Steve Bannon, the Republican strategist and former Trump White House adviser, added another title to his unique resume on Monday: federal prison inmate. Before surrendering himself to Federal Correctional Institution Danbury in Connecticut on Monday, Bannon hosted a farewell episode of his “War Room” broadcast with a little help from MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Continue reading “Marjorie Taylor Greene Helped Escort Steve Bannon To Prison “The John Roberts Guide To Doing A Coup And Not Getting Caught
The Court on Monday imbued former presidents with so much immunity from prosecution — some absolute, some presumptive, but with very little guidance about how to sort official acts into those buckets — that it’ll make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to make criminal cases against them going forward. This is, of course, most immediately relevant in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s long-stalled Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump.
Continue reading “The John Roberts Guide To Doing A Coup And Not Getting Caught”One Awful Part Of Supreme Court Immunity Decision Proves Bridge Too Far For Barrett
Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke with her conservative peers Monday on a part of the majority opinion that will kneecap prosecutors’ ability to make criminal cases against former presidents.
Continue reading “One Awful Part Of Supreme Court Immunity Decision Proves Bridge Too Far For Barrett”High Crimes
If the Roberts’ Court is right about the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what the authors of the Constitution had in mind when they proposed that a President could be guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yes, that is in a non-criminal context wherein criminal penalties aren’t possible. But they clearly meant this to be inclusive of official acts. Indeed, it almost certainly is primarily about official acts. Yes, you can kind of thread a needle to maybe work your way out of this contradiction. But you don’t need much of an acquaintance with the period in which the Constitution was written to know that the people of the time would have found this decision shocking. The mere words of the impeachment clause itself tell you that.
‘Official Acts’ are Precisely What Matter Most
One of the many things we have going for us at TPM is that we have two really talented reporters covering different aspects of the world of the law and the courts and we have an executive editor who is himself a lawyer, which adds an additional layer of sophistication. I’ll leave the details of the Court’s decision to them. But I can speak broadly to the nature of president power. This decision creates two classes of presidential immunity for official acts, one absolute, the second presumptive. This is much closer to total immunity than many seem to understand. It is precisely the President’s official actions, actions taken with official powers, that we’re most concerned about. We’re not worried that the President will steal a toaster. If a President beats their spouse that is an outrage and he or she should be held accountable to the full extent of the law. But that doesn’t threaten the state itself. It is precisely official acts which matter most with a President and where legal accountability is necessary because the Constitution gives Presidents such vast powers and their conferral is personal and will-based in nature.
Continue reading “‘Official Acts’ are Precisely What Matter Most”More Thoughts on the Debate and Its Aftermath
As with my last post, a few thoughts not organized into a single argument but presented as a list of items.
- On the question of Biden dropping out, I hear people say, “surely there’s another leading Democrat who is up to this challenge?” Or, “how can it be there’s no way to do this?” Or, to me personally, “why can’t you see that this is the obvious thing to do?” The best way I can answer this is to say that my assumption is that switching candidates now is the equivalent of pricing in 10 or 20 debate-night disasters. That doesn’t include how the next person does. I mean the simple act of making the switch. I’m not asking you to believe that’s true for the moment. Maybe you disagree and that’s fine. But if you’re trying to understand my reasoning, that is a significant part of what it’s based on. Needless to say, you need to be certain the current plan is hopeless and that person X is going to really knock it out of the park if you make the switch. Again, I have my own assumptions and theories that get me to this conclusion. I note it here just to give you a sense of why, while I’m not ruling anything out, I’m still very skeptical about a switch.
Supreme Court Gives Trump Immunity For Official Acts, Threatening Jan. 6 Prosecution
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court Monday ruled that presidents get “presumptive immunity” for official acts they took as president, a decision with sweeping implications both for executive authority and holding former President Donald Trump accountable.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Gives Trump Immunity For Official Acts, Threatening Jan. 6 Prosecution”Awaiting Trump Immunity Decision From SCOTUS
Our live coverage is underway here.
Why You Can’t Call The Roberts Court ‘Conservative’ Any Longer
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
POWER GRAB
The most consequential decision yet from the six-justice Roberts supermajority was sandwiched between President Biden’s debate pratfall Thursday night and this morning’s Supreme Court decision on former President Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution. So before it gets wiped clean from the front pages, I want to just take a moment before the immunity decision comes down to re-cast the current court.
The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overrule Chevron will have vast consequences, many of then unseen or hard to detect, but one of the things we were discussing internally Friday as we assessed the Supreme Court’s term and its four years with a 6-3 conservative supermajority is how the defining characteristic isn’t conservatism at all but the accrual of power to the judiciary at the expense of the executive and legislative branches.
Rather than taking a conservative view of the role of the courts – a modest, humble, restrained posture that is wary of its own power and applies it carefully – the Roberts supermajority has taken a radical course where the judiciary is increasingly the final arbiter not just on the law but on the facts, the interpretation of those facts, the application of those facts in given situations, and the technical, scientific, and professional implications of those facts in the real world.
There’s nothing conservative about it, and you only have to look to conservatives’ exact same complaints about the Warren and especially the Burger courts to see the obvious. We’ve taken to calling the court “right wing” rather than conservative because it’s a more precise description (though it’s still a pretty blunt term). Rather than being driven by a guiding conservative judicial philosophy, however odious it might have been, the current Supreme Court is most consistent when it comes to consolidating power for itself. For more on this:
- Lisa Needham: SCOTUS completes the biggest power grab in modern US history
- Kim Wehle: The right-wing Court just made another massive power grab
- Judd Legum: Supreme power grab
Trump Immunity Decision Coming From SCOTUS This Morning
Today is the final day of announced decisions by the Supreme Court before it breaks for the summer. The big remaining case for our purposes is the Trump immunity case that is blocking/slow-rolling his prosecution in the Jan. 6 case in DC.
The Supreme Court convenes at 10 a.m. ET. It has more than one decision to issue today; if I had to guess, I would say the immunity decision will be the final one in that batch, both because of its significance and because it was the last case in which the court heard oral arguments this term and because Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to author it.
Please join us for live coverage this morning as we make sense of the immunity decision and its implications for the timing and direction of the Jan. 6 case against Trump.
In the meantime, I’d refer you to what I wrote a few days ago about the various forms of disingenuousness to be on the look out for from the justices when the immunity ruling comes down.
Not Many Clues From SCOTUS’ Other Jan. 6 Decision
An unusual lineup that saw Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson join the right-wing majority and Justice Amy Coney Barrett defect to write a dissent with Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor produced a decision that narrowed the application of a key obstruction statute used in the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters.
The opinion didn’t provide much in the way of hints on the how the court would come down in the immunity decision. As for its implications for the Trump prosecution, it doesn’t seem as dire as initially feared when the court took the case, but the real-world impacts are going to take some time to watch play out.
How The Criminal Justice System Works For Non-Trumps
As someone who writes and reports on those everyday abuses, it’s been especially surreal to hear these typically wealthy, often very powerful people simultaneously claim that police, prosecutors, and courts are unfair and biased against them and far too permissive and lenient with everyone else.
The truth is that Trump has been getting the criminal justice system’s “platinum door” treatment from the start. His cases are unusual in that he’s a former president. But his status and political position have helped him far more than they have hurt him.
Balko is essentially putting some meat on the bone of Wilhoit’s law.
Steve Bannon To Prison
Former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser Steve Bannon is set to report to federal prison today to begin serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, after the Supreme Court Friday rejected Bannon’s last-ditch appeal.
Trump Prosecution Miscellany
Sweeping up some of the developments from late last week that got swamped by the presidential debate:
- MAL: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Donald Trump’s claims that the FBI misled the court to obtain the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, but in the same order she called for two bizarro evidentiary hearings on other specious pre-trial claims by Trump that will continue to drag the case out at a snail’s pace.
- MAL: Cannon still hasn’t ruled on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s motion to modify the terms of Trump’s release to prevent him from savaging federal law enforcement. Instead, she gave both sides until Friday to file yet another round of briefs on the matter.
- GA-RICO: Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been involved in a quiet legal battle to obtain from the National Archives documents from his time in the West Wing to use in his defense of the criminal charges in the Georgia RICO case. That effort spilled into public view last week for the first time.
Good Read
Greg Sargent: Trump’s Shameless, Corrupt Wooing of Plutocrats Is Suddenly Backfiring
Where Does Biden Go From Here?
Round II of post-debate analysis:
- TPM’s Josh Marshall: A Few Thoughts on Last Night
- Brian Beutler: What We Can Expect Of The People Closest To Joe Biden
Debate Fallout: How The Bigs Are Covering It
- CNN: Democrats fear replacement scenarios as much as keeping Biden
- Politico: Biden’s family privately criticizes top advisers and pushes for their ouster at Camp David meeting
- NYT: Biden’s Family Tells Him to Keep Fighting as They Huddle at Camp David
- AP: A private call of top Democrats fuels more insider anger about Biden’s debate performance
- Politico: Whitmer Disavows ‘Draft Gretch’ Movement
Oklahoma Follow Louisiana’s Lead On Bible In Classroom
Whereas Louisiana passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction took it upon himself to order that the Bible be taught in public schools.
The Stunning Collapse of New York’s Congestion Pricing
WSJ: “The epic collapse in New York shows how a fear of dramatic change can give the status quo stubborn power over those trying to solve some of America’s most intractable challenges. That leaves policymakers nibbling at the edges of deeply rooted problems, even after investing huge sums of money and political capital.”
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Right-Wing Internet Cesspools Suspect A Trick
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕
After listening to me mutter to myself and shout into the depths of my laptop for nearly three hours Thursday night, my roommate finally asked me a wild question: Do you think Democrats did that on purpose?
Continue reading “Right-Wing Internet Cesspools Suspect A Trick”