You can thank one liberal pipe dream and one overly cautious Justice Department.
“It’s up to the Supreme Court.” These days the phrase is as much a statement of fact when it comes to a major legal issue that the justices will resolve as it is a cause for concern. After all, in the past two years alone, the conservative supermajority of justices installed by Donald Trump has upended the law on abortion, gun control, voting rights, affirmative action, executive power, and discrimination in public life.
The same group of justices is now poised to consider two major legal questions that will significantly shape — and perhaps even indirectly determine — the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. The Court’s handling of these issues will constitute a roiling, monthslong subplot of the 2024 presidential contest, one that remains, according to recent polling, a statistical dead heat between Trump and President Joe Biden and couldplausibly turn on the progress of Trump’s criminal cases before Election Day.
It is an unsettling, if not outright maddening, situation that should concern anyone who has watched the politicization and deterioration of the Court in recent years or who recalls its intervention in the 2000 election in favor of George W. Bush. The uncertainty before us is the result of two ostensibly different problems that are converging before our eyes: the emergence of a solidly conservative majority on the Supreme Court, whose decisions often align with the partisan political priorities of the Republican Party, and the Justice Department’s needless delay in moving to investigate and prosecute Trump over his effort to steal the 2020 election.
The delays in the justice department are because they’ve never prosecuted a previously sitting president to this degree before. If they make a misstep, he wins on appeal. This is being taken very slowly, very deliberately as to not pervert the course of justice. Unfortunately for us, the very rich and very influential can essentially delay this almost indefinitely.
Trump will die before he ever ends up in prison. Honestly, I think that’s the best we can hope for.
So sorry, I’m confused, your start off by saying that the justice department is responsible for the delays because they’re working hard to get it right. That’s an excellent point.
But then you say that unfortunately the rich and influential can delay this indefinitely. Also a good point, but flies in the face of the first.
Can you clarify?
It doesn’t fly in the face of the first at all. That’s how the law ends up working (or not working) for people. If you can hire a team of educated lawyers, they can postpone, argue merits of, wording of, conditions of, etc – written law.
If you can’t hire that same team of lawyers, you just get told “that’s how it is” and you don’t get the same protections.
Like Trump saying he never vowed to “uphold” the constitution. That teeny tiny argument ended up costing like 2 weeks worth of court…
It’s these little things, that lawyers then argue in appeals court – to justify overturning a previous ruling. Things like the previous judge misapplying a ruling, etc. These “small” injustices are done every day to normal people who can’t afford a team of lawyers to scrutinize every single little thing that a judge does.
In some cases, if a lower court gets it wrong – then the decision gets overturned. However…if the lower court is slow, methodical, and steps very carefully - appeals will look at the person filing the appeal and laugh. But every single I has to be dotted. Every T has to be crossed. Everything has to be performed perfectly. It reduces the amount of scrutiny that the lawyers can use to their advantage.
Sorry still confused. Are things moving slowly because Prosecutors want to get it right? Or are things moving slowly because the former President’s legal team is dragging things out? They literally can’t both be true.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
Can you explain why a trial can’t proceed slowly for more than one reason?
They literally both can be true, and literally are both the case. They drag things out by scrutinizing the proceedings. THUS, they are moving methodically in order to get it right so that it doesn’t ALSO make it to appeals court.