Former SCOTUS clerk tells Chris Hayes the court “cannot be trusted”

More than 100 days have passed since the Supreme Court considered Donald Trump’s attempt to claim presidential immunity from criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. That’s already twice as long as it took the Supreme Court to find that Richard Nixon was not immune from criminal charges in the Watergate scandal.

This, combined with “extracurricular activities” such as Justice Alito’s flag-raising, has created a court that “simply cannot be trusted,” former SCOTUS clerk Leah Litman, who clerked with Justice Anthony Kennedy, told Chris Hayes.

Asked if she believed the explanations for the delay – that internal disputes within the court or the complexity of the case were the main reasons there had been no movement – Litman was skeptical. “I think this court has lost the benefit of the doubt and the presumption of good faith for a number of reasons,” she explained.

“For one thing, they are more than capable of acting quickly even in difficult cases where there is disagreement,” she continued. “The Trump disqualification case in Colorado, in which the Colorado state court removed her from the ballot, divided opinion. Yet the court managed to hear the case before Super Tuesday, before people went to the Capitol Palace, and within a month of oral arguments.”

“There could well be a disagreement here, and yet it has taken the court two months since oral argument, and the arguments in this case are, in my view, far more preposterous than any arguments for disqualifying a president who participated in the January 6 insurrection,” Litman added.

“When you add in all the evidence from the justices — say, extracurricular activities like Justice Alito flying several ‘Stop the Steal’ flags on his house — I think that’s more than enough evidence that you just can’t trust this court to actually follow the rules and follow the legal process when it comes to cases involving Donald Trump.”

It took the Supreme Court just 54 days from taking up the case against Richard Nixon to ruling against the former president in 1974. Like Nixon, Hayes said, Trump is essentially trying to portray the president as a kind of monarch who can disregard laws at his own discretion. Nixon was told that this is not the case in the United States, and it remains to be seen what the court will say to Trump.

You can watch the interview between Chris Hayes and Leah Litman in the video above.