The Court Is Corrupt. Say It with Me.

Sure the Roberts Court is partisan, I thought. But there's a threshold level belief in the rule of law. 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.

Everything comes into conceptual alignment if we understand the Court's corruption: corrupt in its construction, corrupt in its jurisprudence, venally corrupt as well, though that is the least of its problems. No. We don't want to shore up faith in a corrupt institution.

That's the challenge in front of us. It sucks. But things become more clear cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact. Swallow it whole.

It's better to rip the blinders from our eyes than to kid ourselves about how the plutocratic right has corroded the American experiment, desecrating our constitutional bedrock belief in the Rule of Law and no one person being beyond its reach.

In early 2021, Trump's lawyers said during his second impeachment trial that there was no need for the Senate to convict the former president, because the matter was better left to the judiciary.

In early 2024, Trump's lawyers said the former president's alleged crimes can't be left to the judiciary, because the Senate didn't vote to convict.

www.msnbc.com

This is precisely why the Roberts Court showed just how corrupt it is yesterday. Not a single male member of the SCOTUS bothered to mention that Trump's arguments show that they aren't based on sound legal principles, they're based on stretching and bending reality to fit Trump's legal needs in any particular moment.

There is a clear and present reason none of the males wanted to address the actual facts of the case brought before them instead of inventing far-fetched hypotheticals never before brought before them because no other former President tried to illegally remain in office through a conspiracy involving the disenfranchisement of legal voters across numerous states. That reason is Trump's charged conduct is unique to him and him alone. There is ZERO need to extrapolate of an even more unhinged tyrant bent upon revenge and retribution more than Trump himself has already articulated.

Our Founders were basically optimistic. They saw a future where American citizens would seek the wiser, educated, and capable amongst us when choosing Presidents. And even though they anticipated a time might come when a malevolent but popular tyrant is elected to our highest office, they created the tools for saner elected representatives to stop them once they've crossed the line. Trump has turned all of this on its head with an assist from the Federalist Society arsonists currently in the process of setting this nation's Constitution on fire for the sake of protecting the most vulgar and gravest internal threat to democracy this nation has ever seen.

People are way over-reacting.

No, people are not overreacting. The Roberts Court was tasked to answer a simple question based on a known set of conditions that are real and not hypothetical. The question at issue was does Donald Trump possess ANY form of Presidential immunity for the specific acts he's being charged with regarding January 6th(?) The Roberts Court has told this nation repeatedly that's it's not their job to legislate or rewrite laws from their bench unless there is a constitutional issue at stake which they deem either Congress or the Executive have misinterpreted.

That is not the case with Trump v. U.S.. The ONLY issue before the Court was whether or not Donald Trump has inherent constitutionally-based immunity from prosecution for the criminal acts he's charged with committing on and around January 6th and his conspiracy to illegally remain in office against the expressed will of voters and the constitutional process of presidential succession.

Worrying about what presidential actions are "core" or "not core" is not germane to answering the precise question put before the SCOTUS. And the most insidious aspect of Alito's meandering rant is that he completely ignores that no former President EVER has been charged with a crime expressly by his successor - including Trump. So what basis of fact is his hypothetical point based on? N-O-N-E!

President Biden has nothing to do with the DOJ investigating and charging Donald Trump, but if one listens to Alito, that is the direct allusion his questioning promotes. No one is asking today's SCOTUS to set parameters for presidential conduct but for the SCOTUS itself. Instead of sticking to what has already occurred under an actual President, hours were wasted on hypotheticals which don't address the ripe issue they injected themselves into.

Presidents place their hand on a bible and swear to faithfully execute our laws under the Constitution. Unlike most every other President not named Nixon, Trump not only broke his oath by conspiring against the Constitution, he's now trying to undermine that Constitution in alliance with corrupted judges placing the protection of fantasy before the prosecution of criminality, turning the Constitution on its head.