Allison Gill is a Navy veteran, a comedian, a podcaster, and a blogger. Her blog “Mueller, She Wrote,” was launched at the beginning of that long-ago investigation of Trump’s connections to Russia. This post appeared on her blog:
I’m not a lawyer, but usually, when the Supreme Court hears a case, they are supposed to rule on that specific case. Yet somehow, in two crucial cases about holding Donald Trump accountable for insurrection, the corrupt court went out of its way to decide on questions not before it, and create “a rule for the ages,” as Neil Gorsuch put it during oral arguments this past spring.
The first bomb they dropped to destroy accountability for Trump was their ruling overturning the Colorado Supreme Court on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The justices decided 9-0 that Colorado could not keep a federal candidate off the state ballot – but a 5-4 majority took it a step further by deciding that Section 3 of the 14th amendment is not self-executing; meaning Congress has to first pass legislation disqualifying Trump. An idea so wrong that even Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberal justices and objected to that part of the ruling in her concurrence.
The second bomb they dropped was the immunity ruling. Not only did they grant Trump presumptive immunity in the case before them, but they granted all presidents presumptive immunity, and took it a step further by disqualifying official acts from being used as evidence to prosecute unofficial acts.
But that’s not all! Rather than deciding which acts in the Trump case were subject to immunity, they kicked it back down to the lower court, teeing up a second interlocutory appeal on whatever the lower court ruled. That effectively added another year to the delay. Additionally, it would give the corrupt court another swing at the DoJ case on the second appeal, where I imagine they’d rip it apart once and for all. When all was said and done, they decided that they themselves would be the ultimate arbiter of rulings on official acts for criminal presidents while adding ridiculously long pre-trial appeals to the process.
That’s nothing compared to the official acts evidence part of the ruling. Again – so bad and so wrong that Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberal justices to disagree. The gist is this: let’s say you want to prosecute a president after he leaves office for accepting a million dollar bribe in exchange for an ambassadorship. And let’s say you have emails between the president and the potential ambassador explicitly stating “I will give you this ambassadorship in exchange for a million dollars.” This Supreme Court ruling says you can’t mention the appointment of the ambassador (the quo) while trying to prosecute the bribe (the quid). Absolutely bonkers.
These two rulings are the reason we can’t have nice things. That and Mitch McConnell failing to convict Trump of Insurrection after his impeachment. These decisions are the reasons Trump has not been held accountable. All because a bought-and-paid-for supreme court, funded by dark money with corporate interests before the court, needed to protect Trump from prosecution and accountability.
Were it not for the immunity ruling, Donald would have faced trial for his role in the insurrection in March of 2024. Would a conviction have made a difference in the election given he was already a 34-count convicted felon? I don’t know, but we would have had a trial were it not for the Supreme Court. The immunity ruling also contained a permission slip from Clarence Thomas in his concurrence for Aileen Cannon to dismiss the documents case, opining apropos of NOTHING that Jack Smith was probably appointed and funded improperly.
POOF. Both DoJ trials were scrapped from the pre-election calendar. But even if Trump had lost the election, there’d be a second interlocutory appeal of Judge Chutkan’s immunity determinations that would have gone all the way back up to the Supreme Court – adding at least a year to the trial calendar. Would the corrupt court have left Judge Chutkan’s ruling in place, allowing the case to go to trial? If you believe that, I have a luxury motor coach to sell you.
People have been trying to convince me that if Trump were indicted sooner, he would have gone to trial before the election and wouldn’t have been re-elected. For that to be true, you’d have to convince me that the dark money funded oligarchs on the Supreme Court would have been cool one time and allowed the trial to happen. You’d also have to convince me that people are fine electing a man convicted of 34 felonies, but not a man convicted of 38 felonies. I have my doubts.
Regardless, I will forever blame the billionaire-funded Supreme Court. They are part of the oligarchy, and were installed to dismantle democracy.
~AG

It’s worse than that … they are the very epitome of our present national sociopathy …
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Jon: Notes from the rabbit hole: . . . Today, the Supreme Court ruled . . . CBK
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Before you stomp on everything consider that the Presidential immunity thing will keep Trump from prosecuting President Biden from some of he has done when he is in office. So right or wrong the pendulum swings both ways. I’m not a supporter of either President Biden or President-Elect Trump.
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You must have missed the part about how the Court made itself the judge of what counts and doesn’t count. Selective application of the law has been their hallmark in every case.
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The non-self executing fallacy falls apart as Trump was an adjudicated insurrectionist just as he was a convicted felon in New York.
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The bottom line is that our country has put Al Capone in the White House. A mob boss. Someone we would not pay to mow our lawn. This is the indictment against our electorate. Yes, the Supreme Court is bought and paid for. So is the majority of Congress and don’t even start about our illustrious executive branch soon to be occupied by a plethora of billionaire sociopaths who could not care less about American Citizens. Should our country, and by extension the global order, survive this, Trump will die before he sees any semblance of accountability. He will continue to have sycophants who will stand around his bedside to tell him how magnificent his life was. I recently saw a piece that stated we are no longer right vs. left, but top vs. bottom. I just hope the bottom discovers there is power in numbers and takes back the store.
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Trump has tricked those at the bottom to believe that he is on their side. They don’t know that the only legislation passed in his first two years was tax cuts for the very richest. Nothing for the not-rich.
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It’s going to be a difficult time. Tend your garden. Meditate. Take long walks. Cherish those close to you. Make new friends. Go out at night and look at the stars.
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You’re correct! There is no use in fighting to the death over this. Change will be hard for ALL of us so we need to keep a clear head. Those that voted for this incoming clown show will see the error of their ways soon enough.
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Those who voted for Trump are deep in media that shield them from truth. They will be told BS and they will swallow it again and again.
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Diane, I found the 7 Pm Service from Christmas Eve. It’s at SRC Worship 12/24/24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEdyAUVK7JY, I think you might enjoy it. Our services are similar to Episcopal liturgy and style. Not “low church, but not high church with all the incense vestments.
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Thanks, Ken.
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RIP Jimmy Carter! He was the last decent and humane person to occupy the WH. He was elected during dire economic circumstances yet he was calm and cool headed during his Presidency and always tried to use his administration for the good of “the People”….ALL People.
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LisaM,
Carter was a humble man. But I would not call him “the last decent and humane person to occupy the WH.”
Biden fits the description.
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Alas, I cannot put out of my mind the fact that the Carter administration approved spraying marijuana crops in Central America with Malathion, an insecticide that, if inhaled, causes rupturing of the lungs. This he approved because, supposedly, marijuana is so bad for people. Worse than ruptured lungs?
How perverse is that?
So, he was, as his faith taught him, imperfect, sometimes profoundly so.
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An insightful and thought-provoking blog! The discussion on how the Supreme Court’s rulings protect corporate interests and prevent accountability for powerful figures is both alarming and eye-opening. Well articulated!
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What an excellent analysis by Alison Gill. Confirms every floating doubt I’ve had not only about these decisions, but about the way they were covered in media reportage opinion articles– & spells them out in plain English.
My sense from the beginning has been that SCOTUS wanted no part in entering the fracas over whether a past POTUS/ potential future POTUS was “qualified to run” (let alone held accountable for actions while in office). They weren’t going to help a miscreant POTUS be legally declared such while in office, nor be declared one after leaving office, nor stand in the way of a populace who decides they want to run him again for president. Apparently a miscreant POTUS has no accountability other than how historians view his legacy.
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