The majority’s decision, and Barrett’s concurrence, reads like a transcript of evidentiary hearings that happened throughout Trump’s New York trial. … The trial court is going to be hard-pressed to say that any possible error here was harmless; SCOTUS went out of its way to say that admitting basically any such evidence is prejudicial.
… the Court’s opinion takes a wide view of what counts as “official acts.” Second, the Opinion holds that the parsing of official from unofficial acts is something that has to happen before trial; we can’t rely on traditional rules of evidence to decide these issues in a piecemeal fashion during trial itself.* SCOTUS is pretty strident here…
There’s no way that the NY trial court correctly analyzed evidence drawn from Trump’s time in office—how could it, when the rule didn’t exist then? But still, it seems impossible to say ex ante that all of the evidence let in was merely private. And, if anything let in was plausibly a public act, then SCOTUS’s opinion seems to say that a mistrial would be required.
Bolding added.
July 1st, 2024. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day; the US democratic experiment wasn’t ended in a day. But yesterday certainly makes the timeline.
There’s your answer. He’ll have the SS agents rotate at the task of picking up roadside trash while he snoozes in a lawn chair that one of them carries around for him.
Trump is going to interpret this to mean past, present and future acts. If he had a shred of empathy he’d extend it to his kids too. But for now, Trump is going to take it as gospel truth that his absolute immunity covers everything. [Gary Oldman]EVERYTHING[/Gary Oldman].
Did Trump get a bad grade back in grade school? Overturned by his absolute immunity.
Did Trump use the n-word on the set of The Apprentice? This was an official act of the POTUS.
Did Trump go to Epstein Island and avail himself of every teenager there every time he visited? Well this is perhaps the most official of all official acts and since it’s all lies the Democrats made up to smear him, he’s going to declare it illegal for anyone to talk about it.
It does not make sense, it does not follow logic, it does not apply to anyone else. Just Trump, who is now God and is a very jealous God indeed.
As long as he’s sentenced first, and has to wait in prison while his appeals work their way through the system, like any other felon, and as long as the appeals are as slow as the original trial.
The effort to set aside the conviction might be a long shot. The Manhattan case centers on acts Mr. Trump took as a candidate, not a president.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office responded on Tuesday arguing that Trump’s arguments to do so are “without merit” – but said that prosecutors do not oppose the former president’s request to push back the July 11 sentencing date by two weeks, requesting a final deadline of July 24 to file all legal arguments in the case.
But is this just a baseless, desperate attempt from Trump to quash the Republican presidential candiate’s conviction in the 11th hour, or might the defense have a case?
Duncan Levin, a criminal defense attorney and former senior official at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, told The Independent that the Supreme Court’s ruling is “unlikely to change anything at all”.
“There’s really no credible argument that can be made that covering up the payment of hush money to a porn star is part of the core constitutional duties of the President of the United States,” Levin said.
“They’re doing everything they can to try to delay things and delay the sentencing… if you don’t ask for something, you don’t get it,” he added.
I like to think this delay is a bit of malicious compliance on Merchan’s part.
"Oh, you want to delay sentencing while we entertain your utterly ridiculous claim of official immunity? Sure, I have no problem letting your 2-month sentence begin in the final 2 months of your campaign, since that’s what you seem to be asking for.
I find it rather dispiriting that the Supreme Court took as long as possible to release their decision, that the months of pre-trail preparation for Trump’s trial (the Jack Smith case) has been put on hold while we waited for the Court, and yet Trump’s attorneys were able to file this motion in just one day.
Whatever Merchan decides, I expect it to be appealed to the Supreme Court. If we’re lucky, they’ll reach a decision before July of next year, but I wouldn’t count on it.