The Supreme Court is "in-your-face corrupt" — and working to help former President Donald Trump get re-elected however it can, Andrew Perez wrote in a blistering analysis for Rolling Stone published on Monday.
The court is getting ready to decide a pair of cases that could heavily impact whether Trump can be tried for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election — and as Justice Samuel Alito is refusing to step aside from participating in them, despite recent reporting that he has flown symbols associated with MAGA conspiracy theories at his house.
"The deck is stacked," he wrote. "Right-wing extremists can impose their ideological and religious views on the rest of us — at will. The justices have their lifetime appointments, and a lucrative reward system: Benefactors provide them with private jet rides and superyacht trips, buy their homes, supply them with teaching side hustles, and occasionally even steer consulting payments to their spouses. The notion of accountability is a foreign one; the justices can fly flags at their homes associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Christian nationalism. Their spouses can try to overturn elections. Americans are losing faith in the Supreme Court, but it doesn’t matter. The justices have hard power — no one is going to stop them."
The Supreme Court is even debating whether to "legalize gratuities" for politicians, Perez noted: "The case involves an Indiana mayor who steered two government contracts to a garbage truck company, which then paid him $13,000. At oral arguments, justices debated whether the $13,000 thank-you payment is too similar to taking a teacher to the Cheesecake Factory to constitute bribery."
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"And then there’s the court’s shameless advocacy for Donald Trump, who assembled this monstrosity," he wrote. "In the first case, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot keep Trump off their ballots under the 14th Amendment, which prohibits insurrectionists from serving in office. The court’s decision to hear the second Trump case — over his facially ridiculous, dangerous claim to having expansive immunity in perpetuity for acts he committed as president — delayed his federal criminal trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and had his team 'literally popping champagne,' as a lawyer close to Donald Trump told Rolling Stone at the time."
Trump's allies know that he could make even more Supreme Court appointments with a second term, Perez concluded.
"The potential for destruction would be immense," he wrote. "The justices and their dark-money allies are ready to seize their opportunity and take full advantage of it."