US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush nearly 20 years ago, has been exposed as even more biased than we previously thought.

We all know the importance of SCOTUS appointments, and some people base their entire vote on them. For example, evangelical Christians held their nose and just got used to Donald Trump’s disgusting behavior so he would appoint justices who would overturn healthcare rights for women.

And it worked.

But abortion rights are a single issue, just like the interpretation of the Second Amendment, or environmental protections, and justices can sometimes even hold opposing views from the president that appoints them on some things, but not others.

The case of presidential immunity, however, is entirely different. This is what determines what those in power can get away with. That’s a pretty important distinction for the highest court in the land. It’s not the same as determining what a president is empowered to proactively do. It’s about what they can do that others would be unable to under the law.

When you’re a kid, you think the President can do anything they want. Then you grow up.

I guess John Roberts has some growing up to do, because he still thinks that presidents can do anything they like. And according to leaked memos sourced by the New York Times, he pushed against even some of his fellow conservatives on the Court to rush the verdict in Donald Trump’s immunity trial.

More importantly, he told them to rule in Trump’s favor.

It’s important to remember that the reason this even came before the Supreme Court is because Trump himself asserted that he was immune from any consequences for the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Numerous congressmembers and police officers sought damages, and all lower courts ruled in their favor.

Again, Trump at no point argued that he did nothing wrong. He simply argued that he was allowed to do the things he did. And after Roberts’ prompting, that’s exactly how the SCOTUS found in the end.

The Times reported that Roberts wrote a memo to his fellow justices back in February of last year about the criminal charges against Trump in that case. At this point, there was nothing before the Supreme Court on the matter.

But Roberts complained to them about lower court rulings allowing the case to even go forward. In fact, prior to the Supreme Court even taking up the case, Roberts was arguing that Trump was immune.

He essentially told the justices that they should take up the case before anyone even suggested it, and that they should provide Trump more protection from prosecution.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” he said to them in the private memo.

Even some of the republican justices on the court wanted to delay the case until after the election, so that they wouldn’t be seen as trying to swing things in Trump’s favor — but Roberts was having none of that.

Ultimately, it was a massive win for Donald Trump.

Of course, following the decision, Jack Smith issued superseding indictments against the former president, in front of a brand new grand jury that Trump couldn’t later claim were “tainted” by previous hearings that went outside the structure of the Court’s ruling in his favor.

For example, the Court ruled that Trump was immune from consequences for “official acts,” or things he did or decided in his capacity as president. The Special Counsel then re-worded the indictments to refer to Trump as a candidate for the 2020 election, who also happened to be the incumbent.

After all, the reason Trump was on trial in the first place was because he was accused of trying to overturn the results of the election. And unless Smith made it clear that he was doing so in order to better his chances at winning, rather than to (as president) correct some harm that had been done, Trump would be innocent of all crimes, if Roberts had his way.

In another case regarding Trump, Roberts once again intervened. In the case of individual states’ ability to bar a candidate from their state ballots for violating the insurrectionist clause (preventing anyone who’d been involved in an insurrection from ever holding office), Roberts told his colleagues — who were basically acting as his employees by this point — that he wanted the eventual opinions unanimous and unsigned.

Every male justice on the Court argued that Congress should have to approve the insurrectionist ban (that’s in the constitution), while every female on the Court, including Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, argued that this was overreach.

Roberts sided with the men, and eventually wrote that opinion too. It was unsigned.

In a third case regarding obstruction of justice charges against the insurrectionists who took part in the Capitol attack, the opinion writing was initially assigned to Justice Samuel Alito.

Then, after it was found that Alito’s wife had, at the time of the attack, flown the same upside-down American flag outside their home that the attackers were flying to indicate the “extreme distress” that America was in if Trump didn’t win, Roberts took over and wrote the opinion himself.

It’s terrifying to think of how much power has been consolidated in the hands of 9 unelected officials. It’s even scarier to think that one man could be their boss for the next 15-20 years.