In an appearance on MSNBC, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern, who focuses on legal issues, accused the U.S. Supreme Court of effectively creating for itself a role in ongoing attempts by former President Donald Trump to evade the machinations of justice. The context is the federal criminal case against the former president on accusations of conspiring against the 2020 presidential election’s outcome, when Joe Biden won.

Some two months ago at this point, the nation’s highest court heard in-person arguments on appeals from Trump claiming that he holds wide-ranging legal protections by mere virtue of once serving as president that supposedly should shut down the case. The protections that he claims are for actions taken amid his official duties in the role of president, and that’s where he groups what he was doing after the last election — although taking his evident ambitions to their endpoint would have unwound the collective impact of tens of millions of votes from Americans for president.

“The Supreme Court is slow-walking the Trump immunity case in a way that, intentionally or not, has made it complicit in the former president’s bid to delay his trial beyond the election and, of course, if he wins, to kill that trial altogether,” said Stern. “The Supreme Court could have easily resolved this case back in February, when the appeals court issued a strong decision clearly correct on the law.”

Trump’s other federal criminal case, dealing with his handling of government classified documents, is also lagging. Presiding Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, kicked off proceedings Friday that would cover legal challenges to the lead prosecutor, Special Counsel Jack Smith, holding that role at all. She already indefinitely delayed trial.

Watch Stern below in footage highlighted earlier by Raw Story: