: let him smell her a lot, put one of her spit-up rags in his crate, give him time to adjust.
That first week I was pretty on edge, but then my mom came to visit her first grandchild. When she arrived, I was in my study with the baby asleep on my chest. My mom made a beeline for the baby – but when she got to the doorway, the GSD blocked her path.
She tried to sidestep him. He countered. She tried to push by him. He wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t mean about it, but he wasn’t nice either. And then I realized: HE WAS NOT GOING TO LET HER ANYWHERE NEAR THAT BABY. I called him off, and he reluctantly let my mom through.
In that moment, the baby was confirmed as part of the pack (and to my mother’s chagrin she was not). From then on, I relaxed about the dog and the baby, and we never had a problem.
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The Court is Corrupt. Say It With Me.
I was watching cable news this afternoon at the gym. And I saw one of those examples of what has now become a Trump/Roberts Court-era set piece, where principled and very smart lawyers and/or legal academics have to say, I guess I was a chump.
Sure the Roberts Court is partisan, I thought. But there’s a threshold level belief in the rule of law. I’m not trying to make hay out of others’ mistakes. My guiding heuristic has been that the Roberts Court, especially in its post-2017 iteration is thoroughly corrupt and will generally do whatever is in the interests of the GOP so long as it doesn’t put too big a dent in the Court’s own perceived legitimacy and elite social standing. Based on this standard I assumed the Court would settle for delaying Trump’s trial until the Fall. It seems now that they’re likely to kick it back to the trial Court for further fact-finding and thus the case itself well into 2025.
Fair enough.
Continue reading “The Court is Corrupt. Say It With Me.”Trump Saves Most Merciless Humiliation For Bill Barr
Donald Trump needs a good grudge like the rest of us need air. But from time to time, those who wrong him debase themselves and shred their own dignity so thoroughly to get back in his good graces that he makes an exception. Lindsey Graham is a good example. So is Ted Cruz.
Continue reading “Trump Saves Most Merciless Humiliation For Bill Barr”Pecker Back On The Stand As Trump Trial Resumes
Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial resumed this morning at 9:30 a.m. Prosecutors are continuing to question former tabloid executive David Pecker, who will then be cross-examined by Donald Trump’s lawyers.
Trump Will Be Happy With Supreme Court Arguments On Immunity
The Supreme Court conservatives seemed to solidify around a middle-ground position on Donald Trump’s claims of absolute presidential immunity Thursday, a win by another name for the former president as it would add months of delay to the Jan. 6 case.
Continue reading “Trump Will Be Happy With Supreme Court Arguments On Immunity”Conservative Justices Appear Poised To At Least Limit Scope Of Jan. 6 Case Against Trump
The Supreme Court heard Donald Trump’s attempt to knock the legs out from under Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case on Thursday. The arguments come over four months after Smith initially asked the justices to decide whether Trump could claim sweeping immunity to protect him from prosecution related to the insurrection.
The conservative justices at times at least appeared skeptical of the Trump team argument that the former president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, but were primarily concerned about the chilling effect a ruling on the matter might have on future presidents.
The arguments began at 10 a.m. ET.
Catch up on our live coverage below:
Our Long National RCP Nightmare Is Over
For most of this election season so far, FiveThirtyEight hasn’t surfaced its own presidential race average. Compiling these averages in a sophisticated and honest way is actually kind of complicated. (They explain their methodology here.) We used to play in this space with PollTracker. So I know from experience. For me it’s not that I put so much weight on the specific number. It’s just a simpler way of visualizing the trend over time.
Well, now they’ve finally rolled theirs out. So I don’t have to be so reliant on RealClearPolitics, which has both a clumsy methodology and goes to comical length to add or not add polls to juice their favored candidate. All that said, the absolute averages as of today as remarkably similar. Trump up .4% on FiveThirtyEight and .3% on RCP. This reminds us of some of the ironies and … how can I say it, melancholy and ennui of complexity. The FiveThirtyEight model is HUGELY complex and sophisticated. It factors in all sorts of different variables. It incorporates findings from individual states into the national averages and vice versa. And yet for all this statistical leg work the averages as of this moment are essentially identical.
Continue reading “Our Long National RCP Nightmare Is Over”