AI
Thursday, February 29, 2024 12:42:28 PM
In Taking Up Trump’s Immunity Claim, Supreme Court Bolstered His Delay Strategy
By scheduling a hearing for late April on the former president’s assertion that he cannot be prosecuted for his actions in office, the justices increased the chances that he will not face trial by Election Day.
With each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Donald J. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one. Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
By Alan Feuer
Feb. 28, 2024
The Supreme Court that former President Donald J. Trump helped to shape tossed him a legal lifeline on Wednesday night, making a choice that substantially aided his efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.
It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October.
But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.
If Mr. Trump is successful in delaying the trial until after Election Day and he wins, he could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether. Moreover, Justice Department policy precludes prosecuting a sitting president, meaning that, once sworn in, he could likely have any federal trial he is facing postponed until after he left office.
-----
Takeaways From Trump’s Indictment in the 2020 Election Inquiry
Card [5] of 5
Four charges for the former president. Former President Donald Trump was charged with four counts in connection with his widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington. Here are some key takeaways:
The indictment portrayed an attack on American democracy. Smith framed his case against Trump as one that cuts to a key function of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. By underscoring this theme, Smith cast his effort as an effort not just to hold Trump accountable but also to defend the very core of democracy.
Trump was placed at the center of the conspiracy charges. Smith put Trump at the heart of three conspiracies that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to obstruct Congress’s role in ratifying the Electoral College outcome. The special counsel argued that Trump knew that his claims about a stolen election were false, a point that, if proved, could be important to convincing a jury to convict him.
Trump didn’t do it alone. The indictment lists six co-conspirators ..
[Among those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College; Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by President Biden. ]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/us/politics/trump-indictment-election-co-conspirators.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-capitol-mob&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_levelup_swipe_recirc ..
without naming or indicting them. Based on the descriptions provided, they match the profiles of Trump lawyers and advisers who were willing to argue increasingly outlandish conspiracy and legal theories to keep him in power. It’s unclear whether these co-conspirators will be indicted.
Trump’s political power remains strong. Trump may be on trial in 2024 in three or four separate criminal cases, but so far the indictments appear not to have affected his standing with Republican voters. By a large margin, he remains his party’s front-runner in the presidential primaries.
-----
On its surface, the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday night was a purely logistical decision. The justices decided to keep preparations for the trial on hold while they review a lower court’s rejection of the immunity defense. They set a hearing on the issue for the end of April.
As a practical matter, however, the court’s decision slow-walked the process of resolving the immunity debate, validating what had seemed like a last-ditch move by Mr. Trump’s legal team to find a way to keep pushing back a trial date until the campaign was over.
A spokesman for Jack Smith, the special counsel who is handling the election case in Washington, declined to comment on the court’s decision. Within Mr. Trump’s camp, the court’s ruling was seen as a major victory, but not a decisive one.
A year ago, when Mr. Trump was charged criminally for the first time, in Manhattan, and then, over the course of the next five months, was indicted three more times — in Florida, Washington and Georgia — it seemed as if he would spend much of 2024 in front of a jury. Now, however, if events break his way, he could go to trial only once before the election in November.
In that case, a state judge in Manhattan [Justice Juan M. Merchan] set a start date of March 25 .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/nyregion/trump-manhattan-criminal-case.html .. for the former president’s trial on charges of arranging hush-money payments to a porn star in an effort to avert a scandal on the eve of the 2016 election.
And on Friday, a federal judge in Florida is set to hold a hearing to reset the clock on Mr. Trump’s other federal trial — the one in which he stands accused of mishandling dozens of classified documents after he left office. That trial was scheduled to start in May, but now may or may not take place before Election Day.
The Georgia case is also mired in pretrial clashes that have cast doubt on when, or even whether, it will proceed.
The election interference case in Washington was supposed to have been the first of Mr. Trump’s four criminal proceedings to go in front of a jury. Months ago, the judge overseeing it, Tanya S. Chutkan, picked a trial date of March 4.
But then Mr. Trump filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that he enjoyed complete immunity from the charges because they arose from acts he took as president. While the claim had no precedent and went against basic legal and constitutional principles, it had a powerful attraction to Mr. Trump’s lawyers: Once it was lodged, Judge Chutkan was required to put the underlying case on hold until the question of immunity was resolved.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Washington weighed in on the question, rejecting the immunity defense in a unanimous and scathing ruling that found that Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.
He then asked the Supreme Court to keep the trial proceedings on hold while the justices decided whether they wanted to weigh in on the issue, perhaps hoping less that the justices would agree with him on the merits of his claims than that they might take up the question and take their time in reaching a decision.
And that is precisely what the court did on Wednesday.
The question of when the trial will ultimately happen has been complicated by Judge Chutkan’s insistence that Mr. Trump not lose any time to prepare for the proceeding while the pause in the case remains in effect. She has suggested in court papers that, in the spirit of fairness, the former president should have an extra day to prepare for every one lost to the stay.
Judge Chutkan froze the election case on Dec. 13 . . https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/politics/trump-immunity-decision-election-case.html . That means, if she sticks to her decision, she owes Mr. Trump an additional 82 days of preparation time — equivalent to the period between Dec. 13 and the originally scheduled trial date of March 4. If the Supreme Court renders a ruling on the immunity decision in June and preparations for the trial start up again immediately, the extra 82 days could push a trial date into September.
At that point, the general election campaign would be in full swing — and there would be no guarantee that the trial could be completed by Election Day.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. More about Alan Feuer
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/us/politics/trumps-immunity-supreme-court-delay-strategy.html
By scheduling a hearing for late April on the former president’s assertion that he cannot be prosecuted for his actions in office, the justices increased the chances that he will not face trial by Election Day.
With each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Donald J. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one. Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
By Alan Feuer
Feb. 28, 2024
The Supreme Court that former President Donald J. Trump helped to shape tossed him a legal lifeline on Wednesday night, making a choice that substantially aided his efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.
It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October.
But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.
If Mr. Trump is successful in delaying the trial until after Election Day and he wins, he could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether. Moreover, Justice Department policy precludes prosecuting a sitting president, meaning that, once sworn in, he could likely have any federal trial he is facing postponed until after he left office.
-----
Takeaways From Trump’s Indictment in the 2020 Election Inquiry
Card [5] of 5
Four charges for the former president. Former President Donald Trump was charged with four counts in connection with his widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington. Here are some key takeaways:
The indictment portrayed an attack on American democracy. Smith framed his case against Trump as one that cuts to a key function of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. By underscoring this theme, Smith cast his effort as an effort not just to hold Trump accountable but also to defend the very core of democracy.
Trump was placed at the center of the conspiracy charges. Smith put Trump at the heart of three conspiracies that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to obstruct Congress’s role in ratifying the Electoral College outcome. The special counsel argued that Trump knew that his claims about a stolen election were false, a point that, if proved, could be important to convincing a jury to convict him.
Trump didn’t do it alone. The indictment lists six co-conspirators ..
[Among those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College; Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by President Biden. ]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/us/politics/trump-indictment-election-co-conspirators.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-capitol-mob&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_levelup_swipe_recirc ..
without naming or indicting them. Based on the descriptions provided, they match the profiles of Trump lawyers and advisers who were willing to argue increasingly outlandish conspiracy and legal theories to keep him in power. It’s unclear whether these co-conspirators will be indicted.
Trump’s political power remains strong. Trump may be on trial in 2024 in three or four separate criminal cases, but so far the indictments appear not to have affected his standing with Republican voters. By a large margin, he remains his party’s front-runner in the presidential primaries.
-----
On its surface, the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday night was a purely logistical decision. The justices decided to keep preparations for the trial on hold while they review a lower court’s rejection of the immunity defense. They set a hearing on the issue for the end of April.
As a practical matter, however, the court’s decision slow-walked the process of resolving the immunity debate, validating what had seemed like a last-ditch move by Mr. Trump’s legal team to find a way to keep pushing back a trial date until the campaign was over.
A spokesman for Jack Smith, the special counsel who is handling the election case in Washington, declined to comment on the court’s decision. Within Mr. Trump’s camp, the court’s ruling was seen as a major victory, but not a decisive one.
A year ago, when Mr. Trump was charged criminally for the first time, in Manhattan, and then, over the course of the next five months, was indicted three more times — in Florida, Washington and Georgia — it seemed as if he would spend much of 2024 in front of a jury. Now, however, if events break his way, he could go to trial only once before the election in November.
In that case, a state judge in Manhattan [Justice Juan M. Merchan] set a start date of March 25 .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/nyregion/trump-manhattan-criminal-case.html .. for the former president’s trial on charges of arranging hush-money payments to a porn star in an effort to avert a scandal on the eve of the 2016 election.
And on Friday, a federal judge in Florida is set to hold a hearing to reset the clock on Mr. Trump’s other federal trial — the one in which he stands accused of mishandling dozens of classified documents after he left office. That trial was scheduled to start in May, but now may or may not take place before Election Day.
The Georgia case is also mired in pretrial clashes that have cast doubt on when, or even whether, it will proceed.
The election interference case in Washington was supposed to have been the first of Mr. Trump’s four criminal proceedings to go in front of a jury. Months ago, the judge overseeing it, Tanya S. Chutkan, picked a trial date of March 4.
But then Mr. Trump filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that he enjoyed complete immunity from the charges because they arose from acts he took as president. While the claim had no precedent and went against basic legal and constitutional principles, it had a powerful attraction to Mr. Trump’s lawyers: Once it was lodged, Judge Chutkan was required to put the underlying case on hold until the question of immunity was resolved.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Washington weighed in on the question, rejecting the immunity defense in a unanimous and scathing ruling that found that Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.
He then asked the Supreme Court to keep the trial proceedings on hold while the justices decided whether they wanted to weigh in on the issue, perhaps hoping less that the justices would agree with him on the merits of his claims than that they might take up the question and take their time in reaching a decision.
And that is precisely what the court did on Wednesday.
The question of when the trial will ultimately happen has been complicated by Judge Chutkan’s insistence that Mr. Trump not lose any time to prepare for the proceeding while the pause in the case remains in effect. She has suggested in court papers that, in the spirit of fairness, the former president should have an extra day to prepare for every one lost to the stay.
Judge Chutkan froze the election case on Dec. 13 . . https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/politics/trump-immunity-decision-election-case.html . That means, if she sticks to her decision, she owes Mr. Trump an additional 82 days of preparation time — equivalent to the period between Dec. 13 and the originally scheduled trial date of March 4. If the Supreme Court renders a ruling on the immunity decision in June and preparations for the trial start up again immediately, the extra 82 days could push a trial date into September.
At that point, the general election campaign would be in full swing — and there would be no guarantee that the trial could be completed by Election Day.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. More about Alan Feuer
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/us/politics/trumps-immunity-supreme-court-delay-strategy.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Discover What Traders Are Watching
Explore small cap ideas before they hit the headlines.
