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.
And they’ll find in the Colorado case that states can’t remove insurrectionists until specifically convicted in a criminal trial, so that will also be tucked behind their delay. I even think they’ll find that no, presidents are not perpetually above the law, but then stay any case that would kick either kick Trump off the ballot or send him to prison because now it’s too close to the election and/or it’s being appealed.
There’s no real reason to take this case, particularly after refusing earlier, but they don’t have to be blatant to get exactly the result they want.