New Trump cases overshadowed by rocky relationship with Supreme Court

“I’m not happy with the Supreme Court,” President Donald J. Trump said on January 6, 2021. “They love to rule against me.”

His assessment of the court, in a speech outside the White House in which he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol, contained a substantial portion of the truth.

Other parts of the speech were laced with anger and lies, and the Colorado Supreme Court quoted some of those passages on Monday as evidence that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection and was no longer eligible to hold office.

But Trump’s reflections on the U.S. Supreme Court in the speech, full of resentment and accusations of disloyalty, reflected not only his perspective but also an inescapable reality. A fundamentally conservative court, with a majority of six Republican candidates, including three named by Mr. Trump himself, has not been particularly receptive to his arguments.

According to the US government, the Trump administration had the worst record at the Supreme Court since at least the Roosevelt administration data developed Through Lee Epstein And Rebecca L Brownlaw professors at the University of Southern California, for an article in Presidential Studies Quarterly.

“Whether Trump’s poor performance says anything about the court’s view of him and his administration, or about the justices’ increasing willingness to check the executive branch, we cannot say,” the two professors wrote in an email mail. “Either way, the data points to a bumpy road ahead for Trump in cases involving presidential power.”

Now another series of Trump cases are in court or on the doorstep: one over whether he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution, another over the viability of a central charge in the federal election interference case and the third, from Colorado, over whether he was barred from serving another term under the 14th Amendment.

The cases raise obvious legal questions, but previous rulings suggest they could divide the court’s conservative wing along a surprising fault line: Mr. Trump’s appointees have been less likely to vote for him in some politically charged cases than Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by Trump. the first, President Bush, and Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was appointed by the second.

In his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump spoke contritely about his three appointees: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, suggesting that they had betrayed him to establish their independence.

“I picked three people,” he said. “I fought hard for them.”

Mr. Trump said his nominees had failed him and blamed his losses on the justices’ eagerness to participate in Washington social life and assert their independence from the accusation that “they are my puppets.” ”

He added: “And now the only way they can get out of it is because they hate that it’s not good in the social circuit. And the only way they can get out is by running against Trump. So let’s rule against Trump. And they do.”

Mr. Trump has dismissed Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on similar grounds. criticized. When the chief justice cast the tie-breaking vote to save the Affordable Care Act in 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter, “I think @JusticeRoberts wanted to be a part of Georgetown society more than anyone knew,” citing a fake handle. During his presidential campaign, Trump called the chief justice “an absolute disaster.”

When he spoke on Jan. 6, Trump was likely thinking about the painful loss the Supreme Court dealt him weeks earlier, when it rejected a lawsuit from Texas that had asked the court to throw out election results in four battleground states.

Before the ruling, Mr. Trump said he expected to prevail at the Supreme Court, after taking Judge Barrett to the court in October 2020 in part in the hope that she would vote in Mr. Trump’s favor in election disputes.

“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said of the election a few days after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September. “And I think it is very important that we have nine judges.”

After the ruling, Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter. “The Supreme Court has really failed us,” he said. “No wisdom, no courage!”

The ruling in the Texas case was not entirely unanimous. Judge Alito, joined by Judge Thomas, issued a brief statement on a technical point.

Those same two judges were the only dissenters a few of cases in 2020 over access to Mr. Trump’s tax and business records, which had been requested by a New York prosecutor and a House committee.

The overall trend continued after Mr. Trump left office. In 2022, the court denied the release of White House records on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting Trump’s claim of executive privilege. The court’s order left in place an appeals court ruling that Mr. Trump’s desire to maintain the confidentiality of internal White House communications did not outweigh the need for a full accounting of the attack and the disruption of the certification of the 2020 elections.

Only Justice Thomas noted a dissent. His participation in the case, despite his wife Virginia Thomas’s own efforts to overturn the election, was harshly criticized.

Mr. Trump’s shaky record on the court offers only clues about how the justices will approach the cases already before them and those that lie ahead. His claim of absolute immunity appears fragile, based on other court decisions on the scope of presidential power.

In the case examining whether one of the federal statutes invoked by the special counsel in the federal election interference case makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, Mr. Trump is not directly involved, although the ruling of the court could undermine two cases. of the charges against him.

The justices were skeptical of broad interpretations of federal criminal law, and arguments in the case will undoubtedly involve close analysis of the statute’s text.

The case that is hardest to assess is the one from Colorado, which raises a host of new questions about the meaning of an almost entirely untested clause of the 14th Amendment, one that could bar Mr. Trump from the presidency. The case is not yet before the Supreme Court, but will almost certainly be heard in the coming days.

Guy-Uriel E. Charlesa law professor at Harvard, said the judges should take action.

“The Supreme Court is a controversial entity, but it is the only institution that can address and try to address this problem, which requires a national solution,” he said. “There is some loss of confidence in the court, but even people who are deeply hostile to it believe the court should intervene.”