(And now that Judge Chutkan moved the March date off the calendar.)
Sure, but it looks a little suspicious since they released the ruling right AFTER Judge Chutkan moved the trial date off her calendar. We can't legitimately find him immune from prosecution - that would be unthinkable - but we'll help him as best we can by delaying that ruling until it's too late to keep the current trial date.
Well, that'll be the option they choose then.
Very speculative, indeed. We have no way of knowing how long SCOTUS might take to even tell us whether they'll take up the case or not.
We'll see.
And how long do they have to make that decision?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Fine. But this is Leonard Leo's (and Trump's) Supreme Court.The opinion cataloged the dangerous consequences of granting such sweeping impunity to the most powerful official in the country. “At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches,” the court wrote. “Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”
And the opinion rejected Trump‘s absurd impeachment conviction precondition out of hand — holding, as we have explained before, that the “interpretation runs counter to the text, structure and purpose of the Impeachment Judgment Clause.”
[...]
The D.C. Circuit ruled, in effect, that the stay of lower court proceedings will be lifted in six days. Trump may ask the full circuit to overturn the panel’s ruling, known as en banc review. But the ruling is sound, the vast majority of judges on the full circuit are unsympathetic to Trump, and we expect they will turn him aside in a matter of weeks.
[...]
Moreover, the D.C. Circuit’s opinion even addressed the potentially thorny question of appellate jurisdiction. The court clarified the arguably murky state of the law in this area. This was a wise choice, and will present the Supreme Court with a straightforward legal issue to analyze.
[...]
Some may assume the [Supreme] court will necessarily take up Trump’s appeal, given the magnitude of the legal issue involved. If there were any serious arguments in favor of granting the sweeping immunity Trump seeks, that would be a fair assumption. Where there is a genuine controversy — especially on a question as consequential as this one — the court has a duty to set the law.
But that is not the case here.
[...]
The ruling [...] leaves no controversy for the Supreme Court to resolve. For that reason alone, it should rebuff the case.
MSNBC
I still wouldn't make any bets.The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to hear Trump and his allies’ assaults on democracy and the rule of law. The justices spurned the legal challenges trying to overturn the 2020 election results, including Texas’ lawsuit challenging the Pennsylvania vote, among others. The court chose not to review the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Trump v. Thompson, which denied Trump’s attempt to prevent the Jan. 6 committee from accessing his documents. And most recently, the justices refused to review the 11th Circuit’s ruling overturning the district court’s baseless special master order in the Justice Department’s classified documents prosecution.
In each of these cases, the court found that the answer to the legal challenge Trump presented was so obvious, it did not need to intervene. The same is true in this case.
Beyond the lack of legal justification for granting review, denying review would be strategically wise: it would allow the justices to dodge another political landmine. The court, battered by controversial decisions and ethics scandals, is already in the middle of a politically explosive term, facing issues ranging from Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment to the scope of the administrative state. Regardless of how the court comes down in those cases, blowback is almost inevitable.
Even if the court agrees to hear Trump’s appeal, it should do so on an expedited basis — and only to reject Trump’s immunity claim once and for all. The court has already granted a quick pace in the Colorado 14th Amendment case; and perhaps the most similar case to this one, U.S. v. Nixon, took two months to resolve (from when the court granted review to when it released its decision). As we have written before, even if the Supreme Court decides to hear the appeal on an expedited basis, the trial can begin at some point over the summer (assuming the court rejects immunity). And if the Supreme Court rejects the appeal altogether, that could come as early as June.
UPDATE 12:06 pm:
UPDATE 04:30 pm:
UPDATE 02/07/2024:
[The decision] has several “even ifs”, including:
EVEN IF a president couldn’t be prosecuted for official acts, oversight of the counting of votes is NOT an official act
EVEN IF an impeachment precluded a president from being prosecuted under double jeopardy, Jack Smith did NOT charge trump with what the impeachment charged him with (inciting an insurrection)
EVEN IF trump’s super-wrong interpretation of Marbury were true, your separation of powers argument is moot because you admitted a president can be prosecuted.
EVEN IF trump was somehow immune from some crimes, he's definitely NOT immune from this one - which deprived citizens of the right to vote and have their votes counted.
It also mentions "office" or "officer" 61 times, which will come in handy on Thursday when the Supreme Court hears arguments on Section 3 of the 14th amendment - where trump is expected to argue that the president is not an "officer" of the United States.
[...]
It concludes that trump gets Marbury v Madison wrong, and that instead of granting him immunity, it actually says he doesn’t have immunity.
[...]
And lastly, it has a mandate effective MONDAY 2/12, which means trump has until then to appeal to SCOTUS or for an en banc re-hearing, and not the usual 45 days.
Mueller, She Wrote
That's what they SHOULD do, but I think we can be pretty sure they won't.
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