'Darker view': What Alina Habba's comments reveal about her take on the Supreme Court
Former President Donald Trump's attorney Alina Habba's pressure campaign on Justice Brett Kavanaugh to "step up" in Trump's criminal cases shows she has a twisted, quid pro quo view of the legal system, said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on MSNBC Friday.
"You can talk about Samuel Alito, who got his lifelong dream of overturning Roe through Donald Trump being the president," said anchor Joy Reid. "You could go on and on, the people who want him there, Clarence Thomas, you could argue his wife has material financial benefits from having a Trump presidency. I just wonder what you make of the fact that this court is operating in a world in which some people believe they owe him and that isn't like a crazy thing to think."
"You know, Alina Habba has a much darker view of our court system than I do," said Vance. "Apparently, she believes that justices and judges are transactional, that they respond purely to the people who put them on the bench. And for all federal judges, that's a president from one party or another."
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"The federal judiciary that I know sets aside their origin story, their political origin story, when they take on their role as a judge," Vance continued. "And they commit to decide cases on the law and on the facts. This is a Supreme Court that has strained our credulity in some cases. The end of Roe v. Wade comes to mind. In other cases that have involved the Trump presidency and the core of democracy, in cases following the 2020 election, the courts have held firm. And I think the hope we have to have is that they will do that in this instance."
When it comes to the state rulings disqualifying Trump from the ballot, "I tend to agree with [former Solicitor General] Neal [Katyal] in large part on the legal issues here," said Vance. "I have a little bit less confidence than he does that the Supreme Court will uphold the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court. I think that they may look for a procedural off-ramp that lets them off the hook for deciding here. But Joy, what stands out to me is that the Supreme Court is only being asked to make this decision because Republicans in the Senate abdicated their duty following the 2020 election to convict Donald Trump on articles of impeachment. That would have established for all time the issue of whether or not he was eligible to run again, and so we're at this juncture for reasons of political failure."
That, she added, is "something we should hold on to going into this next election."
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