Not saying you are wrong, or that we radically disagree, but I posted right after reading this:
So there are a bunch of further possibilities for delay of the trial discussed in this thread, as with others. Some of them may be low probability (illness of key actor; hung jury requires second trial), but when you add together all the low to moderate probability opportunities to push things past November 5, it still looks to me a Learned Hand situation.
It would cause delays in the other cases.
The J6 appellate court ruling explicitly stated it only applied to that specific fact scenario before them. So it would not apply to the Florida document case and the immunity claim there.
The good thing about the SC taking this, after Trump filed the different immunity claim in Florida, and given the broad nature in which the SC will review the J6 immunity doctrine, should cover everything/all Trump cases.
Trump will still file an immunity motion in his other cases, but the SC likely won’t agree to hear them anymore since their J6 ruling should cover many scenarios.
It is a well known statement but not a well understood statement by those who most often cite it. Accepting a pardon doesn’t actually mean that you are agreeing that you are guilty. However what it does do is make it so that you can no longer prove your innocence in a court of law and are no longer covered by the 5th amendment with regard to not testifying about offenses you were pardoned for. So there are reasons why a defendant might choose to not accept a pardon.
ETA: And apparently, relatively recently the courts have gone further and decided that one can actually continue appealing their conviction in court even if they have been pardoned.
True, but what would have been his motivation to do so?
If the Supreme Court only wanted to delay as long as possible, why wouldn’t they send it back to the appellate court for a full court opinion, knowing that if the full court decides the same way, it will still get kicked back to them?
Why, so they can write yet another opinion absolutely eviscerating the notion that the Supreme Court needs to take it up at all?
Why should the Supreme Court treat this any differently than any other criminal? If they go fast, it look political. If they go slow, it looks political.
The schedule is slightly faster than the normal case.
They don’t want to delay it as long as possible. But they may prefer that the courts aren’t in the position of signaling how voters should cast their ballots.
Some posters here seem certain that the end-of-trial signal would be to vote against Trump (conviction). But jury trials, especially of politicians, are unpredictable. An October verdict could be acquittal or mistrial, followed by a Republican sweep. Supreme Court Democrats, and other privately Trump-skeptical justices, may be less than optimistic as to how trials will play out.
The SCOTUS dynamics are, so far, a New York Times/Washington Post reporting failure. John Roberts has apparently cowed potential anonymous sources needed to tell us the real reasons for seeming delay. Five or ten years from now, it will all come out in published books on the 2024 election. I expect they will be released by big New York publishers. But if the worst comes true, and Trump-family-led fascism triumphs, I’ll read them in samizdat.
The delay could backfire on Trump. Obviously most people participating in the P&E forum are pretty tuned into politics, but most people aren’t. And they won’t be until close to the election. As an example, the late breaking news regarding Hillary’s emails probably caused some damage to her electoral chances. Assuming SCOTUS finds Trump not immune, which seems likely, then that might be in the news cycle at a time that might be inconvenient for Trump. All the people not tuned into politics may be suddenly reminded that Trump might be (is) a criminal for which he has no immunity. Just the phrase “Trump does not have immunity for any criminal acts committed while president” is powerful to somebody that doesn’t really keep up with the whole politics thing.
That’s standard. Contemporary leaks from the Court are extremely rare; the Dobbs episode was a massive outlier.
If you mean it cost her the election, then I agree with this statement.
But, yes, an 111th-hour decision against Trump certainly had the potential to sway some voters.
I’m sorry, you’re talking about standards that were applied in the past, to other people. Such things don’t apply to Trump. No matter how often anyone says this, the MAGAts will just insist that it’s all five-dimensional checkers, and Trump has double-reversed it so that the system is the one who is admitting guilt.
I used to follow SCOTUS quite closely on several issues, but stopped doing so a decade or 2 ago. As you and others have observed, SCOTUS is extremely opaque in many respects, and it is very hard to clearly ascertain why they take certain action, or to predict what they may do.
My very rough assessment is that SCOTUS accepts cert if either:
-they feel their input is NEEDED, such as to resolve a split among the circuits; or
-they WANT to express an opinion and - essentially - legislate from the bench.
There have been countless issues in which I thought, “Gosh, if only SCOTUS would step in and clarify this mess.” Only to have them either deny cert or decide based on some BS technicality.
And they can act as quickly or as slowly as they wish.
This may reflect my liberal bias, but my perception is that over the past couple of decades, SOCTUS has been more willing to interject in matters where it is not strictly necessary, in order to express their point of view. To some extent, that was influenced by the lack of Congress to meaningfully legislate WRT many hot issues.
I certainly see no reason SCOTUS NEEDED to accept this action at this time. Instead, the impression I get is, “Oooh! This is a big juicy issue. We WANT to have a say in things.”
Now, whether they want to help Trump or not, we will not fully know until we see a decision. We don’t know which >3 voted for cert and why.
That is my impression as well but of course I’m just a non lawyer who avidly follows these things.
Yeah, its certainly true that there’s a real possibility (given the timeline of the appeal and the discovery, etc.) that voters will go to the polls literally listening to (like it will be on pretty much every radio station, even the conservative talk radio stations*) the final stages of a trial (maybe even the actual closing statements) where one of the candidates they are voting for is on trial for trying to overturn the results of the last general election. Which in any sane universe would result in a landslide victory for whomever candidate wasn’t currently on trial for staging a coup to be dictator But I think we’ve established out current political universe is not a sane one.
The only thing that would be more worse than that for Trump? Voters going to the polls as one of the candidate starts his decades long prison sentence for trying to overturn the last general election.
* - I think? I mean even fox news et al covered the civil verdicts against him live and didn’t just pretend they weren’t happening, right?
IANAL, but this wording by the Supreme Court bothers me:
whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office
It seems they could have said “immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts.” I would think this would mean that if a President was charged, a strong defense would be that his actions were officially part of his role as POTUS. This would I guess put the Judicial Branch in the position of determining what constitutionally the role of POTUS is. I think this is well within their purview as part of “checks and balances.”
But instead they worded it to say that the conduct must only be “alleged to involve official acts”. Doesn’t this mean that the defense need only say that the action involved official acts, and provide only the flimsiest of justification – or no justification at all – and the case would have to be dropped? Isn’t this in effect giving POTUS blanket immunity?
Again, IANAL, but some of you are. Am I reading too much into this phrasing?
You’re certainly on to something with how the question is phrased. We won’t know the answer until they rule.
However, alleged in this context means alleged by the prosecutor (the indictment). How it generally works is the prosecutor will file their indictment that will state how the prosecutor thinks (alleges) the defendant broke the law.
Then, the Defendant can immediately file a motion to dismiss the case, and basically say, based on those facts in the indictment, I’m immune from prosecution, it’s past the statute of limitations, or whatever other reason. The key is the Judge can only look to the alleged facts in the indictment to determine what happened. The defense cannot offer any new facts. very generally speaking.
In this case, the indictment is thorough and the facts are well laid out to allege the defendant committed the crimes.
Later, once more facts are proven and were not just relying on the alleged facts in the indictment, say after the trial but before it goes to the jury, the defense can ask for a motion for directed verdict and use those new facts (actual evidence) to say the case should be dropped, etc.
That’s how I take the word alleged to mean in the SC question. I don’t think it’s a big deal and it’s normal to use that word at this stage of a case.
The rest of your post, about what constitutes an official act is a good question. Some we know for sure are official acts since they are spelled out in the constitution (treaties, sign bills, commander in chief during war, etc), some we think we know (?) and some we know are definitely not (?). There is an intuitive sense of what it is, but I don’t know so I put a ? and I think it’s what the SC wants to find out.
There is some form of immunity for the President from criminal prosecution - everyone agrees to that (at least Trump and DOJ do). But disagree to what extent, how far reaching it is.
Finally, I’m confused by limiting only to official acts because I’m thinking the indictment tried very hard to lay out everything as not being an official act - it was personal/election related type acts/done in concert with civilians, etc.
I do a kata-based martial art, and there’s one kata that’s pretty much just a straight-up murder. There’s an (unofficial) kiai you can use during this kata that is basically Japanese for “I’m doing this under official orders!”, so that everyone else knows you’re not just randomly killing the guy.
I can imagine something like that evolving for Trump. Every time he says or does anything, he prefaces it with, “This is an Official Action of Me, president Trump!”
Hasn’t it occurred to the Pubs that if the SC says a President is immune from prosecution for pretty much everything, up to and including attempting to overturn the results of an election (the result Trump is surely hoping for), then they’ve just empowered Biden to do a rerun of 2020. Dark Brandon could refuse to accept the results of the election, direct Kamala to discount suspicious electoral votes and remain in power indefinitely while it’s all sorted out. Surely that’s not what the R’s are hoping for. I mean, even this Supreme Court is unlikely to say “A Republican is immune from prosecution and can do whatever he likes but a Democrat is guilty until proven innocent and any elections where a Democrat wins are automatically fraudulent.” So any such ruling would apply to the sitting president as well as the former crook-in-chief.
Yeah, but I believe this MAGA court is aware that Democrats would never do that, and that Republicans will.