Sargent: I think you really hit the nail on the head there because what’s really striking here is the audacity of it. Let’s go through the larger context. First, the Supreme Court said Trump could run for president despite the insurrection attempt. Then the Supreme Court helped Trump delay Jack Smith’s January 6 prosecution so the trial didn’t happen before the election, which arguably helped Trump win. The Supreme Court also granted Trump partial immunity from prosecution. And now Alito just hops on the phone with Trump to recommend someone for a job in the new administration? Kyle, do the Supreme Court justices worry about what all this looks like or not?
Sargent: That is exactly it, Kyle. They just don’t seem to care, and that’s what’s so surprising. Onto Jack Smith, Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily blocked him from releasing his report. Can you walk us through where that is now? Smith has appealed this. What’s Smith’s argument, and what’s the timeline? How does it all unfold now?
Kyle Cheney: Good to be with you, Greg. Always.
Cheney: I think pretty quickly too.
Cheney: Yeah, I think that’s honestly the larger plot or subplot of this entire thing. There’s Donald Trump, who’s coming into office with a clear intent to redefine, recast this revisionist version of what happened on January 6 and his role in it, versus all these other forces, political adversaries, and the Justice Department in trying to ensure that the truth of that day—what really happened, how bad and dangerous January 6 alone itself was, not to mention the several month effort Donald Trump undertook to subvert the election—doesn’t get lost in that clearly political effort to tell a different story.
Cheney: The way Trump wields executive power in general is going to be a big story of his second term, and whether the courts can stop, can restrain some of that if he crosses certain lines. The way he wields the pardon authority is going to be very fascinating, including whether he uses it to assure people that if they break the law doing things that he asks them to do that they’ll be protected. For example, do the courts have a role in constraining that somehow? Can they constrain that? To me, that’s the number one sort of area I’ll look at because he’s going to use that pardon authority pretty much on day one.
Cheney: He is. He made a reference to Alito and his wife having the flag that was associated with January 6 in their house. At the same time, he’s now known … He’s weighing matters related to the attack on the Capitol. Alito is smart enough to know this creates an appearance problem to take a call from President Trump. So whether there’s any sort of nefarious arrangement here or not, Alito knows exactly how this is going to look when he gets that call, It’s President-elect Trump calling you. Sure, it’s hard to turn down a call from the president, but when he’s asking for a favor, essentially, for a former clerk, you have to know that no matter how that turns out, whatever he rules is going to now be called into question because of that personal dynamic between the two of them.
Cheney: Exactly. You even see it now. It’s been four years since January 6, and a lot of the visceral memories of it have faded to a degree. As those of us who have really followed it closely every day, it’s hard to forget how dangerous and harrowing all of that was, especially when you’re in court all the time, seeing the video of it and hearing the testimony about it. For other people, it’s easier to have it get muddier, especially when the person with the most powerful megaphone in the world is trying to tell a different version of events.
Sargent: By the time people listen to this, the Supreme Court may have ruled on whether Juan Merchan can proceed with the sentencing, right?
Sargent: The courts are going to be even arguably more important given that Trump is going to really press very hard on the boundaries of presidential power. What do you see as the fault lines?
Sargent: Kyle Cheney, thanks for coming on with us, man. It’s going to get pretty ugly.
Sargent: Well, the larger context is worth looking at here again with regard to January 6. Donald Trump, once he becomes president, is going to undertake a pretty concerted effort to entirely erase the truth about what happened and replace it with a big historical lie. For instance, he’s going to pardon … I guess we don’t really know exactly which ones, but he’s going to pardon at least some of the January 6 rioters. He talks about them as patriots and heroes and political prisoners and hostages. He has succeeded in nullifying the prosecution of himself for January 6. In a sense, you can see why he is fighting the release of Jack Smith’s report on January 6 as well. It really could interfere with his effort to rewrite the whole story, right?
This week, we learned that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke privately with Donald Trump to recommend a former law clerk for a job in Trump’s government. Jamie Raskin tore into this news, urging Alito to recuse himself from matters involving Trump. And as it happens, Trump just asked the high court to block a New York judge from issuing a sentencing for Trump’s hush money conviction. What Raskin got right is to really zero in on the corruption embedded in Trump’s relationship with the Supreme Court. After all, between this and another big piece of news—Judge Aileen Cannon ordering Special Counsel Jack Smith not to release his report on the evidence he’s collected against Trump—the courts are really facing a crisis with regard to the president-elect.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Sargent: Indeed.
You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
Sargent: Yeah, he’s certainly going to be using that megaphone. Just to bring this back to Raskin, he really hit the mark on the big picture here with the legitimacy of the whole arrangement between the high court and Trump being endowed. There’s a big role here for Democrats to really articulate that argument going forward, isn’t there? I know you write about this stuff sometimes as well, especially with Trump’s policies likely to go before the court. This doesn’t end now. The Supreme Court’s going to have to rule on some major things going forward, right? For Democrats to really try and push the court to have to reckon with the role it’s played in the Trump era is essential to getting them to be a little more impartial.