During his single presidential term, Donald Trump had a penchant for referring to federal judges and Supreme Court justices as though they ruled based on loyalty to the presidents who nominated them. Thus, Trump suggested, there were “Obama judges” and Trump judges. In 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stern rebuke: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.” He added, “That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
A lopsided high court ruling Wednesday against Trump helped dispel all notions of justices basing their decisions on personal loyalties. They dealt Trump the hardest of defeats by dismissing his mythical assertion of a post-presidential executive privilege. He had no constitutional basis to block the release of 724 pages of documents sought by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Congressional Republicans have gone to extraordinary efforts to block the Jan. 6 committee from doing its job. It’s now a matter of record that the Judicial Branch sides with congressional Democrats and the Executive Branch on the need to uncover the truth. That is: Who planned the insurrection, and to what extent was Trump’s White House involved? No matter what Trump’s cronies in Congress assert about this being a partisan witch hunt, they cannot count on the Supreme Court to help them obstruct justice.
