'Democracy is at stake': Legal expert says top court risks making Trump a king

The Supreme Court is the "highest tribunal" in the country and the "final arbiter of the law." They're not kingmakers.

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner stressed this point while discussing the fallout over the nation's highest court approving Special Counsel Jack Smith's gambit request on Monday seeking to to skip the appeals process and have the Supreme Court consider an expedited review to render if former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution or not.

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” the filing reads.

In a statement, Trump’s presidential campaign criticized Smith for the appeals go-around. “There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters."

If the justices decide Trump is immune from prosecution, Kirschner fears it all but assures his absolution with the D.C. election subversion case accusing him of inciting a massive crowd on Jan. 6, 2021 to riot at the Capitol Building to prevent the certification of the election.

Doing so would ultimately anoint him a sovereign.

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"I guess it's only our democracy at stake," he said with a bit of sardonic undertones. "You know, just small potatoes."

But Kirschner then detailed just how bleak such a ruling could be.

"To put it indelicately, a president would order his political opponents assassinated," he said.

Deciding that Trump is all but untouchable with the law, would also have the Supreme Court relinquishing its power.

"If the Supreme Court justices want to abandon their responsibility, their honor, their ethics to interpret the Constitution in a way that can literally be found in the text of the Constitution, then they can do whatever they want."

"They can act in a completely lawless manner and do a favor for an aspiring dictator like Donald Trump."

Kirschner then stops himself, saying, "They won't do it."

Because if they do, he continues "they'll be delivering the power of the judiciary to the power of a criminal president."

He believes Trump or any other president cannot be above the law.

"They will literally be putting a criminal president above and beyond the reach of the law and the Supreme Court," he said. "The Supreme Court loves its supreme status. The last thing that they're going to do is hand it over to a criminal president and make themselves, the judiciary, a second class branch of government. It's not going to happen."

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