Justice Sotomayor: Supreme Court Has Made Trump 'A King Above the Law', Upended Democracy

Daily Kos, July 1, 2024.

The Supreme Court just gave convicted felon Donald Trump everything he wanted. In a 6-3 decision issued Monday, the court’s six conservative justices granted him sweeping immunity from key elements of the federal Jan. 6 case against him, all wrapped up in a flimsy conceit that the lower courts need to take it back to reconsider precisely what conduct he can be prosecuted for.

More than that, however, the six conservatives just upended democracy.

It’s a five-alarm fire, Justice Sonia Sotomayor essentially says, in what Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern calls “one of the most terrified and terrifying pieces of judicial writing I've ever encountered.” Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark,” Sotomayor writes in her dissent. “The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding.”

When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Sotomayor writes. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/1/2250250/-Justice-Sotomayor-The-Supreme-Court-has-made-Trump-a-king-above-the-law
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- The Supreme Court Just Made Trump the First American King, Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams, July 1, 2024. Ed. The 6 Republicans on this court have essentially declared that they and Trump are so far above the law that the entire concept this nation was founded on—that “no person is above the law”—is null and void.'
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They did it. The U.S. Supreme Court handed a massive victory to former President Donald Trump in this so-called “immunity” case, and it will probably take a year or more before there’s even a chance he’ll be held to trial for trying to overthrow the 2020 election and, thus, the government of the United States.

As feared, the six Republicans on the court essentially threw Trump’s sedition case back to the lower court (with caveats) where there will be numerous decisions to make—which are all further appealable, resetting the case so Trump can drag things out for another year or more—about whether the crimes he’s committed are “official” or “private/personal” acts.

But that’s not the worst of it. They also turned Trump or any future fascist president into our first American king or führer.

Unless Congress acts quickly to overturn this obscene 6-3 decision—which won’t happen so long as Republicans control the House—democracy in America has been wounded, perhaps fatally, and the president has been made into a dictator, should he or she choose to behave that way. And, of course, no matter what little fig leaves exist in this decision, if he’s elected this fall, he’ll appoint a corrupt attorney general, who’ll make Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election all go away immediately.

..This is the sort of decision you’d get from a court in Putin’s Russia.

.. The six Republicans on the Supreme Court today did massive, perhaps irreparable, violence to our republic...
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/supreme-court-trump-king