The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s claim that he should be shielded from criminal prosecution keeps the justices at the center of election-year controversy for several more months and means any verdict on Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 vote will not come before summer.
The country’s highest court wants the final word on the former president’s assertion of immunity, even if it may ultimately affirm a comprehensive ruling of the lower federal court that rejected Trump’s sweeping claim.
For Trump, Wednesday’s order amounts to another win from the justice system he routinely attacks. The justices’ intervention in the case, Trump v. United States, also marks another milestone in the fraught relationship between the court and the former president.
Cases related to his policies and his personal dealings consistently roiled the justices behind the scenes. At the same time, Trump, who appointed three of the nine justices, significantly influenced the court’s lurch to the right, most notably its 2022 reversal of nearly a half century of abortion rights and reproductive freedom.
Quite. And Bush v. Gore was in 2000; in 2001, just four months into office, Bush appointed Roberts to the DC appellate court, which was a very cushy appointment for a lawyer who’d never even been a judge.
Then, in 2005 when a Supreme Court seat finally opened up (Sandra Day O’Connor retired) Bush gave it to John Roberts. Surprise, surprise.
But wait, there’s more. When Chief Justice William Rehnquist happened to die during Roberts’ SCOTUS confirmation hearings, Bush gave Roberts the Chief Justice position.
In other words, in just four short years after Bush v. Gore, John Roberts rocketed from being nothing but a very well-connected lawyer straight up to Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court – with nothing more than a brief stint as an appellate court judge in between on his resume, and he even got that with zero prior experience on the bench.
Thanks I hate it.