From The New York Times:
On Monday, the planned sentencing hit a snag when the Supreme Court granted Mr. Trump broad immunity from prosecution for official actions taken as president. The landmark ruling, which was decided 6-3 along partisan lines, dealt a major blow to Mr. Trump’s federal criminal case in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss. Although the Manhattan case does not center on Mr. Trump’s presidency or official acts — but rather on his personal activity during the 2016 campaign — his lawyers argued on Monday that prosecutors had built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House. And under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors not only cannot charge a president for any official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts to bolster other accusations.
In a letter to Justice Merchan, Mr. Trump’s lawyers contended that the conviction should be set aside. They also asked the judge to postpone the sentencing while he considered their request. In response to the letter from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the district attorney’s office wrote that prosecutors did not oppose Mr. Trump’s request to delay the sentencing.
I devoted Monday to despondency. It was comfortable and warm and I felt blessedly free from the hurly-burly. But I woke up this morning as angry at American politics and its transparent moral desolation as I ever have been. How in the unholy, unshirted FCK are we going to have the everlasting gall to celebrate the Fourth of July this week? How will we have the big, clanging brass ones to celebrate the anniversary of a document that states, in addition to its more famous passages, these most fundamental truths?
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States....
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary power.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
No, Alvin Bragg. No, Justice Merchan. You didn’t have to give the former president* this breather, in which he can pretend his conviction never happened and that his legal peril elsewhere has disappeared. Make him and his cult earn every step in their assault on democracy. Fight every motion down to the last clause and comma. Lives. Fortunes. Sacred honor. Find them again. Quick.
