Thread by @davidfrum

With due respect to the astute @neal_katyal : Trump has lived all his life one jump ahead of the law. He's still one jump ahead of the law. His goal was to ensure the public voted without seeing his financial records. He has succeeded in that goal, for 2020 as well as 2016.

@neal_katyal Yes, the cops may catch up to Trump later. But Trump has never worried about the long term. Every day he stiffs his creditors is a win to him. He stiffed them again today.

@neal_katyal The deeper concern: the promise of the American system is that we have safeguards *between* elections. The story of the Trump years is that those institutions mostly failed to check Trump and enforce norms. That failure now including the courts.

@neal_katyal I expect Trump to lose in November because of his own massive incompetence. But had he been a little luckier with the virus - or had he listened to slightly better advice - he might well have gotten away with it, despite Congress, despite "adults in the room," despite the courts.

@neal_katyal The lawyers are happy today because the Court reaffirmed that the president is theoretically subject to law. The president cannot invent new legal immunities for himself. Future presidents are on notice.

But future presidents are not the immediate problem!

@neal_katyal Future presidents won't invent crazy immunities for the same reason that past presidents did not invent crazy immunities: they did not have lifelong records of financial fraud to conceal. That's only Trump.

Today Trump got the OK to conceal, not forever, but just long enough

@neal_katyal In the long run, very probably, Trump risks indictment and worse after 2021. By then, he'll almost certainly be an ex-president anyway.

Roberts & Co. have no interest in protecting him forever. But they have protected him long enough for GOP purposes in 2020.