Donald Trump and John Roberts: Comrades (Getty)
Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling in Donald Trump's immunity case did more than give Trump a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. It also lit a stick of dynamite under one of our nation's most important law-and-order concepts. In short, Chief Justice John Roberts and his corrupt right-wing colleagues obliterated the notion of an independent Department of Justice (DOJ), one that operates separately from the presidency on charging decisions.
As we have reported for 17 years here at our Legal Schnauzer blog, our justice system has many flaws -- No. 1 being corruption, tied to judges, lawyers, clerks, cops, the whole shebang. (We will have much more in upcoming posts on the problem of judicial corruption, which we now know plagues our nation's highest court.) One thing our country got right from the early days of the republic is to have the DOJ conduct one of its primary missions -- whether to charge or not charge individuals for alleged criminal conduct -- outside of influence from the White House. This set-up has served our nation well, but it is no more, thanks to the rogues and criminals on John Roberts' court.
How did that happen? The New Republic (TNR) supplies the answers, with associate writer Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, who specializes in breaking news, writing under the headline "Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Destroys Independent Justice Department; Chief Justice John used Donald Trump’s immunity ruling to casually wreck the concept of an independent Department of Justice:
The Justice Department will no longer be an independent authority on the law, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity case Monday. Instead, it will be an arm to be leveraged by the Oval Office, with open communication enabled between the federal law -enforcement agency and the presidency for all future investigations.
Chief Justice John Roberts slipped the allowance into his majority opinion, as the justices ruled 6–3 in Trump’s favor along ideological lines. In a quiet sentence, Roberts argued that the fresh take on the executive branch relationship would help the president carry out his constitutional duties.
“The president may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’” Roberts wrote.
Roberts, as should be well understood by now, is full of horse manure. His ruling will put out a welcome mat for all kinds of corruption. Have any previous or possible presidents, before Donald Trump came along, needed to tinker with the DOJ's internal operations to ensure laws are faithfully executed"? I'm not aware of one.“And the Attorney General, as head of the Justice Department, acts as the President’s ‘chief law enforcement officer’ who ‘provides vital assistance to [him] in the performance of [his] constitutional duty to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,’” Roberts continued, citing a precedent from an immunity case argued for Cabinet members, Mitchell v. Forsyth.
This means that if Trump returns to office, he will have free rein to wield the Justice Department as he sees fit—and he and his allies have already given plenty of indications as to what they plan to do.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution, indeed, includes an Executive Vesting Clause that requires the president to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed." But it suggests this usually happens through the president's authority to appoint the agents charged with the duty of such enforcement.
It does not say the president is to directly engage in the DOJ's charging and non-charging decisions.
But that appears to be exactly the kind of system Roberts has installed, essentially making the president the nation's "chief law-enforcement officer." This is the perfect system for a grifter like Trump, who we already know is incompetent and deceitful, to usher in an era of unparalleled corruption if he is re-elected.
Speaking of Trump, what will we have if he winds up back in the White House? We will have a convicted felon as chief law-enforcement officer, which should make us the laughingstock of the world. And we can thank John Roberts' skulduggery for that. Houghtsling writes:
The decision from the conservative majority overturned a federal appeals court ruling that had unanimously rejected all three of Trump’s presidential immunity arguments in his January 6 case, “patiently, painstakingly, and unsparingly” dismantling his arguments in an “airtight” opinion, according to George Conway, a conservative attorney and ex-husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Monday’s ruling has effectively killed the January 6 trial, which would have been overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
