Monday, July 1, 2024 BY CROOKED MEDIA

*- Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, slamming the right-wing majority opinion granting presidents extraordinary immunity.*

The Supreme Court handed Trump broad new protections from criminal prosecution. But it also set the stage for fresh courtroom drama, right before the election, centered on some of Trump’s worst behavior.

The court’s conservative supermajority gave disgraced former President Trump “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all “official acts,” in a sweeping decision that fundamentally reshapes the American presidency. The court ruled presidents don’t enjoy such immunity for non-official acts, however, meaning Trump can still theoretically be convicted in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case, pending some more wrangling over whether Trump’s attempts to reverse his electoral defeat were technically part of his job.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the 6-3 ruling for making a “mockery” of the principle that “no man is above the law.” The Constitution, she argued, should not shield “a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts.” Sotomayor proceeded to list some hair-raising things a president might now do without fear of prosecution: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.” We’re not in the despair business here, but this is bad.

The court’s grant of absolute immunity is so broad that it would have let disgraced former president Richard Nixon walk after the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, his own former White House lawyer-turned-whistleblower John Dean told CNN — that is, if Nixon hadn’t been pardoned by his successor, former President Gerald Ford. Yes, the Court’s conservative justices are so far gone that, at this point, we’re expecting them to issue a decision any day now saying: “Watergate was fine, actually.”

But the high court’s decision also creates an opportunity for a very public deep dive before the election into exactly what Trump did — an event that some are already calling the Trump “mini-trial.”

All eyes now turn to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who’s overseeing this case. While there’s practically no hope that the trial could wrap before the election, Chutkan may still be able to move quickly in another way after today’s ruling. She’s been tasked with sorting out whether Trump’s actions were official or not — and in doing so, she may host a high-profile event for prosecutors and Trump lawyers to hash out exactly what he did.

Such a mini-trial may even feature witness testimony from the likes of former Vice President Mike Pence or former Attorney General William Barr, according to Norm Eisen, a former top lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment. The event won’t end with a conviction — but it may focus the public’s attention on Trump’s alleged efforts to steal the 2020 election, and even unearth new facts about what happened, at a key moment in the 2024 election cycle.

If Trump wins the election, he’ll be able to tell his new Attorney General to drop the case — meaning the mini-trial might be the only criminal accountability he’d ever face for January 6.

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The Supreme Court went on a MAGA bender in the days before it finally wrapped up this year’s term on Monday. In a series of right-wing decisions, the court took a hatchet to the federal regulatory framework, and dramatically weakened the government’s ability to guard the public from corporate greed and abuse. On Monday, SCOTUS served up yet another conservative giveaway, when it ruled in favor of a North Dakota truck stop that wants to sue the Federal Reserve over the swipe fees that financial institutions can charge retailers when customers use their debit cards.

That might not sound like a big deal. But it opens the door to a “swarm of legal challenges to rules that have protected the American people from bad actors and corporate malfeasance for decades,” according to the Center for American Progress. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that “the tsunami of lawsuits" unleashed by the court's recent assault on federal agencies' power, in this case and others, "has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.”

After all, this is the third time in a week that the high court has dealt a major blow to federal regulations. Last week, the court overturned 40 years of regulatory precedent when it threw out the “Chevron deference,” which held that courts should defer to federal agencies when interpreting laws passed by Congress. It also stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a valuable tool the agency uses to fight financial fraud.

MAGA provocateur Steve Bannon reported to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, on Monday to begin serving his four-month sentence. Bannon turned himself in after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute bid to avoid prison time for defying Congress’ subpoenas related to the Capitol riot. He also recorded one last episode of his podcast before reporting to prison, something all podcasters should consider!!!

Hunter Biden sued Fox News over its “The Trial of Hunter Biden” miniseries, alleging that the network violated New York’s revenge porn laws by using “intimate images” of Biden “depicting him in the nude, depicting an unclothed or exposed intimate part of him, as well as engaged in sex acts…” I don’t know how many more cycles of “Hunter Biden’s laptop” discourse we as a nation have left in us.

Biden’s campaign is working behind the scenes to calm donors who were jarred by his subpar performance in last week’s debate. NBC News reported that Biden’s campaign manager told roughly 40 of his biggest donors in a phone call that he has no plans to exit the race but added that if he did, purely hypothetically, most of the campaign funds would go to Vice President Kamala Harris. Y’know… what might really assuage Democratic fears is having a nominee everyone feels is fully in the driver’s seat, but hey, what do we know!

A majority of voters said Biden should be replaced as the Democratic nominee — but in that same poll, most still picked him over Trump. That’s according to a new Morning Consult survey, in which 60 percent of respondents said Biden should “probably” or “definitely” be replaced. But in a two-way race, 45 percent chose Biden, while 44 percent went with Trump.

The Supreme Court extended First Amendment protections to online content moderation. In Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the court said social media platforms’ curation of “others’ speech into an expressive product of its own” is protected by the First Amendment. The court remanded both cases back to lower appeals courts, saying they hadn’t properly analyzed free speech issues in the cases.

Benjamin Netanyahu is cozying up to Mario Bramnick, a far-right pastor who wants all Jews to convert to Christianity, HuffPost reported.

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) was charged with a weapons violation after TSA officers detected a firearm in her carry-on bag at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. The gun was unloaded, a TSA spokesperson told Axios. Spartz is running for reelection in November, after initially announcing her retirement from Congress.

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A San Francisco bookstore is shipping LGBTQ+ books to groups that want them in states where the books are banned. Becka Robbins’ “Books Not Bans” initiative is funded by customer donations as a response to conservative-led censorship sweeping the country.

New York City’s libraries are about to reopen on Sundays and have their budgets fully restored after enduring steep cuts, thanks to months of pressure from the public and the City Council against the decision made by Mayor Eric Adams. Adams, we’re sure, is reeling knowing that money will be going to fund something other than cops looking at their phones in all of the city’s subway stations.

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