All eyes are on the Supreme Court as it wraps up its current session with key decisions looming on former President Donald Trump's immunity case and on questions about the validity of obstruction charges filed against Jan. 6, 2021 defendants, but the justices have already ruled in significant cases that will prove significant, Carrie Severino, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, said on Newsmax Saturday.
"One was a few months ago, so we almost forgot about it, but remember when the court had to do a rapid turnaround to ensure that Trump wasn't getting illegally kicked off the ballot in Colorado?" Severino said on Newsmax's "America Right Now."
The ruling preserving access to the abortion drug mifepristone will also be a decision "utilized politically going forward," as will the ruling striking down the federal ban on bump stock weapons accessories, she said.
The bump stock decision, Severino added, was an important look at how the Supreme Court views regulations.
"When you change the law, it has to be through Congress," she said. "It can't be a bureaucrat somewhere in the government's administration … Congress can certainly go back and change it and I think that a lot of the justices probably think that would be the right result."
The court also this week upheld a 2017 tax on foreign investments, and Severino said there were many people, herself included, who were hoping the case "might be the one to really put the nail in the coffin of a wealth tax."
But leaving the door open on it "means that if President [Joe] Biden wins reelection or there's a Democratic Congress, they could try to push that," said Severino. "I don't think it would survive constitutional scrutiny."
Meanwhile, decisions are expected on the Trump immunity and Jan. 6 defendants' cases this week.
Severino noted that people are complaining that the case took too long to decide but she said she is amazed that it has gone through the courts as quickly as it has.
"It's hard to predict, but I think in this case, the court's going to come to a conclusion that says it's not an all-or-nothing thing, that you don't automatically get immunity for everything," she said. "But also there are a lot of official government acts which presidents can assume are going to be immune from later prosecution, and then it's going to have to go back to the lower court to decide where the charges, in this case, fall on that spectrum."
She also said it's "hard to read the tea leaves" on the Jan. 6 case, but she said it's likely that the court will rule that language in the obstruction of Congress law can't be stretched ot cover everything.
"I think that one was a little harder to read from the oral arguments, but again, it's another congressional intent case," Severino said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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