The Supreme Court's immunity decision makes a mockery of the Fourth of July

Perhaps on this Fourth of July, the Alitos will fly the American flag properly, not upside down, at their Virginia or New Jersey homes.

It is after all the 248th anniversary of America’s founders declaring their independence from a king. But I’m guessing Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his flag-loving wife, Martha-Ann, are celebrating that he and his fellow right-wing Supreme Court justices have made a king of our presidents, just when it seems more likely that Donald Trump could be restored to the throne.

The court’s ruling Monday in the appropriately titled Trump vs. United States was a gift to the former president. Trump got just about everything he asked for despite the majority’s specious attempts to make it seem otherwise: absolute or presumed immunity for official acts, which the court defined in a way that could encompass much of what the Jan. 6 criminal indictment alleges the former president illegally did to overturn the 2020 election.

Also, the court’s delay — taking months to decide the case and, with its decision, imposing time-consuming pretrial proceedings to determine what is or isn’t covered by the court’s immunity notions — ensures that Trump will not be tried before the 2024 election for seeking to steal the previous one. The classified documents case in federal court in Florida, and the state case in Atlanta alleging Trump pressured Georgia officials to flip Joe Biden’s 2020 win there, both already slowed for various reasons, will be further sidetracked as the justices’ decision is parsed.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-07-04/donald-trump-immunity-supreme-court-samuel-alito-sonia-sotomayor