Score One For The Donald?
The Supreme Court Declines To Be Drafted Into Smith's Jihad Against Trump
The case(s) against Donald Trump have made for a busy past few news cycles!
The Supreme Court earlier today denied Jack Smith’s petition for certiorari on Donald Trump’s motion regarding Presidential immunity for actions performed while in office.
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request by special counsel Jack Smith to fast-track arguments on whether Donald Trump has any immunity from federal prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while in office – a move that will likely delay his trial.
Intriguingly, there was no explication of the denial, nor were there any recorded dissents. Whether there is any particular significance to this is indeterminate.
Ironically, this setback for Smith comes even as Colorado all but ensures that a strikingly similar question will be taken up by the Supreme Court, having ruled Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot because he is an “insurrectionist”.
Because this case turns on the interpretation and application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, it is difficult to see how the Supreme Court could refuse to accept an appeal of the Colorado decision.
Even without the immediate Constitutional implications of the Colorado ruling, the Supreme Court will very likely feel additional pressures to quickly take up the Colorado matter. A similar litigation is proceeding in Michigan and has made it as far as that state’s Supreme Court.
A liberal group on Monday appealed a ruling keeping former President Donald Trump on the ballot to the Michigan Supreme Court, setting up the latest in a series of state high court showdowns over whether a rarely used constitutional clause prohibiting those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office bars him from a return to the presidency.
California’s lieutenant governor is making a call for Trump to be denied ballot access in that state as well, and is citing the Colorado ruling as justification.
A Democratic state official in California is now calling for the former president to be stripped of ballot access in that state too, citing the Colorado court’s finding that Mr Trump had participated in an insurrection via his support and tangential leadership of the mob which attacked the US Capitol on January 6, attempting to halt the election certification process.
Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis sent a letter to the secretary of state urging her to make a similar determination in the days ahead; California’s deadline for certifying ballots for the upcoming 2024 primary is this coming week.
Separately, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has pondered whether President Biden could be barred from the ballot in Texas.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, floated the idea of taking President Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas over his handling of the border crisis after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled to block former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
“Seeing what happened in Colorado tonight makes me think—except we believe in democracy in Texas—maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he’s been president, disrupting our state far more than anything anyone else has done in recent history,” Mr. Patrick told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview on Dec. 19.
These dueling ballot access challenges, if allowed to play out on their own, would take the Constitutional crisis created by the Colorado ruling into the stratosphere. For the sake of the Republic, I hope the Supreme Court does take the matter up and quickly.
Yet if they do, Smith will have been peremptorily sidelined as a result of his gambit. As I had speculated at the time, the move, while bold, seemed to entail an inordinate amount of risk with little upside for the prosecution.
As the court has already rejected his certiorari petition, it is unlikely Smith would be able to do much more than issue an amicus curiae brief in support of the Colorado ruling, and even that might be problematic, given that his prosecution of Donald Trump is ongoing.
Meanwhile, noted law professor and Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley predicts the Colorado ruling will be overturned.
The test for the U.S. Supreme Court is not just what they should do, but how they should do it. As an institution, the Court is often called upon to seize such moments to bring unity and clarity on our core values. That is why this insidious opinion must not only be unequivocally but unanimously overturned.
The Colorado decision to bar Donald Trump from the ballot will be overturned because it is wrong on the history and the language of the 14th Amendment.
Dead wrong.
The question is whether the US Supreme Court will speak with one voice, including the three liberal justices.
To Turley’s list of Colorado wrongs I would also add that it is wrong on the facts. If the facts surrounding the “J6” riot prove anything, it is that Donald Trump is not an insurrectionist.
Yet if the Supreme Court rules that Donald Trump is not an insurrectionist, how can such a ruling not weaken if not eviscerate Jack Smith’s “J6” case against Donald Trump? We should not forget that Smith’s case against Trump is skating on mighty thin ice already.
To accept Smith’s view of Trump’s actions as criminal one has to presume that declarations by the State are the definition of objective reality. To give credence to Smith’s indictment of Trump one has to presume that the State is the arbiter of what people may know, and what they do know. To accept Smith’s understanding of American civil liberties one has to presume that the State decides when, where, and how such liberties may be exercised.
There has never been a time in American history when the federal government was granted such omnipotence as to be competent to define reality. The power Jack Smith imputes to the federal government does not exist, and has never existed. Smith’s assertions to the contrary are themselves a Constitutional obscenity, deserving only of contempt, derision, and dismissal.
Which merely reiterates yet again my conclusion that the Democrats would have done far better to impeach Trump, convict him at an impeachment trial, and only then pursue criminal cases against him.
The lesson here is clear: deal with the political issues first, and only then deal with the legal issues.
The Democrats unwisely chose not to do so. Instead, they sought to politicize the criminal justice system. Having sown the wind of weaponized courts, they are now reaping the whirlwind of Constitutional chaos.
There is no way this ends with the Democrats being anything but diminished as a credible force for lawful governance in this country. The country itself will be fortunate if that is the only damage that is done.
Your excellent writings on this matter have reassured me. I saw the Supreme Court’s decision to refuse to rule on it, and immediately wondered, are they just passing the buck here? Maybe because they are anxious to begin their Christmas festivities? Or are they disgusted at the politicalization of the legal system? In any case, I sure hope you’re right that this will end badly for the Democratics - they deserve it!
Your stuff on these cases continues to be my goto for commentary and information.
The bottom line is the word "insurrection" was chosen on Jan 6, and repeated continuously by the Dems and their lapdog hack media, for a specific reason.
This reason is playing out in the courts and, for the good of the rest of us, must be rejected by SCCOTUS