Trump v US
Judge Aileen Cannon ... No more special prosecutors ... Rogue judges at the highest level ... Presidential immunity decision worse than anticipated ... A dreadful partisan court ... Milwaukee convention ... Vance has no conviction - unlike his running mate ... Roger Fitch files from Washington
"FBI searches for motive in Trump shooting" - mystifying Associated Press headline.
What a great election choice! On one side, representing the party that has always claimed it stands for law and order, the candidate standing for president is a felon, the career criminal Donald Trump. On the other side, his worst nightmare, a former San Francisco public prosecutor and California AG, Kamala Harris.
Criminal charges, however, don't faze Republicans. In Florida, a convenient trapdoor has been provided to one set of charges by a Trump-appointed federal judge. According to Aileen Cannon, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump was illegally appointed.
Ignoring court precedents, the intensely ambitious Judge Cannon caught a Clarence Thomas pass and dismissed the Espionage Act case against Trump, just as Thomas had suggested in his presidential immunity concurrence. More here on the wildly ultra vires decision by Trump's rogue federal district judge.
As Obama's former White House counsel Bob Bauer commented, if Cannon's ruling is upheld, we may never again see the likes of Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Robert Mueller or Jack Smith.
Stolen documents in Mar a Lago bathroom, with chandelier
Cannon's decision fits neatly with the supreme court's ruling, in Trump v US, that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for "official" acts, even patently criminal ones involving murder and bribery, and are also presumed to be immune for everything unofficial.
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"The parallels between [Trump v US] and Germany's Enabling Acts …similarly ratified by the German Supreme Court right after Hitler took power in early 1933 - are startling. That collection of laws ruled that whatever Hitler said in the context of an 'official act' instantly became the law of the land. For all practical purposes, as the nation's leader, he became immune from prosecution under the laws that applied to every other normal German or elected politician." - Thom Hartmann
Although everyone is reeling from the new presidential election dynamics in the US, all eyes should still be on the US Supreme Court and a decision being called the Dred Scott of our time.
Hitler: immune from prosecution
In perhaps the most partisan power grab in its 235-year history, the supreme court on July 1 attempted to nullify all the outstanding federal criminal litigation against Donald Trump as well as litigation under appeal in New York State and Georgia. Rather than Justice Gorsuch's promised "rule for the ages", it's a rule tailor-made for Donald Trump.
As international law professor Oona Hathaway noted in Foreign Affairs, for the rest of the world the US president has always been above the law. Now Americans themselves will learn what that means.
In a decision that will live in infamy, the court ruled that a president is, in all essential matters, above the law. That's contrary to the Constitution; Article 1, Section 3, makes clear that even a president who has been impeached and convicted remains "liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law".
By a majority of 5-4 (Justice Barrett not joining), dicta was inserted in Trump v US that may affect multiple criminal prosecutions in several states, e.g, those involving fake electoral slates.
The five justices opined that even the evidence of crimes that falls within the president's astonishingly-broad "official acts", e.g, contacts and phone calls between the president and others, perhaps bribery and corruption, attempted subversions of justice through corrupt contacts with department employees (e.g, Jeffrey Clark in the DoJ), intimidation of the Vice-President and the Justice Department's senior officers, pressuring Georgia officials to "find" votes, cannot be admitted in court, nor the president's motives and good faith queried.
More here on CJ Roberts' now-notorious footnote 3.
Roberts: footnote three
The immunising of improper contacts with the Justice Department offers Trump a licence for vengeance, as envisioned by the Heritage Society's frightening, Republican-endorsed Project 2025.
The supreme court's decision is part of a pattern, and Eric Segall thinks it's all about the election:
"[T]he Court's fast-tracking of the disqualification case ... combined with the slow-walking of the immunity case ... had the purpose and effect of making sure Donald Trump would be on the ballot in November and that the pending criminal case against him brought by Jack Smith would not be concluded by the election but, even if it were, the case would be much, much harder to win. Those events demonstrably help the Republican Party and Donald J. Trump."
In other words, Trump v US is even worse than people think. The supreme court has attempted to kill every case against Donald Trump.
How worried should Americans be? Back in 2019 (before Trump's Espionage Act charges), former head of CIA Russian operations John Sipher concluded that Donald Trump was not a Russian agent. Though easy to recruit and manipulate, he would be beyond control:
"His narcissism, poor memory and ego would make it ... impossible for him to follow directions and keep a secret ... He blathers about things he doesn't understand ... is loathe to admit mistakes, lies constantly and is barely intelligible ..."
In the light of Trump v US, however, Sipher sees a new and different national security threat: a president who might direct the CIA or a mercenary to engage in illegal activities, and then order that the CIA director not brief Congress on such activities.
The question now presented: if the supreme court has actually authorised Donald Trump to order his rival killed by Seal Team Six, is the military entitled to disobey that order?
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It's been a horrible supreme court term all around, and it's impossible to overstate the damage it has done. While amplifying presidential power, the court has kneecapped federal agencies.
The demise of "Chevron deference" will bring the most ominous changes to administrative law.
Conservative Catholics on the US Supreme Court: shameless partisans
As David Dow notes, "[N]ow that Chevron has been overruled by Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, federal courts will no longer defer to scientists or experts when it comes to interpreting ambiguous statutes. The anti-intellectualism in American life that the political scientist Richard Hofstadter identified in 1963 has taken over the judicial branch."
Lawrence Tribe has more on the shameless partisan hackery of the court; Chris Geidner believes the Supreme Court Six have signalled they will consider anything.
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In Wisconsin, the credulous ninnies and cult-worshippers who underpin today's Republican Party staged its quadrennial freak show (convention) to anoint a presidential candidate. Their reward was a 90-minute acceptance speech containing a torrent of lies.
Meeting in the once-socialist citadel of Milwaukee, the delegates, some cranks, some under indictment themselves, chose a convicted felon as their presidential candidate, along with a running mate who once compared his leader to Hitler.
As Kentucky's Governor Andy Beshear quipped, "The problem with JD Vance is, he has no conviction. But ... his running mate has 34."
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