If the Supreme Court takes its time in handing down a ruling on Donald Trump’s demand for absolute immunity for insurrection-related crimes, voters may not know whether Trump is a convicted criminal before deciding whether to elect him to the most powerful position in the world.
That’s bad enough. But there’s another dimension to all this that’s gone underappreciated: Such a delay could also perversely reward Trump and his allies for the extensive cover-up they implemented after the insurrection failed by denying voters critical information about Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021. Even putting aside whether Trump’s coup amounted to criminality, keeping voters in the dark throughout the election about that conduct would represent an appalling, next-level failure of accountability.
This idea emerges from Liz Cheney’s new op-ed piece in The New York Times urging prompt action from the high court, which will hear arguments in the case this Thursday. Buried in the piece is an urgent warning whose importance is not immediately obvious. Cheney writes that a delay in this ruling could kick Trump’s trial until after the election, which we know. But then Cheney says special counsel Jack Smith obtained—and presented to the grand jury that indicted Trump—information that the House committee that examined Jan. 6, on which she served as vice chair, could not gain access to. Cheney adds this:
There is little doubt that Mr. Trump’s closest advisers also gave the federal grand jury minute-to-minute accounts of his malicious conduct on Jan. 6, describing how they repeatedly begged the president to instruct the violent rioters to leave our Capitol and how Mr. Trump refused for several hours to do so as he watched the attack on television. This historic........