We remain astonished, unable to evaluate for now the extent of the terrible blow that the Supreme Court Blazer attacked its credibility two days ago.
It seemed impossible that a president of the United States could try to steal an election, invent fraud all denied by dozens of lost legal cases, try to maintain power by sending a few hundred maniacs to smash the halls of Congress to block the nomination of the winner. It seemed impossible that the author of all this could lead a new electoral campaign by always talking about stolen elections, defining the attackers of the Congress, who in the meantime had often been condemned, as "heroes". And it seemed impossible that the Supreme Court could pretend nothing happened and after four years, don't pass judgment on those facts, that is, don't tell the Americans who have seen everything on TV how serious they are. No, he prefers to ignore them by discussing vague principles. He thus protects the suspect, and indeed decides to postpone each judgment with low legal expedients on the Greek calendars, beyond the consultation of November 5th, thus protecting them from any judicial effect of the events of January 2021, thus denying the very reasons for their existence. It is clear, in fact, that a Trump not even formally condemned, but somehow reprimanded for those facts, would be a certain candidate for defeat.
Everything seemed impossible. But now it must be admitted that the American judicial apex itself is sucked into the Trumpian vortex where truth and lies chase each other and indeed it is the second that is the first. It happened without a shadow of shame at the American Supreme Court, a Washingtonon April 25, 2024.
The presidential immunity debate: Trump before the Supreme Court
The background is known, theassault on the Capitol on January 6, 2001, which everyone followed on TV. The objective is known, to try to scare Vice President Mike Pence ("let's hang Pence" was the battle cry) and the senators who were making the presidential vote results, won by Joe Biden. After a long investigation, which demonstrated Trump's responsibilities, the Department of Justice brought the accusation in the summer of 2023, through the special prosecutor Jack Smith. But in front of the federal district court in Washington Trump challenged everything last March by invoking thepresidential immunity: as president he could not be impeached for the events of January 21st. And he appealed to the Supreme Court. Jack Smith did so too, asking for a quick decision, which was immediately denied.
Calmly, the preliminary discussion on presidential immunity was scheduled for the last week of the calendar, April 25th. THE nine Judges, six Republican nominees, three Democrats, but all obviously required in theory to respect the law not the political part, spoke first with Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, then with the lawyer for the Ministry of Justice, Michael R .Dreeben. There will be a response, perhaps, by June. But since it is clear, in the dilatory technique adopted by the six Republican judges and by Trump in this and other proceedings, that they will want to better define the contours of presidential immunity by entrusting the task to federal court in Washington, the actual debate and the presentation of the evidence, an overwhelming element for Trump, will only take place in 2025, once the vote is over, which is what Trump wants, given his belief in victory. And at that point any verdict will be ineffective.
The fate of American democracy
Already before the meeting of 25 April Michael Village, a constitutional scholar at Cornell Law School, had identified a wake-up call: there won't be much hope of justice, he said, "if we hear some judges ask the thoughtful question of what could happen if presidential immunity in the Trump case is underestimated and add that this would open the way to criminal charges against all former presidents. If we hear this, without even tacit mention of the fact that none of our former presidents (and, with one worrying and potentially imminent exception) none of our future presidents fall into the category of dangerous pathologically lying narcissists who don't really care about norms and democratic institutions, there will be no hope.
Promptly, the "risk" of touching presidential immunity emerged. Clarence Thomas, the most discussed and discredited (for corruption) of the six Republicans wondered what would have happened to John Kennedy without parliamentary immunity at the time of Operation Mongoose, a plan to bring down Fidel Castro's government in Cuba. Putting a The clandestine political operation, questionable as long as you like, on the level of a scam to the detriment of the nation and for one's own personal gain, gives the measure of moral degradation. One would say that the caustic HL Mencken he was prescient when he declared a century ago that “as democracy improves, the role of the president increasingly represents the deep soul of the people. And one glorious day the common people of the country will see realized what they aspire to from the bottom of their hearts and finally the White House will be honored by having installed a real scoundrel.” Completely honored and served by the leaders of the judiciary.
The assault on the Capitol: the great absentee in the confrontation between the judges
If the central point of thelawyer Sauer was that of the untouchable and theological presidential immunity the federal prosecutor, with Michael Dreeben, centered everything on the fact that the not well-defined presidential immunity is nevertheless subject to the supreme principle, desired by a Constitution written by a people who had rebelled against a king, and which subjects everyone, even the president, to the power of the law.
But it wasn't enough for the zealous Republican judges. The most conservative, the Italian American Samuel Breath, he dueled with his colleague Sonia Sotomayor and with Dreeben on the risks faced by a president forced to decide on everything and in need of protection. The system offers it to him, starting from the consultancy of the Ministry of Justice, all at his disposal, and much more. “It's always a risk,” Alito said. “It's a system that, if it doesn't work in the end, it's because we destroyed democracy with our own hands, isn't it?” Sotomayor closed.
Alito went so far as to argue that limiting impunity is a threat to democracy, because every president could be put in prison once his mandate is over, as is already happening in various countries, he said. The opposite is true,” Dreeben responded. There are, he said, infinite procedures to demonstrate fraud electoral. Dozens of legal challenges were made and all but one were lost. There are courts. “This is the rule of the nation. I believe the court is familiar with this,” was his final thrust, the courts, not the assault on the Capitol, which was never named by the supreme judges, despite hovering over everything.
Assault on Capitol Hill: Hypocrisy, Justice, and the Destiny of America
“Just imagine if during the debate a crowd had attacked the noble building of the Supreme Court in protest,” a criminal law professor wrote in the New York Times. “The crowd breaks doors and windows, overwhelms the officers and invades the courtroom. Some shout: let's hang the president of the court. Judges and lawyers must run for their lives. Hours pass before the police can regain control." Well, perhaps a replay of January 2021 at the Capitol could break the thick fog of hypocrisy that surrounded the judicial April 25th and remember what the problem was to be solved.
The majority of the chief magistrates therefore bet on Donald Trump's victory in six months. Possible victory but to date not at all certain, and which the fraudulent indolence of the Court helps on the one hand but damages on the other, because for many voters the vote will now be a form of popular verdict replacing, through culpable renunciation, that of the judges togati.
Max Lerner, a tsarist immigrant in love with America and interpreter of its nature, compared the supreme judges to the great priests and the Court to the great cathedral of America. Deconsecrated, for the moment.
It doesn't console Bob Dylan, with his The Hurricane from 1975, a protest song for the conviction without certain evidence of a boxer, the Hurricane, to life imprisonment for murder and released after 20 years due to a miscarriage of justice. “How can the life of such a man be in the palm of some fool? Seeing how everything was clearly cheated, it only makes me ashamed of living in a country where justice is rigged."
