Even under the best of circumstances, a criminal trial of a former head of state is a fraught exercise. And, for a number of reasons, the four trials of Donald Trump are happening decidedly not under the best circumstances.
Consider the federal judiciary itself, which will oversee at least two of Trump’s trials (and which may also wind up hearing the new charges just filed against Trump in Georgia). Trump filled those courts with judges who range from conservative outliers within the legal profession to outright hacks. And that’s also true of the federal appeals courts that will review many decisions made by federal trial judges in the Trump prosecutions.
For the better part of the last decade, moreover, Republicans have made it crystal clear that the Supreme Court is a partisan prize awarded to the political party that does the best job of playing constitutional hardball.
In 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death gave Democrats their first chance in a generation to control the Supreme Court — and with it the federal judiciary — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell announced that no nominee would receive a confirmation hearing until after that year’s presidential election. He claimed that this newly invented rule against election-year confirmations was necessary to ensure that “the American people have a voice in this momentous decision.”
Yet, after McConnell successfully held this seat open until Trump could fill it, Republicans reversed course when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died fewer than two months before the 2020 election that cast Trump out of office. Republicans didn’t just give Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett a confirmation hearing, they raced to confirm her just eight days before the election.
Unsurprisingly, the Court’s political standing is now at its lowest ebb. Gallup recently found disapproval of the Supreme Court at its highest point since the polling company started asking people if they approve of the Court….
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