So what happens next?
Let’s assume that this issue dies fairly quickly…say by mid-March the supreme court has issued its decision, and this question of immunity is dead.
What other options does Trump have to delay the trial? He still needs to buy about 6 months of time, to make the trial disappear entirely.
How can he do it? (maybe fire his lawyers? what else?)
This is my expectation, as I mentioned in the Jack SMith/Jan. 6 thread. I’m sorry to disagree with your earlier prediction they would deny cert (and desperately hope you are right), but I strongly think they are going to take it for the reasons you mention here. They will want a definitive ruling from the highest court of the land on this. Even if they expedite, t’s going to be another delay, IMO.
I was thinking after the Trump team puts in a brief… I hope the reply from the SC is quickly done and very short.
I keep wondering if there’s a tipping point for MAGA. At what point are they going to take a good hard look at why Trump keeps losing court cases?
According to the experienced political strategists on Breitbart, today was a HUGE victory for Trump because it means he can prosecute Obama and Biden when he gets back into office.
Somehow I think it’s going to take a miracle to get through to these people.
I am no court watching expert but I disagree.
I think the conservatives will want to help Trump (more broadly, conservatives). It is almost impossible to see them say the president is immune but they will delay the whole thing as long as possible making it all more fraught as the election nears. Which, in their view, will get out the conservative vote.
I seriously doubt the likes of Thomas gives a shit about putting his imprimatur on anything. He wants money in his bank account. Fuck the rest of it.
Just out of curiosity, what are some RW boards that I could check out? If we aren’t supposed to show them here, a PM would be fine.
This site gives a pretty good overview of the prospective timetable:
Tl;dr version:
Our analysis suggests that a trial, which is anticipated to last between 8 and 12 weeks, may conclude in late August or early September if the Supreme Court denies Trump’s eventual cert petition or in mid to late October if the Supreme Court grants Trump’s cert petition.
Of course IANAL. What do the legal minds of the dope think of that timeline?
But doesn’t denying cert effectively place their imprimatur upon the D.C. Court’s decision? I realize SCOTUS can be inscrutable in denying cert—who can tell why?—but ISTM in this instance, with a case of this significance, it’s impossible to read their denial as anything other than “we agree that the D.C. Circuit Court got it exactly right.”
I may be just trying to talk myself into the outcome I’d desperately prefer. And certainly I’m not dismissing expert opinions to the contrary. But I really don’t see why this isn’t the right move for SCOTUS, from every angle.
I think no matter what happens, after the inevitable Trump team delays, the MAGAts will turn around and blame Biden personally for the trial being delayed.
Oh, wow. This was one of the first things my mother said about the decision. Now they can prosecute Bush, Obama, and Biden. For what? I don’t know.
Then how do you explain stuff like this?
Pay especial attention to the dates. Trump made his request on October 4th. The SCOTUS ruled on October 13th.
They can move fast when they want. And Thomas did not formally disagree with the decision.
The ruling came in an unsigned one-sentence order
Hardly the court or Thomas getting in to it. If he saw all the other justices were going one way there was no profit for him to mess with it. It was a one sentence, unsigned decision.
Easy: He wasn’t being paid to help Trump, therefore he didn’t.
I am not a legal mind, but thanks for posting that, it’s very comprehensive. If it’s accurate, it makes me feel a lot better about this, they think even on the slowest likely schedule with them hearing the appeal that an approx 3-month trial would start around end July ending right around election day.
I am talking from a place of pure speculation, but I do think there is a perception difference in actually ruling in their own language vs. just denying cert. Even if they know they are going to rule 9-0, I think they’ll want to take the time to send that signal. I hope I am wrong.
That’s a really interesting timeline. Thanks for sharing it.
What it does make me wonder is if the lengthy delay by the DC Circuit Court in issuing its ruling was in some part due to playing chicken with the SCOTUS. Obviously I have no proof of any kind, but maybe – in addition to wanting to be sure their ruling was ironclad, of course – they were pushing the clock to force SCOTUS to deny cert if they, SCOTUS, want the trial to take place before the election.
That’s all I’ve got. What the SCOTUS chooses to do is anyone’s guess. How far do they want to lead with their chins? The outcome, whether they take it up or not, is really not in dispute.
The timeline is still helpful.
As the justice who oversees the Eleventh Circuit, Thomas certainly got into it, signed or unsigned.
Thanks for posting that. They had a similar estimated timeline prior to this ruling that I had been looking at - never occurred to me they would just update it. With that said, the prior one was really good at anticipating what actually occurred so it didn’t change much.
Maybe I missed it, but I read in the NYT today that the trial Judge said whatever amount of time that is “paused” by a this appeal/stay, she would give back to the Defense. So, if we pause for 120 days (from Dec until April) to sort this out, there would be no trial for at least 120 days when it gets back to the trial court; or 60 days, or whatever it turns out to be. As far as I can tell, the analysis in your link keeps saying whenever it gets back to trial court there will be “3 months” until trial - which makes sense but doesn’t follow the day for day suggestion. It’s possible I’m misunderstanding this. Here’s the NYT article and language:
Whether or not the underlying case remains frozen in place will have a direct effect on when it will go to trial. Just last week, Judge Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in Federal District Court in Washington, scrapped her initial trial date of March 4, bowing to the reality that time had run out to get the proceeding underway by then.
In recent court papers, Judge Chutkan said that, in the interest of fairness, she did not want Mr. Trump and his lawyers to be penalized by the pause in the case. She suggested that for every day of trial preparation they lost to the freeze, she would push the trial back by an equal number of days.
That is factored into the timeline:
Upon denial of cert, the case would then return immediately to the district court, which would restart pretrial proceedings. With another three months of those pretrial proceedings to go, trial would begin approximately June 1 . (It is likely that Judge Chutkan will use the same period of time, though she may choose a shorter schedule this second time around.) A three month trial would then conclude around Sept. 1 .
Even though they are the ones who caused this pause in the first place. Okay then. Chutkan might as well just rule that any delays are just fine, and also she’d like the payment to be in ten’s and twenty’s.