The Supreme Court is facing a momentous term for our democracy— one like few others in its storied history. The cases they will review arising from former President Donald Trump’s attempts to cling to power pose a profound test, including for the court’s new ethics code. Under that new code, it’s clear that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself in all of these cases.
The confluence of cases in the court’s pipeline is extraordinary. It reflects the unprecedented nature of Trump’s autogolpe, or self-coup, in which a country’s leader tries to stay in power through illegal means. Each of the historic cases that is either before the court or likely en route to its chambers represents a different response of the legal system to that core precipitating event.
The justices acknowledged they should recuse themselves from any proceeding where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
The first of December’s bombshells was special counsel Jack Smith’s request that the Supreme Court expedite consideration of whether Trump has presidential immunity from prosecution. On Friday, the justices declined to step in for now. As we explained earlier this month, there is no absolute immunity and Trump will likely lose this appeal. And with the D.C. Circuit handling the matter on an accelerated basis, it will be back at the Supreme Court in short order.
The next explosive development at the court was its decision to hear arguments in U.S. v. Fisher, which concerns the obstruction of an official proceeding statute under which Trump, and scores of other alleged insurrectionists, were charged. In the worst case, the court could kneecap two of the four charges against Trump in Smith’s election interference case, though that is unlikely.
Now, as if all that were not enough, the 14th Amendment case will certainly make its way to the high court. The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision — finding that Trump committed insurrection and thus is…
Read the full article here