A totally corrupt Court, protected by a corrupt Congress, protecting a gangster

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that the Supreme Court has accepted the case of whether a former president has immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts while in office. The court had previously ruled that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, which makes sense as it avoids people suing him for actions and policies they don’t like. Lower courts have rejected the nasty guy’s claim that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity. The Supremes will hear arguments in late April with a ruling by the end of June. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that the Supremes taking the case is an enormous gift to the nasty guy. His method of operation is delay cases as much as possible, and in this case he wants to delay it until after the election, until after he resumes office, so he can tell his compliant Attorney General to call off all federal cases. And the work of the Supremes will definitely make that scenario much more likely. If the ruling comes at the end of June the multi-week trial likely won’t resume until September when cries of election interference will be much louder. Of course, no matter when the trial resumes the nasty guy will raise more appeals, reducing the chances of completion by the election. The ruling by the appellate court is considered so definitive the Supremes didn’t need to take the case. But at least four justices agreed to give the nasty guy his desired delays. So even though a definitive ruling is out there the Supremes could give the nasty guy a favorable ruling. In the comments of a pundit roundup Kos member kurious discussed the difficulty in removing a Supreme Court justice for corruption. Included is a quote from an article on Vox. The unquestioned assumption is that impeachment and conviction is the only means of removing a corrupt federal judge. From the Vox article:

Once a staunch conservative like Thomas (or Gorsuch) is in office, Republicans have an overwhelming incentive to keep that justice in his seat regardless of whether the justice behaves unethically.

A response by kurios:

So, we have a totally corrupt Court, protected by a corrupt Congress, protecting a fellow grifter and gangster—and seditionist—smug in their own ability to behave as corruptly as they wish, and judge themselves innocent of wrongdoing.

In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic:

First, Democrats should stress that voters need to know before the election whether Trump committed crimes—and this is due to them as a matter of right. Second, Trump is seeking these delays to end all prosecutions of himself if he regains the White House—to corruptly place himself above the law by pardoning himself or having his handpicked lickspittle attorney general do it. Democrats must say clearly that if the court helps delay the trial until after the election, it will be enabling him to do that.

Yesterday I had written that Moscow Mitch will be stepping down from the leader of the Republicans in the Senate. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that there are candidates already running for the position, though it doesn’t officially open until November. There are three categories of candidates. The first is those representing the Republican establishment. These candidates are “The Johns” – Cornyn, Thune, and Barrasso. Then there are candidates representing the MAGA movement. And the third category is those directly endorsed by the nasty guy. Even with the categories, the guy to take the position will be one the nasty guy approves of and who supports him. And that will be the end of the withering Republican establishment. That is Mitch’s legacy. He was the most powerful Republican in a position to stand up to the nasty guy. And he didn’t. This post marks the 500th time I’ve tagged a post for the nasty guy. Considering I didn’t write about him in the first seven years of this blog this means I’ve been writing about him a lot since then. The nasty guy is third in my list of most discussed topics. Republicans (GOP) top the list at 1013 posts, then is gay marriage/marriage equality (I changed the tag) at 705 posts. Then the nasty guy. I wish I didn’t have to write about him anymore. Alas, he’ll be around – and continue to prompt me to write about how much he annoys me – for quite a while. Sumner reported that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people gathered in Moscow for the funeral of dissident leader Alexi Navalny. This was in defiance of Putin and defiance of threats from security forces and that took considerable courage. Some in the crowd changed “No to war!” and “Ukrainians are good people!”

It would be wonderful to think that the tragedy of Navalny’s death might be redeemed by an anti-war movement that would save thousands of lives, but at this point, there is little to indicate this is a threat of the scale that might get Putin’s attention, much less force him to change his mind about the illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

And if it did get Putin’s attention he would respond with more murder.