Now that the Supreme Court has made any president into a king who chooses to corruptly use the power granted him by six Republicans on the Supreme Court, the next step will be to end all prosecution of Donald Trump, now and for forever.
Clarence Thomas—writing on behalf of the billionaires who have been bribing tipping him, Sam Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch—initiated the process with Friday’s “the president is a monarch” decision, reversing the Revolutionary War. He wrote in his concurring opinion:
I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States. But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires.
By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.
In other words, Jack Smith should go back to The Hague and prosecute European war criminals, because American war criminals and fascists—as long as they hold the office of the presidency or are former Republican presidents—are now officially immune.
While Thomas’s concurrence isn’t entirely reflected in the larger court’s opinion, it’s reasonable to assume it’ll be the next step once a lawsuit against Smith’s appointment reaches the court.
As many have speculated in the past 24 hours, President Biden could use his newfound powers to order the arrest and imprisonment of those corrupt Supreme Court justices for bribery, Donald Trump for any one of the hundreds of crimes he committed while in office and afterward, and even right-wing talk show hosts for encouraging sedition.
But he won’t. He’s a good man who believes in the America we had before six corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices changed everything. So Biden will, no doubt, continue to hold to the old laws, consequences be damned.
Trump, of course, will not be so restrained. The parallels between last week’s Supreme Court decision and Germany’s Enabling Acts—which were similarly ratified by the German Supreme Court right after Hitler took power in early 1933—are startling.
That collection of laws ruled that whatever Hitler said in the context of an “official act” instantly became the law of the land. For all practical purposes, as the nation’s leader, he became immune from prosecution under the laws that applied to every other normal German or elected politician.
In a very real sense, therefore, one could argue that the six corrupt, bought-and-paid-for Republicans on the Supreme Court just initiated the process of the Nazification of America.
By any reasonable standard, including the code of ethics by which every federal judge must live and operate, at the very least, Thomas and Alito should have recused themselves from this decision. Thomas’s wife, after all, was an actual participant in the attempted overthrow of our government for which Trump is being prosecuted, and Alito and his wife proudly proclaimed their loyalty to that seditious overthrow attempt by flying flags to that effect.
And had those two not been so vociferously arguing on behalf of Trump and his fascist proclamations and crimes, it’s remotely possible that, at the least, Barrett and Roberts may not have gone along with this morally and politically criminal decision.
But the “well-bribed two,” after ruling last week that their bribes were merely “gratuities,” prevailed, and we live now in a new America that would be unrecognizable to Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Hamilton, or Adams.
It’s been said so often that it’s now almost a cliché, but it is no longer possible to even feebly deny that, of our two political parties, one is still devoted to our Founders’ ideal of a secular democratic republic and the other, the Republican Party, is fully committed to a form of government last seen on this continent in the Confederate states, when they ended democracy, instituted a brutal police state, and fought a war to try to destroy democracy in the North.
It’s been often noted that this November’s election will be the most important in our history. Tragically, alongside the election of 1860, that is now irrefutably true.
If ever there was a time to volunteer with one of the many fine organizations or to help encourage people to vote this fall, that time is now. It could well be our last chance.
