Voters Are Now Jury in Trump Trials
Supreme Court ruling lets public decide presidential powers
For all the gloom and doom expressed in initial public commentary on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, there is still the likelihood that well before the 2024 election, former Vice President Mike Pence will testify under oath against Donald Trump’s behavior on January 6.
MSNBC legal analyst Lawrence O’Donnell says special prosecutor Jack Smith will call Pence to testify in September before federal judge Tanya Chutkan. The NYT notes that the Supreme Court decision will still allow prosecutors to make their case against Trump before election day.
Hearings will “focus on the question at the center of the Supreme Court’s decision: whether the myriad allegations in Mr. Trump’s 45-page indictment were based on official acts he took in his role as president or on unofficial acts in his private role as a candidate for office.”
The Supreme Court ruling may also indirectly help Joe Biden. It allowed him to deflect attention from his poor debate performance. In a succinct and eloquent statement after the ruling, he looked fully in command and presidential. Full text.
A couple of my friends who after the debate debacle felt Biden should not run for re-election were reassured. They, like Biden, tend to be mentally fried after 9 pm. They began to understand why he might appear cognitively impaired at a late-night debate for they, though a decade younger than he, tend to lose it mentally late at night. In his 7 pm statement, he looked sharp.
I rarely go to bed before midnight. When the damn dog woke me at 5:45 am Monday to go outside to pee, I was disoriented and mentally impaired. I couldn’t find my glasses or my phone. I stumbled around, mumbled, and cursed. Who hasn’t been there?
Biden effectively changed the subject, at least temporarily, from his mental capabilities to the serious threats posed by the madman Trump who has called for the execution of Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for a “televised military tribunal” for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on treason grounds. On Truth Social, he re-tweeted a meme calling for the jailing of 15 former and current elected officials, including Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and former Vice President Pence.
“The American people must decide if Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable. Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide if they want to entrust the president — once again, the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing he’ll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.
Biden can take further steps to reassure the public about his presidency as he manages it not as a one-man dictatorship (“Only I can fix it,” Trump proclaims), but more like a CEO or chairman of the board. At least 11 major CEOs are older than Biden or Trump. Warren Buffett is 93.
If Trump cannot be convicted of charges related to refusing to accept the 2020 election, insisting despite lack of evidence that the election was stolen, calling election officials in GA and AZ and telling them to "find" additional votes so he fraudulently wins those states, inspiring fake electors and violent rioters at the Capitol, saying (as he told aide Mark Meadows, according to Cassidy Hutchinson) that Mike Pence deserved to be hanged for not going along with his scheme to block certification of the election, what's to prevent any future president from taking similar steps?
They, like Trump, will undoubtedly claim such power-mad behavior was part of his “official duties.”
If the American people do not reject Trump at the ballot box, elections in this country will be officially over.
That’s the key issue in the 2024 election.
We, the voters, are now the jury in the Trump trials.
Drill Deeper:
Read the full decision and the dissents.
We the voters - if the voters just happens to live in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, or possibly North Carolina. The rest of us get to watch and hope. But that’s another problem for another day, if the country survives long enough to discuss trivial issues like the electoral college.
I have not read the dissents. I can't bring myself to do it. In a Trump administration, no action will be challenged by Trump's Justice Department. Any current actions will be nixed early in the Trump administration. Any attempts in state courts to hold him liable for any "unofficial" acts will take years to go through the courts and will end up at the Supreme Court again and again. Will SCOTUS bat them all down? All this remains to be seen, and feared.