Supreme Court will have 'signed its own death warrant' by ruling in Trump’s favor: analysis

26 April 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court spent much of Thursday, April 25 listening to opposing oral arguments in Donald Trump's absolute immunity case.

The former president claims that because he enjoyed absolute immunity from criminal prosecution when he was in the White House, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's election interference indictment is illegitimate and needs to be thrown out. But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, assigned to Smith's case, has flatly rejected Trump's absolute presidential immunity claim — ruling that U.S. presidents do not enjoy a "divine right of kings."

In a scathing article published on April 26, The New Republic's Brynn Tannehill is vehemently critical of the way the Supreme Court has handled Trump's immunity claims.

Trump, Tannehill warns, has done everything he can to undermine the United States' institutions — and the Court is no exception.

"Trump's argument should be going down in flames 9-0," Tannehill argues. "A democracy cannot survive when its supreme leader can arbitrarily decide that it's in the nation's best interest to rub out his opponents... But the justices did not laugh this argument out of court."

Tannehill continues, "Quite the contrary: At least five of the justices seemed to buy into the Trump team's arguments that the power of the office of the president must be protected from malicious and politicized litigation."

Tannehill warns that if Trump returns to the White House and is allowed to rule as an "autocrat," the U.S. Supreme Court will be among the governments institutions that suffers.

"In the end, the Court appears to be doing everything to destroy itself, democracy, and the union, with its own arrogance and lack of foresight," Tannehill explains. "It's either castrated itself, and in the process doomed the country, or signed its own death warrant."

Read Brynn Tannehill's full New Republic article at this link.

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