Ex-prosecutor flags 'key difference' as SCOTUS rejects Trump — and says 'fasten seatbelts'
Chief Justice John Roberts was decisive in the Supreme Court's refusal to delay or block sentencing in President-elect Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal hush money conviction, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Thursday.
The decision, which comes after the right-wing bloc of justices issued several other rulings favorable to Trump, including preventing states from disqualifying him from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment and granting him a presumption of criminal immunity for official acts, clears the way for Trump to be sentenced on Friday morning — although Judge Juan Juan Merchan is expected not to issue jail time and may simply offer Trump conditional discharge.
"To me, this decision by the Supreme Court, this very surprising decision, is also an indictment in many ways on the Justice Department, which has so clearly failed to hold Donald Trump accountable even for an attempted coup," said Reid. "But it is New York. It is the stalwart pursuit of justice by [District Attorney] Alvin Bragg and the commitment of this judge to follow through ... your thoughts?"
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"Well, there is no question that you can't say enough good things about Alvin Bragg and about the state court judge here who did the right thing and kept their head down and wanted to make sure that the rule of law applied regardless of station," said Weissmann."
"A couple of thoughts on the 5-4 decision," said Weissmann. "The key difference here is that the chief justice switched" from his position in the pro-Trump rulings. "But Amy Coney Barrett dissented on the key part relevant to the issue that was before the court, and Chief Justice Roberts also switched ... those were the two justices who joined the so-called liberal justices to make up five. And I think one, the main thrust and the take-home here is that the court said that the rule of law is going to apply the same way to Donald Trump as it does for anyone else ... you raise issues on appeal after sentencing, not before. That's what would happen to you and to me and to everyone else. And that's why you have the five justices saying that."
That said, Weissmann added, it should have been unanimous, not 5-4.
"What we are going to be seeing in the next four years is an issue of whether this will continue being 5-4 and we are going to have this bloc of the four dissenters, and when we are going to see Justice Roberts and/or Justice Amy Coney Barrett switch back, and I think that this kind of dynamic is one that I think we better sort of fasten our seatbelts."
"But tonight we are seeing the Supreme Court having done the right thing, after they took so long to decide the presidential immunity decision, delayed the federal cases inordinately," said Weissmann. "Here they are giving the green light for the president-elect of the United States of America to be sentenced tomorrow in state court for 34 felonies that he was convicted of by a jury of his peers."
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