Supreme Court sends Donald Trump’s critics into a meltdown

Critics of former President Donald Trump are expressing their outrage at the news that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Trump’s claim of immunity in his federal election subversion criminal case.

In a brief order issued on Wednesday evening, the court said that oral arguments scheduled to take place during the week of April 22 would decide whether or not ex-presidents have “presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts.”

The court’s decision means the election subversion case being pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith will be delayed. Scheduled to begin in early March, that case could perhaps not be heard until later this year or even after November’s presidential election.

“Let’s not beat around the bush, [the] decision by the Supreme Court to hear the Trump immunity case is outrageous and, at its heart, fundamentally corrupt,” David J. Rothkopf, a political analyst and columnist for The Daily Beast, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Rothkopf, who wrote the 2020 book Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, noted that the Supreme Court justices will be considering a unanimous ruling from earlier this month by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which rejected Trump’s assertion of immunity.

Ben Meiselas, co-founder of progressive media outlet MeidasTouch, said on X that he sees “very little chance the DC federal case can go to trial now in 2024.”

“The Supreme Court strikes again,” Meiselas added.

“April 22nd! Trump’s legal defense team on the Supreme Court is doing *everything it can* to delay his reckoning till after the election. Everything they can,” Elie Mystal, who writes about the criminal justice system for progressive magazine The Nation, posted on X.

Author and National Black Justice Coalition co-founder Keith Boykin called the court’s decision to schedule the hearing in April “an outrageous delay tactic.”

“It only took 4 days for SCOTUS to decide Bush v. Gore,” Boykin, who was a White House aide to former President Bill Clinton, wrote on X. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Trump, meanwhile, celebrated the news that the high court will hear his immunity claim.

“Legal Scholars are extremely thankful for the Supreme Court’s Decision today to take up Presidential Immunity. Without Presidential Immunity, a President will not be able to properly function, or make decisions, in the best interest of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Presidents will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation after they leave office.”

He continued: “This could actually lead to the extortion and blackmail of a President. The other side would say, ‘If you don’t do something, just the way we want it, we are going to go after you when you leave office, or perhaps even sooner.’ A President has to be free to determine what is right for our Country without undue pressure. If there is no Immunity, the Presidency, as we know it, will ‘no longer exist.'”