Just when it seemed former President Donald Trump was about to face accountability for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the Supreme Court has come to his rescue. The bailout arrived on February 28 in the form of a two-paragraph order announcing the court would review Trump’s claim of absolute immunity in the election-subversion prosecution brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Even if the court rules against Trump on the merits of the immunity claim—by no means a certainty—its decision to take up the issue will likely delay Trump’s trial until after the 2024 election. If Trump wins, he will have the power to order his new attorney general to drop the case. He will also be able to halt Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents prosecution and invoke the Constitution’s “Supremacy Clause” to pause any remaining state prosecutions.

Years from now, historians will look back on the high-court’s bailout as a key inflection point in the decline of democracy and the rule of law.

If the court valued democracy more than Trump’s political interests, it would have declined to review his immunity claim and endorsed the February 6 decision of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Apart from deepening the preexisting divisions in America, Trump’s principal accomplishment in office was remaking the Supreme Court. Guided by lists of potential candidates assembled by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, Trump placed three young doctrinaire “originalists” on the bench to create a six-three conservative supermajority. His goal was to drive the country toward the radical right, using the reconstituted court to overrule Roe v. Wade; expand gun rights; undermine environmental protections; deconstruct the “administrative state;” and destroy affirmative action. Above all, Trump transformed the court to give himself a “get out of jail free” card should he ever need one.

The Supreme Court cloaks itself in secrecy and may seem to operate in ivory tower isolation. But the justices are seasoned political operatives. Three of the current court’s Republicans—Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—worked as young attorneys on the GOP side of the litigation that led to the judicial coup d’état of Bush v. Gore. They understand the intersection of law and politics, and they know their roles.

All nine justices also know that Trump’s principal defense strategy in the pending prosecutions against him is centered on delay. The benefits of delay in the run-up to November are clearest in Special Counsel Smith’s election-subversion case, but can also be seen in the Mar-a-Lago case. As former federal prosecutor Shan Wu wrote last year in the Daily Beast:

The Supreme Court’s February 28 order scheduled oral arguments on the immunity issue for the week of April 22, its last week of hearings for the 2023-24 term. Meanwhile, all proceedings before District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, a no-nonsense jurist unbowed by Trump’s bullying, have been “stayed,” or frozen, effectively vacating the March 4 trial date she had previously set.

Assuming the court follows established procedures and issues its opinion by July 1, and assuming further that it rejects the immunity defense, the case will be remanded to Chutkan. At........

© Common Dreams