CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court Trump Immunity Hearing was hard to hear and had to have the nation’s founders turning over in their graves with all but one of the court’s conservative justices not sounding supreme.
With the exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s conservatives, led by Justice Samuel Alito, dismissed, discounted the gravity of the Jan 6 insurrection attack on the U.S. Capital and Constitution. They dignified the atrocious absurdity of the Trump team’s oral arguments that a coup and killing of domestic political rivals may possibly be considered ‘official acts’ that would be immune from prosecution if the president is not first impeached for them. That was actually open for serious deliberation by the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Despite the dismaying questioning by Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, former Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal held out hope there still could be a 5-4 ruling against Trump and for the founders, that hinges on Chief Justice Roberts.
From what Katyal heard, he sees Justice Coney Barrett ruling with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson. Harder to determine is on which side Chief Justice Roberts will be. Not a good sign that Roberts discounted the Appeals Court ruling against Trump’s immunity claim and even took the case.
It’s another low point for the court that a likely scenario is that it kicks the case back down to the lower courts which would delay the Trump Jan. 6 case until after the election, which is a win for Trump and dictatorship, not democracy.