The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he should be shielded from criminal prosecution keeps the justices at the center of election-year controversy for several more months and means any verdict on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 vote will not come before summer.

The country’s highest court wants the final word on the former president’s assertion of immunity, even if it may ultimately affirm a comprehensive ruling of the lower federal court that rejected Trump’s sweeping claim.

For Trump, Wednesday’s order amounts to another win from the justice system he routinely attacks. The justices’ intervention in the case, Trump v. United States, also marks another milestone in the fraught relationship between the court and the former president.

Cases related to his policies and his personal dealings consistently roiled the justices behind the scenes. At the same time, Trump, who appointed three of the nine justices, significantly influenced the court’s lurch to the right, most notably its 2022 reversal of nearly a half century of abortion rights and reproductive freedom.

  • Cosmic Cleric
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    -59 months ago

    The foaming at the mouth on this topic in the comments is insane.

    You want the Supreme Court to judge this. You can’t get any more important than codifying and defining how much power the Office of the President actually has. And having a lower court do that won’t carry the weight that that decision needs to have.

    Just sit tight people. When the Supreme Court wants to they can move quickly, and something tells me they’re going to move quickly on this one.

    • @tacosplease
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      49 months ago

      They scheduled the next stuff to happen toward the end of April. That’s not fast. It nearly guarantees the case won’t happen before the election. It won’t happen at all after the election unless Biden wins. The Supreme Court fucked us here, and they absolutely know that.

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
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        39 months ago

        And they’ll find in the Colorado case that states can’t remove insurrectionists until specifically convicted in a criminal trial, so that will also be tucked behind their delay. I even think they’ll find that no, presidents are not perpetually above the law, but then stay any case that would kick either kick Trump off the ballot or send him to prison because now it’s too close to the election and/or it’s being appealed.

        There’s no real reason to take this case, particularly after refusing earlier, but they don’t have to be blatant to get exactly the result they want.

      • Cosmic Cleric
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        -49 months ago

        They scheduled the next stuff to happen toward the end of April. That’s not fast.

        For them, that is.

        It nearly guarantees the case won’t happen before the election.

        No, it doesn’t. There’s a lot of time between April and November, and the court has a history of accelerating decisions when needed.

        The Supreme Court fucked us here, and they absolutely know that.

        If they wanted to fuck us they would just decide not to take the case, or take it on their normal schedule instead of the accelerated one in April.