On the matter of the former president*’s taxes, the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday decided that it pretty much doesn’t want any part of the former president* of the United States, and it delivered the former president* up to the tender mercies of a New York District Attorney. From the Washington Post:
After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents.
It is plain that the Court waited until after the election and its prolonged aftermath were over before washing its hands of the former president*, which is an ominous sign for him, and his family, and his various flunkies and enablers.
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has won every stage of the legal fight — including the first round at the Supreme Court — but has yet to receive the records he says are necessary for a grand jury investigation into whether the president’s companies violated state law. The current fight is a follow-up to last summer’s decision by the high court that the president is not immune from a criminal investigation while he holds office. “No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that 7 to 2 decision.
It’s almost as though the entire constitutional system is (belatedly) trying to rid itself of the ergot poisoning it willingly ingested in the fall of 2016. Given the existing prion disease that entered the Republican Party when it ate the monkey-brains of “movement” conservatism, the effects were profound. From the American Society For Microbiology:
Sometimes known as St. Anthony’s fire (for the group of monks who attempted to help during one particularly bad outbreak), the illness most frequently surfaced in the summers after cold, wet winters that were followed by long, damp springs. Entire families would find themselves afflicted with either symptoms of burning and eventual gangrene in the hands and feet or with epileptic-like convulsions, headaches and hallucinations.
Perhaps the latter will pass one day, but I am not optimistic.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
