Jack Smith Hilariously Zings Supreme Court in New Trump Filing
Special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page unsealed motion included revelations about Donald Trump in his January 6 election interference case and a plea for the judge overseeing it to carefully consider the boundaries of what constitutes an “official act” under the new, expanded definition of presidential immunity.
But it also included a jab at the nation’s highest court, using Trump’s private phone calls to underscore that the Supreme Court had extended its aid to a former president who had no appreciation for its labor.
In a section of the document outlining the similarities between Trump’s private rhetoric and that included in his January 6 Ellipse speech, Smith’s office highlighted how Trump, even then, was attacking the nation’s highest court for “not stepping up to the plate” in his legal woes.
“I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They are not stepping up to the plate. They’re not stepping up,” Trump said in a private conversation.
Then, at the Ellipse, he shared a near-verbatim gripe: “I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They love to rule against me.”
The Supreme Court handed Trump one of the biggest wins of his career in July, when it ruled 6–3 to expand a president’s immunity and redefine what constitutes an “official act,” effectively deciding that Trump could not be held accountable for some of his behavior with regard to attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared for the future of a country that legally permits the executive branch authority to commit crimes under the cloak of the office, arguing that the court’s decision made a “mockery” of the constitutional principle that “no man is above the law” and that the court’s “own misguided wisdom” gave Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”