'Damning': Experts slam SCOTUS for 'obviously and unduly' protecting Trump from Jack Smith

22 May 2024

With the defense and prosecution having rested their cases, closing arguments in Donald Trump's hush money/falsified business records trial are scheduled for after Memorial Day on Tuesday, May 28. The three other criminal cases against the former president appear unlikely to go to trial before the November election, but the hush money trial has moved along a rapid pace — just as Justice Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. were hoping.

One of the Trump cases that is in limbo is special counsel Jack Smith's election interference indictment. In a scathing op-ed published by MSNBC on May 22, attorney Norm Eisen and Michael Podhorzer of the Center for American Progress lambasted the High Court for holding up Smith's case — which, they argue, should be moving along rapidly like the hush money trial.

"This week brought milestones, good and bad, in two of the criminal cases against Donald Trump," Eisen and Podhorzer explain. "The positive one came in his prosecution in New York City for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up interference in the 2016 election…. The negative milestone came in Washington, regarding the federal prosecution of Trump in the District of Columbia for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election."

Eisen and Podhorzer add, "On Monday, the Supreme Court blew past a critical date, by which precedent teaches the dispute over Trump's claim of presidential immunity should have been decided. However the New York case turns out, its rapid movement should serve as a rebuke to the ethically conflicted Supreme Court justices who are obviously and unduly stalling the Washington case."

Eisen and Podhorzer stress that the Smith's election interference case should have long since gone to trial, but has been delayed because the High Court has made one terrible move after another.

"What's even more unbelievable is that the Supreme Court had the chance to consider the issue in December — as Smith requested — but chose not to," Eisen and Podhorzer lament. "It decided to take up the case only in late February, then scheduled the hearing for April 25, the very last day of arguments this term. And now, it is dragging out deciding the case."

Eisen and Podhorzer argue that in light of their January 6, 2021-related controversies, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas should "recuse" themselves from the immunity decision.

Thomas' wife, activist Ginni Thomas, was a major promoter of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — and an upside-down flag, according to the New York Times, was hanging outside of Alito's home on January 19, 2021. An inverted flag, at that time, was an expression of solidarity with the "Stop the Steal" movement.

"If the pro-Trump justices on the Court cared as much about an insurrection as they do about shielding the former president," Eisen and Podhorzer write, "we would already have had a verdict in a trial regarding Trump's alleged role in the January 6 insurrection. The fact that we don't is damning, if not surprising, evidence of those justices' real priority: protecting Donald Trump."

Norm Eisen and Michael Podhorzer's full MSNBC op-ed is available at this link.

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