In a new interview on CNN, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) — who was on the House committee that investigated the violence of January 6, 2021, and circumstances leading up to it — tore into U.S. Supreme Court Justices over their handling of somewhat related appeals from Donald Trump in which he is claiming to hold wide-reaching legal immunity merely because he was once president.
“They didn’t need to take this case at all,” Lofgren said, adding: “And really, the debate today showed a very serious problem, which is they are not deciding the case before them, instead engaging in flights of fancy that would involve further delay. Honestly, you know, all of us lawyers are also called officers of the court. We’re trained to believe in the impartiality of the courts and especially the Supreme Court. But it’s tough to do today. It doesn’t look like — they look like partisan hacks. I’m sorry. And it’s a great concern to me, a great concern to the preservation of our democracy.” She kept speaking from there.
As is routine, it was unclear how the Supreme Court would decide as Trump tries using those immunity claims to shut down a criminal case that he is facing over conduct after the 2020 presidential election, though it seemed, to some, unlikely, that a majority on the bench would hand the former president the entirety of the sweeping immunity he seeks.
Trump alleges that efforts after the last presidential race to target its outcome — meaning Joe Biden’s duly documented election win — were somehow part of his official duties as president, and Trump claims that the imagined immunity from even the possibility of criminal consequence broadly covers precisely that category of action. In reality, of course, undoing Biden’s win would have undone the collective impact of tens of millions of duly documented votes from around the country.
