The U.S. Supreme Court is almost certainly obligated to rule on highly politicized issues of critical importance which — decided either way — will anger half of the country.
Here, the central issue at hand is whether future lawyers and lower courts rather than voters will determine eligibilities of presidential election candidates.
No period in modern American history has witnessed equivalent lawfare attempts to influence presidential outcomes to eliminate any remaining fig leaf of institutional justice.
Blatant examples began with baseless accusations that former President Trump had “colluded” with Russia to win the 2016 election whereby top FBI officials repeatedly lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain warrants to spy on his 2016 campaign advisors.
We have since learned that the multi-year $30 million taxpayer-funded DOJ investigation that followed was entirely based on salacious falsified opposition research commissioned and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign apparatus which turned up no collusion evidence whatsoever.
Trump was then impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate twice, and failing to remove him, his opponents now incessantly work to pursue all destructive court actions possible to prevent him from running again as their leading political challenger.
This, after all, is a 2024 contender with about 70% support from his own party who is decisively beating President Biden in most polls, including likely voters in all swing states.
Despite the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations and zero evidence of any felony, Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has attempted to prosecute Trump for “falsification of business records.”
New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James wants to confiscate all of Trump’s New York properties and cancel his licenses to conduct business there based upon allegations that he overvalued his extensive Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach when applying for business loans which he subsequently paid fully back on time.
The presiding judge over the case, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, appears determined to help her do this, having ruled in pre-trial that Trump had committed fraud and deliberately ignoring defense testimony from multiple real estate experts supporting the property evaluation in Trump’s financial statements.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 4-3 majority decision to formally disqualify Trump’s candidacy for president over Jan. 6, Capitol 2021 “insurrection” claims that have never been legally charged much less adjudicated.
The Colorado ruling was based upon Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Civil War remnant enacted to keep former Confederate officials from gaining power during Reconstruction.
The Trump campaign filed a swift U.S. Supreme Court appeal to the Colorado court ruling.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows likewise asserted sole authority to determine Trump ineligible for her state’s ballot because of the 14th Amendment.
Again, GOP supporters immediately filed an objection after having prevailed in other states including Michigan, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Apparently recognizing poor odds of success, plaintiffs withdrew similar lawsuits in 12 other states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Utah.
The high court has previously demonstrated little appetite to enter the political thicket in support of the former president, having rejected Trump arguments to block a 2020 New York state grand jury probe and declining to hear his attorneys’ appeal of a 2022 appeals court decision to review White House records related to the Jan. 6 protests.
This time around things may be different, leaving the court little choice but to get involved.
Trump’s lawyers have specifically called on the Supreme Court to decide whether the former president is immune from prosecution as he faces two criminal indictments relating to his efforts to stay in power — a federal prosecution brought by U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, and a racketeering case brought under Georgia law by a district attorney in Atlanta.
Regarding the federal case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had rejected Trump’s argument of immunity and set a March 4 trial date, intentionally pausing that timeline so that her decision could be appealed.
Hoping to bypass a federal appeals court to expedite the case, Special Counsel Smith unsuccessfully requested that the Supreme Court intervene to move quickly toward trial.
This time, in a unanimous decision, the high court declined to fast-track the presidential immunity question, leaving it first at the hands of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit with initial arguments set for Jan. 9.
So far at least, none of these banana republic-style attempts to weaponize the U.S. criminal justice system against political opponents seems to be working quite as planned.
Two impeachment charades haven’t finished Trump’s ascendancy, and four indictments with 91 felony counts based on untested and unchartered claims during the runup to a presidential election have only caused more to rally at his side.
Nevertheless, there’s also no sign that desperation failures will change the Far Left’s only hoped-for winning strategy with plunging polls and worse than lackluster achievements.
The biggest remaining question is whether the Supreme Court will ultimately respond in nonpartisan unity to recognize that the best way to restore public confidence in equal justice is the old tried and true method … through fair and open elections.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.