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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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I just hope that by tossing the Republicans this bone, that they will end up not ruling that the president has absolute immunity in the next case.
Losing this one is not a big deal, because he only would have been removed from states that he was almost certain to lose anyway. Republicans love their insurrectionists, after all.
I think with a ruling like this where the intent was so crystal clear that it couldn't have possibly been misinterpreted by anybody yet the ruling was entirely backwards, that now is a good time for a constitutional convention and a total rewrite of the constitution. If it's not clear, let's make it clear.
I have a very strong feeling that they're going to find that the President has immunity for his official acts. That's the only question before the court in that case. However, what he was accused of doing clearly was not an official act as President but an act as a candidate in his capacity as a private citizen.
So it'll get kicked down to the district court and they'll decide that, and it will proceed. The terrible part is the timing which is partly on the Supreme Court but also largely on Merrick Garland for slow rolling everything for the first two years of the Biden administration.
That's not really the argument that the Trump legal team is making, though. They are arguing that the President of the United States has absolute immunity from civil or criminal prosecution. Absolute being the key word here. According to Trump's lawyers and Trump himself, no president would be able to do the job if they weren't allowed to bend or break the law with impunity because they'd be so tied down in the courts that they would never get anything done.
Setting aside how ridiculous that assertion is, the historical basis for presidential immunity has always been that the President does have civil immunity, although that too has some limitations (The E. Jean Carroll case, for instance) but we have never had a situation quite like the one we are in right now where the president is accused of committing felonies while in office. Theoretically, we would have tested this with Nixon, but Ford pardoned him and that was that.
I do think that they will not find that his argument has any merit, but the slow-boating and stalling on behalf of Trump and his cronies is frustrating to watch. It's almost like they want this court stuff to all coincide with the election so that they can claim they are being politically persecuted. I mean, they already are, but people are going to be sick of hearing about it by November and might be persuaded that Trump is the victim just by the inconvenient timing of the trial dates.
This is a very real possibility. There's a lot of politicking that goes on in SCOTUS, and I've heard from other lawyers that they cut deals amongst themselves all the time ("I'll go with you on this, if you go with me on the other").
They do it less, due to having a conservative majority, but they don't all always agree on everything in spite of that power imbalance.
Fat chance. The way they're handling the immunity case almost certainly puts the trial in or after November. They've completely stopped all pre-trial movement while they take at least 3 months to return a decision on immunity.
So the immunity decision is scheduled for the end of April, and assuming the verdict is that Trump does not have immunity from prosecution, the trial should resume in June and be wrapping up by October. Very close to the election to be receiving potentially the worst news of Trump's life and political career, but hopefully we get the decision before mail-in ballots are cast so that the American people can have the opportunity to make an informed decision.
Oh no. Arguments are scheduled for April. These arguments were just to see if the criminal trial would be stopped. Trump had appealed to stop the trial and the government asked the court to let the trial go forward or treat the appeal as a full thing that requires all the normal stuff. SCOTUS chose that last option.
So now we get arguments again in late April. Then we get a decision any time after that. Then they have at most 30 days to physically deliver the decision to the lower court. Who would then have to issue their own decision. (But that court isn't playing for time so probably within 24 hours.) At that rate the trial can't even resume pre-trial stuff until late May thru late June.
Then the trial judge said pre-trial stuff should take about 80 days. So we aren't getting in front of a jury until after early voting starts. And if SCOTUS drags things out long enough, maybe not even before November.
Ah heck, I thought it was still on pace for earlier than that. Drat.
Yeah and we haven't even gotten to the rest of the pre-trial delay tactics yet.