DISQUALIFIED:...Not Yet, But Perhaps Likely...Smart Money Is On The U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Donald Trump Out Of The Presidential Race...But...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...How much damage has Donald J. Trump done to America? Surely, you've read, seen and heard about most of it. A lawless president, an angry candidate, an indicted man wearing 91 felonies and four criminal cases like a horse collar around his neck.

Plus, there's much more.

We could write a 5,000-word article here and sort of cover it all, but we won't. No use trying, for now. There are still too many unanswered questions and legal action before we - or anyone else - goes there in a definitive way. It'll all come, gathered by some journalist writing for a major newspaper or a national magazine. Noted historians are taking copious notes.

Until then, we are left with yet another rather shallow report on action at the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices this week will consider that appeal (Republican Trump has until Monday to file it, however) of a ruling by that federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. that almost two weeks ago told Trump he was "not immune" from prosecution.

Hang on to your gasps. It could get silly. The High Court could rule in favor of Trump, is what the learned scholars and conservative pundits are writing in publications and saying on Cable-TV.

The facts surrounding Trump's political world are so well-known that a cursory listing tells the story. He was president from 2016 to January, 2021. He sought reelection in 2020 and lost to Democrat Joe Biden in November of that same year. While awaiting the transfer of power, Trump engaged in some wild wheeling & dealing in hopes of changing the results. He conspired to change the results in several states and even did it personally in a strange telephone call with the elections overseer in Georgia, where he asked the Georgia elections official to find him "11,800" votes so that he would overcome the defeat to Biden and claim the state's Electoral College votes.

For that, he was indicted in Georgia, where he presented himself for arraignment and where he still faces a trial. In New York, a judge is presently working on a sentence to do with massive business fraud. That rendering is expected soon. And that came after Trump saw another judge hand an $83 million judgment against him in a defamation trial connected to his rape conviction tied to an assault of magazine writer E. Jean Carroll some three decades ago at a Manhattan department store.

Still on the stove's burner, as well, is the government's case against him to do with his taking classified government documents after leaving the White House and haphazardly stashing them at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Trump has denied all charges and scoffed at court rulings.

A huge case rests on what Trump did and did not do during the U.S. Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 - the very day the U.S. Senate was certifying the vote results. That day, Trump treated the rioters to a hell-raising speech prosecutors say fueled the riot. If indeed the court accepts that the riot fits the definition of an "insurrection," then Trump is in deep doo-doo.

Trump has said he never ordered anyone to go vandalize the Capitol.

Maybe not.

But there are far too-many fat, cumulus clouds of smoke across the fruited plains for Americans to ignore. You could wonder about one or two or three things to do with his legal problems, but, well, again, there is just too much evidence. The government seems convinced of his guilt; his rabid MAGA followers fully-alive, but in total disbelief.

So, it will be up to the Supreme Court - six judges appointed by Republicans, three by Democrats.

As we noted, there is much writing about all of this out there.

From the current issue of the New York Review of Books: [ . . . The conservative majority of the Supreme Court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump's lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds. So are the facts of the case, which in any event the Supreme Court is powerless to review. The conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.

But the choice is far more profound than the Court’s consistency. In 2000 it disgraced itself by manipulating the Fourteenth Amendment to produce Bush v. Gore, a ruling that changed the course of history and was later described by Justice Antonin Scalia, who concurred in it, this way: "As we say in Brooklyn, a piece of shit."

Now the Court must decide whether it will honor the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and disqualify Donald Trump. If it does so, it may redeem in part the terrible judicial malpractice of 2000. If it does not, it will then trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the Constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge. ]

The article is a wide-ranging one, covering a lot of the current goings-on with the Supreme Court and exactly where the 14th Amendment came in the wake of the American Civil War.

With all that's happened, is Donald J. Trump qualified to seek the presidency?

There's a lot of bad baggage there, much of which the public simply can't grasp and some which some voters may not care about.

The cases are before courts.

The battle away from there is between political parties. Trump's Republicans want him, and that's all there is to it. The federal government and the State of Georgia say he is still to be tried and answer for his deeds. Democrats say Trump is unqualified and a clear & present danger to our republic.

Yes, voters will likely have the last word in November. Ambitious legal acrobatics seem to be the norm these days. What looks clearcut isn't and that which offers a loophole is generally discovered by heady lawyers.

It's been more than 20 years since the infamous Bush/Gore ruling by the Supreme Court, one now seen as horrible reading of the law that handed Bush the presidency. Will the High Court get it right this time? It depends on your political leanings.

Trump has until tomorrow to file his longshot appeal of that "absolute immunity" contention he lost.

I hope he files.

Trump's histrionics has gone on too long...and it all needs to be resolved...

-30-