Good evening from New York.
I'm Chris Hayes.
It is that time of year when Donald Trump's right
wing Supreme Court waits until the very end of the
term to bludgeon us with their decisions.
There are 21 opinions remaining, but we are all holding
our breath for one in particular that has a kind
of clock ticking.
Of course, that is Trump, the United States, the former
president's claim that he is immune from being criminally prosecuted
for anything he did while he was in the White
House.
Now, all of the justices are, you know, adult grown
human beings.
You can read the newspaper and know that time is
of the essence in this case.
We are less than five months away from the election
when Donald Trump will have, if you look at polls
now, basically a 5050 shot at taking back the Oval
Office.
But at every turn, this court, the conservative majority of
this Court, One has to imagine, has dragged its feet.
The federal case against all Trump for his attempt to
overturn the 2020 election charges him with four felony counts,
including conspiracy to defraud the United States.
It has been on hold for more than six months.
The judge in that case, federal District Judge Tanya Chutkin,
was forced to pause the case all the way back
on December 13th of last year amid Trump's community appeal.
That was 189 days ago.
The Supreme Court finally agreed to take up the case
on February 28th.
They heard arguments at the end of April and we
are still waiting.
112 days have passed with nothing, no decision from the
Supreme Court, no movement towards a trial that could hold
Donald Trump accountable for his attempted insurrection and also demonstrate
to voters whether the man is guilty or not guilty
of the grave crimes with which he is charged.
Now, to be clear, as we've often said on the
show, the wheels of justice do move slowly.
But this is not normal.
As law professor Leah Lippmann puts it in an opinion
piece The New York Times today, something's rotten about the
justices taking so long on Trump's immunity case.
She goes on to explain, quote, Mr.
Trump's lawyers put together a set of arguments that are
so outlandish, they shouldn't take much time to dispatch.
The Wall Street Journal also notes that this term as
a whole, the whole Supreme Court term, is moving at
a historically slow pace.
Quote, according to Adam Feldman, creator of the Empirical SCOTUS
blog, the justices are completing decisions at the 2nd slowest
rate since the 1946 term.
Now, keep in mind, each justice has a team of
four very bright and industrious law clerks assisting them, and
they only work nine months out of the year.
It's also really worth remembering the last time the Supreme
Court heard a case, this price pressing the direct analog,
it involved a corrupt Republican president.
It was in 1974.
It had United States in the title, United States versus
Nixon.
And that, of course, was when then sitting President Nixon
claimed he was immune from complying with the subpoena in
the Watergate investigation because of executive privilege.
In that case, the Supreme Court managed to move much
more expeditiously.
Good evening.
The US Supreme Court, acting as swiftly as it ever
has, today announced it will review the special Watergate prosecutor's
complaint against President Nixon.
It was just one week ago today when Leon Jaworski
asked the court to rule on the President's defiance of
a subpoena for more White House tapes.
It was yesterday when the President's lawyer asked the court
not to rush to judgement and allow the case to
be heard in the Court of Appeals.
But this afternoon, the court said it would hear oral
arguments in about 5 weeks, which set the stage for
a possible confrontation between the President and the High Court
on the issue of executive privilege.
At 3:30, the weekly conference ended.
10 minutes later, the Chief Justice issued a single sheet
of paper setting in motion the biggest constitutional test of
presidential power since the Civil War.
In the case now entitled United States of America versus
Richard Nixon President, the court agreed to settle the question
whether the President can be compelled to furnish evidence to
the Watergate special prosecutor, bypassing the Court of Appeals.
The court said briefs should be submitted June 21st and
replies July 1st.
The historic argument was set for July 8th.
Good evening.
The Supreme Court of the United States today heard three
hours of arguments that could very well determine President Nixon's
chances of staying in office for a full term.
There were two principal questions before the court, whether Mr.
Nixon can be forced to give up an additional 64
White House tapes to the special prosecutor and whether the
federal grand jury was within its jurisdiction when it named
the President an unindicted Co conspirator.
The thrust of the argument centered on the release of
the additional tapes.
A decision is expected in a week or two.
Even before this morning's argument, one justice was writing and
circulating his ideas.
Another had his clerk prepare a draft opinion.
Good evening.
President Nixon has not yet responded to the sledgehammer decision
of the Supreme Court today, which ruled that he must
immediately turn over tapes of 64 presidential conversations.
In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice Warren Burger,
the court rejected 8 to nothing Mr.
Nixon's claim of absolute privilege.
On those tapes, the court said the President's claim of
absolute privilege would upset the constitutional balance of a workable
government.
It said its ruling was only that the President had
to give way in criminal proceedings, a very limited intrusion
since presidents would rarely be involved in criminal cases till
5 decades ago.
The court took less than two months to decide President
Nixon's case.
They agreed to hear the case on May 31st, 1974.
You see it there.
They gave each set of lawyers three weeks to file
their briefs, then ten days after that to reply.
The court heard oral arguments on July 8th, and just
16 days later, just over two weeks, they issued their
unanimous opinion rejecting President Nixon's claim of executive privilege.
In total, from start to finish, all done in 54
days.
Just 54 days to decide Richard Nixon's case.
And we are still waiting for the outcome of Donald
Trump's after 112 days and counting.
These are similar cases with similar urgency.
President Nixon was making a completely a historical unconstitutional claim
of immunity because he did not want to turn over
his tapes in the Watergate investigation.
The court ruled no, the president is not a king
and does not get to ignore the laws.
Donald Trump is once again arguing the president is a
kind of king, that he could do anything and everything,
including ordering the assassination of his political rivals, and not
face prosecution unless impeached, Convicted.
And yet the court drags its feet, members of that
court, all of them knowing full well every day they
delay makes it less and less possible that Trump will
stand trial for the insurrection before this next election.
Leah Littman is the author of that New York Times
op-ed.
She's a professor at University of Michigan Law School and
Co host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast along with Melissa
Murray and my wife Kate Shaw.
And she joins me now.
It's great to see you, Leah.
I love this piece partly because you just walked through
the timeline, which inspired us to do so as well.
Why do you not think there's a good faith explanation
here?
That it's complex or that this court is moving slowly?
Because they have weird.
There's some weird factional battles happening behind the scenes.
I think this court has lost the benefit of the
doubt and the presumption of good faith for any number
of reasons.
One is that they are more than capable of acting
quickly even in difficult cases where there is disagreement.
The Trump disqualification case arising out of Colorado, where the
Colorado State court took him off the ballot, that resulted
in a divided opinion.
And yet the court still was able to get it
out before Super Tuesday, before people went to cast their
ballots and within a month of the oral argument Here,
there might well be division.
And yet the court has taken two months since oral
argument.
And the arguments in the case, I think are way
more outlandish than any of the arguments on behalf of
disqualifying a president who participated in the January 6th insurrection.
You add to that all of the indications of the
justices, let's say extracurricular activities like Justice Alito flying multiple
stop the steel flags associated at his house.
And all of that, I think, is more than enough
indication that this court just cannot be trusted to actually
follow the rules and adhere to the legal process when
it comes to cases involving Donald Trump.
That point about the Colorado case is great.
I had totally forgotten that time frame, right?
So in there, the clock that's ticking is they got
to print the ballots.
I think for Colorado, they can actually vote.
They're going to send them out to mail them.
And of course, the notion was if we don't act,
he's not going to be on the ballot, right?
So the sort of constraining thing they had to do
was like, if we don't act quickly, Donald Trump won't
be on the ballot.
In this, it's totally flipped.
If we don't act, then nothing happens to our guy.
And they seem to be taking longer.
Yes, that's exactly right.
And I think if you go back to the oral
argument in the Trump immunity case, you saw the Republican
justices attempt to interject basically every other possibility into this
case aside from the case they were actually being asked
to decide.
So Justice Alito, for example, floated the possibility to the
special counsel's office.
Well, what if a president just made a mistake, could
be prosecuted then, as if the stop the Steel movement
was just some kind of oopsie that the president had
engaged in or the former president had engaged in for
the last two months.
I mean, this case doesn't involve a simple mistake.
And if you look back to the Nixon case, there,
the Supreme Court basically said we don't have to resolve
absolutely everything related to immunity.
All we have to say is presidents aren't immune from
criminal process based on some generalized definition of confidentiality.