As Donald Trump’s first criminal trial in New York neared its end, attentive observers sensed the ex-president was likely to found guilty.

While Prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s team presented a clear, tight, well-supported case, the ex-president’s attorneys were all over the map. Whether that was due to poor lawyering or their client’s insistence on denying everything – even facts most lawyers would stipulate – they signally failed to give jurors anything to latch onto.

The unanimous verdict from a jury including two lawyers should have provided food for thought, especially for office-holders pronouncing on the result.

Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins was among those who, by their own admission, weren’t paying close attention to the trial. She released her statement hours after the rest of the Maine delegation, and it was a doozy.

Rather than urging respect for the legal process and pointing out potential defects in the prosecution that might be relevant on appeal – a defensible position – she slammed Bragg for bringing the charges in the first place.

She claimed – without evidence – that Bragg “brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct.”

Since Trump was convicted of “criminal conduct,” Collins claims she knows more about the case than the 12 jurors who decided it – a stunning admission from a Republican senator who voted to convict Trump after impeachment on Jan. 6 charges.

Now, Collins thinks it’s too much trouble to uphold the law against a president with three more criminal indictments outstanding.

Her stance on impeachment, however, highlights another conspicuous failure, despite wall-to-wall reporting. There’s now no reason why the Supreme Court shouldn’t swiftly decide about Trump’s claimed immunity concerning the very same Jan. 6 events.

Trump was indicted nearly a year ago on charges he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election after voters chose Joe Biden.

Prosecutor Jack Smith presented abundant evidence showing Trump was de facto leader of the hundreds who invaded the Capitol on that dark day, attempting to halt the counting of electoral votes. Many are already in prison for their actions.

Yet, there seems to be a media consensus that the Supreme Court will delay proceedings until after the election despite a definitive decision by the D.C. Court of Appeals demolishing all of Trump’s claims to “absolute immunity.”

If a president is entitled to commit crimes to stay in office rather than hand over the presidency to a legally elected successor, then the very basis of our constitutional order is overthrown, let alone the established meaning of the Constitution itself.

Yet that is exactly what the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is supposedly contemplating.

The spectacle several justices have created is appalling. Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are the longest-serving, though lengthy experience seems only to have hardened them.

Thomas and Alito have serious ethical charges against them they ignore or deny, while Roberts effectively lost control of the six-member Republican super-majority when he failed to avert the disastrous Dobbs decision, which instantly eliminated all protections for abortion rights.

As it stands, Roberts’ legacy of divisiveness and disunion is on track to match that of Chief Justice Roger Taney, who in the 1857 Dred Scott decision said the Constitution provided black men “no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and thus helped bring on the Civil War.

It’s not too late to salvage the situation. At oral argument in April, several justices – especially Alito, far more interested in some hypothetical future president than the ex-president being charged – found reasons for more delays, but conspicuously not Roberts.

Alito and Thomas may be beyond reason, but the three younger justices pushed onto the court by Trump with the eager assistance of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could possibly be persuaded.

No man, no defendant, and no ex-president is above the law. Trump’s immunity claims have no real basis in law, tradition or the Constitution, and it shouldn’t be beyond Roberts’ powers to insist the court affirm that.

The federal classified documents case in Florida is being nakedly delayed by the trial judge, Aileen Cannon, but was always a sideshow to Jan. 6. The Georgia state case involves multiple co-defendants and a sprawling indictment that was never going to be ready for trial quickly.

The Jan. 6 charges, though, are central to determining whether Donald Trump is fit to hold office, and there’s no reason on earth the trial can’t proceed well before November.

For the good of the nation, the chief justice has one month to get this right. The saying is just: Those who sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter since 1984. He is the author of four books, most recently a biography of U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, and welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.