Trump 2.0 - Defying the courts

 

Cannon balls

Why?  She doesn't have anything to do with the January  6 case.

Both sad and disgusting.  This was Smith's case to try.

Nor will a lot of Americans.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01/12/2025:

Inch by inch

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:55 am:

Amen.

A Smith report?

I love Barb McQuade.  She's a very smart former federal attorney.  But is this actually an option now that Smith has asked to put everything on hold while Trump is president? I understand special counsels are required to submit a report if they decide not to prosecute, but I have doubts they're required to submit one if they are simply stashing their case until a later date.

Time will tell.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Chutkan moving on

Donald Trump didn’t want Judge Tanya Chutkan to publicly release the appendix Special Counsel Jack Smith attached to his motion arguing that all of the charges against Trump could move forward despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in the immunity appeal. The appendix contains the evidence that Smith argues is admissible to support the charges against Trump.

[...]

Judge Chutkan has a reputation for being efficient and no-nonsense. She lives up to it here.

[...]

Trump filed a request that she delay [the release] just “briefly” until November 14, which happens to fall conveniently after the election.

[...]

Trump asked the Judge to delay the release so he could release his own appendix. He claimed that was necessary because Jack Smith is "cherry-picking" the evidence, and even if he doesn’t intend to interfere with the election, that’s the effect. Judge Chutkan has repeatedly reminded Trump’s lawyers she’s running a courtroom, not an election.

[...]

Judge Chutkan’s response didn’t take long. She denied Trump’s request this [...] in a five-page order. The appendix will be unsealed [today], Friday.

[...]

Chutkan’s opinion is five devastating pages long. She makes a few key points that are worth noting.

[...]

She writes, “it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be—election interference. The court will therefore continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making, rather than incorporating them as Defendant requests.

[...]

Chutkan lays out the six factors courts have used to perform this balancing test before, noting that Trump doesn’t “engage” with any of them. Instead, she writes, Trump offered “other interests” as justification for keeping the appendix under seal. She concludes none of them are persuasive.

  Joyce Vance

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02:22 pm:

New York Times reviews Smith's new filing

The filing lays out the ways Trump dismissed the real numbers. He sidelined advisers who knew that results, as they were, meant he had not won, and relied instead on the counsel of allies like Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor. He ignored or even threatened swing state Republicans who presented him with inconvenient truths, as when a person who appears to be Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said the state had found evidence that only two voters who had died had cast ballots — not thousands, as Trump had claimed.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump said, according to the filing. “That’s a criminal, you know, that’s a criminal offense.”

  NYT

Like suicide. Good luck prosecuting a dead person.

“We don’t have the evidence,” a person who appears to be Giuliani told state legislators in Arizona in early December, “but we have lots of theories.”

They also seemed to understand that just the existence of lawsuits would help legitimize Trump’s claims in the minds of the public. That might be why Trump showed so little concern when he was told by an adviser that Giuliani’s false claims of fraud could not be proved in court.

“The details don’t matter,” Trump said.

[...]

And, reading Smith’s court filing now, there are striking parallels between Trump and his allies’ actions in 2020 and certain steps they are taking today — and it’s something Democrats and allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are warning about as they make the case that Trump is a danger to democracy.

[...]

The Republican National Committee has started a flurry of lawsuits, some of which are premised on false claims, that voting rights experts say appear to be part of preparations to contest the results of the 2024 election.

“Putting false claims in the form of a lawsuit is a way to sanitize and add legitimacy,” Jessica Marsden, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that monitors elections, told my colleagues last week.

At his rallies and in social media posts, Trump has also been promoting false claims that immigrants who are not citizens will vote during the election, echoing the way his false claims about mail ballot fraud before the 2020 election sowed the seeds of distrust in those results.

[...]

In 2020, Bannon had told the group of supporters that they knew more Republicans would vote on Election Day, while more Democrats would vote by mail, so the ballots counted in the days after Election Day were more likely to break for Joe Biden.

“They’re going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump’s going to take advantage of it,” Bannon said, “that’s our strategy.”

It's not a disadvantage. It's a natural outcome of not being able to count mail-in votes until election day. Last election, mail-in votes came in 5 to 1 Democrats over Republicans.  Remember, Trump wanted to stop the counting when he was in the lead, before the mail-in votes were counted.  They also squeal about making it illegal to count votes after election day.  But I don't suppose that means they want to allow counting mail-in ballots when they arrive. Hmmm?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fast and furious: Game (back) on in Chutkan's court

Special counsel Jack Smith laid out the pathway for his election interference case against former President Trump in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision [in a 165-page filing], describing the former president’s bid to thwart the transfer of power as a “private criminal effort.”

[...]

“At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private one; he extensively used private actors and his Campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

[...]

In particular, the filing reveals new evidence of the former president’s efforts to sway election officials in key swing states to overturn their states’ election results in his favor.

“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.”

[...]

They write that Trump was given “the unvarnished truth” about losing the election but continued to make false claims despite being told they were untrue by close campaign advisers.

By Nov. 7, Trump’s advisers notified him that he would likely lose unless litigation in several states was successful, according to the filing. Later that month, it became apparent the former president’s legal efforts would fail.

Then, in what prosecutors called an “implicit acknowledgment that he had no lawful way to prevail,” Trump sidelined his campaign staff that had been handling the legal challenges and elevated Rudy Giuliani to lead the effort — a private lawyer who was “willing to falsely claim victory” for Trump.

[...]

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional,” suggesting it was released after Tuesday’s vice presidential debate to cover up Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s “disastrous” vice presidential debate performance against Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

“Deranged Jack Smith and Washington DC Radical Democrats are hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power,” Cheung said. “President Trump is dominating, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are freaking out. This entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes.”

[...]

At every turn, prosecutors write that Trump’s behavior extended beyond his official role as president.

  The Hill

Continue reading for more details on Smith's filing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10/03/2024:

Perhaps the most evocative and alarming revelation involves how Trump reacted to the threats on Vice President Pence’s life. From the New York Times report:

After Mr. Trump’s Twitter post focused the enraged mob’s attention on harming Mr. Pence and the Secret Service took the vice president to a secure location, an aide rushed into the dining room off the Oval Office where Mr. Trump was watching television. The aide alerted him to the developing situation, in the hope that Mr. Trump would then take action to ensure Mr. Pence’s safety.

Instead, Mr. Trump looked at the aide and said only, “So what?”

Other revelations include Trump telling Jared Kushner and Ivanka, "It doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell." The whole filing tells a story. Trump and his allies are willing to break any law and stomp any norm to hold on to power. The Big Lie was a fabricated justification to steal an election.

  Dan Pfeiffer on Substack

In his first response to the documents, the former president wrote: “The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

“Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.”

Trump claimed his name is “dominating the Election cycle” and “leading in the Polls,” claiming the “Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are totally ‘freaking out,’” without saying who he was quoting. “This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!”

Trump then accused the Democratic party of being “guilty of the Worst Election Interference in American History” and of “Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.”

He then raged against the Department of Justice.

[...]

Trump then spoke to NewsNation Wednesday night in Houston, Texas, to rage again over the allegations.

“He’s a deranged person,” Trump said of Special Counsel Jack Smith. “He just lost the big documents case, that was the biggest of them all.” In August, Smith formally filed to appeal a district court judge’s dismissal of the case in July.

“This was a weaponization of government and this is why it was released 30 days before the election,” Trump said. “And it’s nothing new in there, by the way, nothing new. They rigged the election. I didn’t rig the election. They rigged the election.” He repeated those claims numerous times throughout.

The former president criticized Smith for releasing the documents despite the fact he claimed he was nonplussed over the information. “They should have never allowed the information to come before the public,” he said, adding, “My poll numbers have gone up instead of down. It is pure election interference.”

  Daily Beast

Yeah, well if your poll numbers have gone up because of it, you should welcome this "election interference."

In her order allowing the redacted filing to become public, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been overseeing the case, addressed the defense's accusations of partisan bias.

"Defendant's opposition brief repeatedly accuses the Government of bad-faith partisan bias," the judge wrote. "These accusations, for which Defendant provides no support, continue a pattern of defense filings focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand."

"Not only is that focus unresponsive and unhelpful to the court, but it is also unbefitting of experienced defense counsel and undermining of the judicial proceedings in this case," Judge Chutkan wrote. "Future filings should be directed to the issues before the court."

  ABC News

"Don't fuck with me."  Is that a decent translation?

Smith alleges that Trump engaged in three conspiracies: (1) to interfere with the federal government’s function of collecting and counting the election results, (2) to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election results, and (3) to obstruct the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.

[...]

One of Trump’s aides who spoke with him “on a daily basis and had informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were false” wrote in an email: “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

In mid-December 2020, Trump spoke with Ronna McDaniel (whose name is redacted, but she’s identified as the “RNC Chairwoman”) and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that purported to identify flaws in voting machines used in Antrim County, Michigan. She refused, saying she had talked about the report with the speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, Lee Chatfield (whose name is also redacted), and conveyed to Trump “this exact assessment: the report was ‘fucking nuts.’”

  Bulwark

Which is no doubt why Lara Trump now holds McDaniel's position.

However Chutkan rules, her decision on what evidence counts as private versus official conduct will be appealed to the D.C. Circuit, and ultimately to the Supreme Court, which holds the ultimate power to decide whether there’s going to be any accountability for criminal presidents under our Constitution.

Definitely getting us beyond the election. And if Trump wins, there won't be any need to appeal. He'll have the DOJ fire Smith and drop the case.

UPDATE 10/05/2024:

Trump will be able to appeal her decisions about what isn’t protected by immunity, and the government can appeal any decisions she makes about what is. Ultimately, the Supreme Court may weigh in, either by hearing the case or by refusing to hear it and affirming the Court of Appeals decision reviewing Judge Chutkan’s rulings, before the case can be set for trial. That could mean the Supreme Court adding the case to its docket for this term—if the Court of Appeals gets it to them that quickly—ordering briefing and oral argument, and not rendering a decision until as late as June or July. Look for the government to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case directly without waiting on the Court of Appeals. The government made that motion last time and the Supreme Court waved it off, but at this point, there is really no rationale to let the Court of Appeals try to speculate about what the Supreme Court meant in its immunity decision in Trump.

  Joyce Vance Substack

I don't think there was any rationale the last time they waved off the government's motion.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Trump immunity appeal is one that, as we discussed at the time, doesn’t make sense. It purports to give a president the ability to do acts we clearly don’t want a president to be able to do in a democracy—the whole hypo about directing SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival with impunity. That’s where the Supreme Court landed, and of course, by the same token, they landed there only for Trump. He’s the only one in the current political landscape who would contemplate doing something like that (although the Court may well embolden future wrongdoer-presidents); the Court could only render a decision like this because it had confidence in Joe Biden’s integrity and good faith.

It was a supremely bad decision.

[...]

For so many years, people have hesitated to call out Trump in plain language. Smith does not. He starts the layout of his evidence like this, saying Trump “resorted to crimes to stay in office.”

[...]

Smith previews the buckets of conduct discussed in the next 82 pages of the brief, signaling to the court that he will establish later in his brief that none of this conduct is covered by presidential immunity.

[...]

Jack Smith is giving them the opportunity to flesh out their decision in a way that undoes some of the damage. He offers them the chance to draw the clean and obvious line between acts of a candidate—acts that are not the official business of the presidency, and so not within the scope of immunity—and official acts of a president. He is also giving them the chance to clarify what they meant when they wrote that the presumption of immunity for “non-core” official acts could be overcome “by demonstrating that ‘applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’” Smith says that while the conduct charged involving Trump’s pressure campaign to get Pence to refuse to certify Biden’s Electoral College win is official, it falls within this category, and prosecuting Trump for it will not damage the executive branch, so Trump is not entitled to immunity.

In other words, when this case returns to them, the Supreme Court can either let the case proceed to trial, or they can rule that a president can solicit his vice president to join his criminal scheme to overturn an election and that somehow, prosecuting him for doing that would damage democracy. It would be an “Alice in Wonderland” look at the law, the notion that somehow, it’s prosecuting Trump, not letting him get away with it, that harms the presidency. Jack Smith is betting that even this Supreme Court, and especially now with the public’s eye firmly on it, won’t go there.

Yes, please

A day after filing a sealed brief seeking to justify his superseding indictment against Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith is pushing to file a public version of the brief that includes "substantive" summaries of what investigators learned from witnesses in the former president's federal election interference case.

[...]

In their filing Friday, prosecutors argued that releasing a version of the brief that removes the names of witnesses other than Vice President Mike Pence -- and also redacts nonpublic information sources -- would respect the court's orders and serve the public's interest in the case.

[...]

If permitted by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the public filing could shed new light on the government's sweeping case against Trump by making public the summaries of information obtained from witness interviews, grand jury testimony, and search warrants.

[...]

"For example, the unredacted substance of what a witness said is more important, for purposes of public access, than the redacted identity of the specific person who said it."

[...]

Judge Chutkan ordered Trump's lawyers to file their objections to the proposed redactions on Tuesday.

A response from the prosecutors is due on Oct 10, meaning the material could possibly become public in mid-October.

  ABC

Yes, please.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Chutkan moving along

Chutkan resets the insurrection case schedule

 [...] 

 [...] 

Judge Chutkan stressed that she's not going to be concerned with politics, including the election, in her treatment of the case, and I appreciate that.  But I can't help but be disappointed in the November 7 date for defendant to file a pleading, because I feel some voters might think there's still something Trump can pull out of a hat to make this case look tarnished.

Some forward motion in Trump insurrection case

Points under consideration, scheduling order ASAP.

Jack Smith regroups

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment in his case indicting former President Trump for his actions seeking to subvert the 2020 election, retaining the same charges but striking some elements of the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

The Tuesday filing comes after Smith presented the case against the former president to a second grand jury, which had not previously heard the matter. It likewise concluded charges were warranted against the president.

  The Hill

I was wondering how that would work. A whole new GJ.  I wonder when they convened. *

The superseding indictment is an effort by the special counsel to respond to a ruling earlier this summer by the Supreme Court, which held that Trump and other former executives retain broad immunity for core actions they took as president and are presumptively immune for other actions taken while in office.

While the indictment retains the original charges – a sign of Smith’s confidence in the evidence underpinning the case – it makes significant cuts.

[...]

The filing removes former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark as an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator in the case, a reflection of specific instructions from the Supreme Court that said Trump’s conversations with Justice Department officials were protected from prosecution.

[...]

The filing also bumps up by a day the date that prosecutors argue Trump’s conspiracy to remain in office began — Nov. 13, 2020.

Hmmm?

[T]he new filing takes pains to distinguish various elements of Trump’s efforts to unwind the election as actions taken purely in a private capacity – and thus conduct that can be prosecuted.

The indictment retains its focus on Trump’s knowledge that he was spreading false claims about his loss in the election.

But it includes new efforts to indicate Trump’s false statements about the election were spread in a campaign capacity, not through his role as chief executive.

I guess I assumed that was the case in the original indictment.

It discusses his once-abundant activity on Twitter, now known as X, noting that he regularly used the account “for personal purposes–including to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud, exhort his supporters to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6” as well as pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results and to “leverage the events at the Capitol on January 6 to unlawfully retain power.”

[...]

[I]t shifts its descriptions of others in the case, describing them as “private” attorneys and a “private” political consultant. Though unnamed in the document, the descriptions leave the group identifiable as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheeseboro – all attorneys who aided Trump in the plot – as well as advisor Boris Epshteyn.

[...]

Smith reframed the allegations against Trump to zero in on Trump’s desire to remain in the White House — not dropping the underlying acts altogether, as the special counsel did in other sections that could run afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

[...]

Smith removed references to certain conversations Trump had with the House minority leader and officials in Trump’s White House and Justice Department.

[...]

It will be up to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine whether Trump’s attempts to sway Pence to certify alternate slates of electors stand up to the Supreme Court’s new tests, though the issue could still be appealed back to the Supreme Court.

    source

UPDATE 08/28/2024:

The same four charges are still in the indictment, and Donald Trump continues to be the only defendant.

[...]

There is no more reference to the 45th President of the United States. The indictment is now about Donald Trump, a candidate for president in 2020 who lost. In other words, following the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, the prosecution is signaling that it has abandoned claims about official presidential conduct and is only moving forward with claims about candidate Trump.

[...]

The Special Counsel has removed allegations about Trump’s efforts to use DOJ in furtherance of the crimes he’s charged with. The Supreme Court ruled that was official conduct, and it’s now out. But the allegations about the pressure campaign to keep Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the election remain in, as do some allegations about interactions with state officials, like the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger begging him to find him the votes he needed to win.

Trump’s lawyers will want to remove much more from the indictment. That’s the fight that begins when Judge Chutkan holds a status conference on Friday.

[...]

Trump will need to be arraigned on the new indictment before anything further can happen in the case, but prosecutors have already said they will waive Trump’s personal appearance in court for that proceeding.

[...]

Unless—and this is highly unlikely—both Trump and the government agree with Chutkan’s decisions, the case is almost certain to go on appeal one more time, as we’ve previously discussed. The Supreme Court will have the final say over what conduct can remain in the indictment and what is protected by presidential immunity.

  Joyce Vance

And I think we can count on them to find that most of the conduct is protected.

The indictment

*UPDATE 08/28/2024:

Get it right

UPDATE 12:07 pm:

Chutkan back in action

She got the case back on Friday. She filed a denial of Trump's motion to dismiss on Saturday.

In a 16-page opinion, [Judge Tanya] Chutkan swept aside Trump’s attempt to dismiss his Washington, D.C., criminal case — which charges him with sweeping conspiracies to subvert the 2020 election — over claims that President Joe Biden pressured prosecutors to target his political rival. In the ruling, Chutkan said Trump repeatedly mischaracterized the charges against him, which describe far more than simply criminalizing his claimed belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

Rather, Chutkan ruled, the charges describe a sweeping attempt to manipulate and lie to government authorities in order to undermine the lawful 2020 election results. And Trump’s claim that Biden was secretly behind the prosecution relied on flimsy evidence and anonymously sourced articles that Chutkan said he described inaccurately.

  Politico

Imagine that.

In an order earlier Saturday, she set deadlines for court filings next week and an Aug. 16 hearing to consider the future timing of the case.

The selective-prosecution ruling later in the day appeared to signal that she hasn’t been ignoring the unresolved legal issues in the case as Trump’s immunity-based appeal wended its way through the higher courts and that she is working through the weekend to swiftly resolve long-stalled motions in the case.

Chutkan is the anti-Cannon.

Much of Trump’s argument that the case was brought for political reasons is based on news accounts from The Washington Post and The New York Times detailing internal Justice Department deliberations ahead of the charges Trump faces in Washington, as well as Biden’s own frustration with the pace of the investigation.

Chutkan concluded that even if the anonymously sourced stories are accurate, they don’t demonstrate that prosecutors brought the charges in order to carry out a political directive from Biden or the White House.

[...]

Chutkan said a Post article detailing the probe’s deliberate pace “reflects conscientious investigation, not political animus.”

“Overall, the article suggests that the Justice Department was especially cautious about investigating a political figure like Defendant.”

[...]

Chutkan also rejected Trump’s arguments that prosecutors charged him in the election case because he pleaded not guilty in the classified information case and made public allegations that the investigations were politically motivated.

[...]

“If vindictiveness could be established by new charges following a not guilty plea or a defendant’s public criticism of the prosecution, then defendants could effectively immunize themselves from superseding indictments by taking such action,” Chutkan wrote. “That cannot be the law.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

At last, Judge Chutkan is up again

UPDATE 08/03/2024:

Trump trial hearings on the docket soon

We vehemently disagree with the majority decision to extend any immunity to aspects of Trump’s 2020 election interference. But the court’s opinion also makes clear that this ruling is not a death knell for Smith’s case.

  CNN

Yet.

[T]he opinion calls on District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to initiate the next best thing: an evidentiary hearing — a kind of mini-trial — that will thoroughly ventilate the facts in this case. She should do so quickly.

And I expect she will.

The trial, which was originally scheduled to begin on March 4, has instead been stayed since December 2023. That is when Trump appealed an order refusing to dismiss the case on immunity grounds — and the Supreme Court first declined to review the case, beginning its unconscionable slow-roll that finally ended almost seven months later with this new decision.

[...]

In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court held that a president enjoyed civil immunity for all “official acts.” Now, in Trump v. United States, the court grappled with which “official” acts should also receive criminal immunity.

Which on its face is insane. Criminal immunity. WTF? Why have laws at all?

Given that ruling, the next logical question is: Which of the alleged actions taken by Trump, charged in the indictment, are protected official acts and which aren’t?

First, the court has ruled that all of the allegations concerning Trump’s interactions with the Justice Department — and his attempt to get them to interfere in the election — were official. Therefore, all of that conduct is protected by immunity and cannot be presented at trial.

But the court also held that there are two allegations for which Trump has presumptive immunity, yet this presumption can be overcome: the allegations surrounding his interactions with former Vice President Mike Pence, and his public communications. However, the court did not specify what it would take for that presumption to be overcome. Again, that is for resolution by Chutkan in the mini-trial.

Hearing.

Finally, the court stated that there is one category of alleged conduct that requires a “fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations”: all of Trump’s interactions with “persons outside the Executive Branch,” including state officials and private parties. More grist for Chutkan’s courtroom.

[...]

The Supreme Court has explicitly directed Chutkan to determine whether Trump’s interactions with state officials and private parties were official — and left open the door for her to hold hearings over allegations that involved Pence, too. Chutkan can give both parties the opportunity to develop facts supporting their competing positions and then make her ruling on immunity, ensuring that Trump continues to receive due process throughout.

And I presume that will be appealable. So, justice delayed, folks.

Beyond the procedural considerations, the mini-trial would also serve a vital function for the public — allowing voters to learn more details about Trump’s alleged election interference.

And just who will be paying attention?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Thursday in Trump trials

It will be a historic and surreal split screen: a former president, current presidential candidate and four-time criminal defendant whose lawyers will be fighting two very different sets of felony charges in two courthouses simultaneously.

  Politico

I'm actually surprised SCOTUS didn't delay even longer because of this.

[Trump] asked his judge in New York, Justice Juan Merchan, to grant him permission to attend Thursday’s arguments. Merchan declined, noting that Trump’s presence in Washington is optional while his presence at the hush money trial is mandatory.

[...]

Trump is demanding that the Supreme Court declare him “immune” from special counsel Jack Smith’s charges stemming from his attempt to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.

The court delivered him a unanimous victory in March when it stopped state-level efforts to remove him from the 2024 ballot over his role in stoking the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Trump passed up his chance to attend those arguments in February.) And at earlier stages of the immunity dispute, the court declined Smith’s effort to expedite the case. The high court’s handling of the issue has, in effect, aided Trump’s strategy of trying to delay all of his criminal cases until after the 2024 election.

[...]

Some Trump critics are publicly urging the court to rule by May 20, knowing that if the justices prolong a decision until late June or issue a ruling that requires lower courts to do additional legwork, they could effectively doom Smith’s plan to bring Trump to trial in 2024.

I think they'll do the latter.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So despicable

Three people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers have already accepted that the justices will likely rule against him, and reject his claims to expansive presidential immunity in perpetuity. Bringing the case before the court — after a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., shut down their arguments on executive power — was a delaying tactic designed to push Trump’s criminal election subversion trial past Election Day this fall. The strategy paid off so much more than MAGAworld anticipated.

“We already pulled off the heist,” says a source close to Trump, noting it doesn’t matter to them what the Supreme Court decides now.

Trump’s lawyers and other confidants had widely expected — and had told the former president as much — that the court maneuver would delay the election subversion trial, but perhaps only to around the summer. For months, Trump attorneys were actively preparing themselves and their client to face a trial, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the violent Jan. 6 assault at the U.S. Capitol, right around the time of the Republican Party’s nominating convention, the sources add.

[...]

But the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which Trump built as president, came through for him in a way that many Trump advisers didn’t believe was probable. When news broke in late February that the court would take up Trump’s claims of vast immunity, Trumpland was so elated that a lawyer close to Trump told Rolling Stone they were “literally popping champagne.”

[...]

For Trump’s 2024 campaign and his top attorneys, the battle ended there and has been over for two months now.

  Rolling Stone

They're bragging about it. Somebody - everybody - should rub this in those SCOTUS justice faces. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04/25/2024:

So, yes.  They're just helping him out by delaying the trial.

They won't.

Denied

I'm sure he did.

Mehta ordered Trump to begin describing the basis for his claim that he is immune from the lawsuits because his actions on Jan. 6 were part of his official duties as president. Trump had urged Mehta to sideline the lawsuits in part because he argued that disclosing details about his claim of presidential immunity could undermine his criminal defense.

  Politico

Because why?

Mehta, however, said questions about Trump’s immunity in the context of his lawsuits can be addressed without requiring him to admit to any particular actions he took on Jan. 6 — from the drafting of his speech at the Ellipse that day to his tweets and public commentary — that might also be relevant to his criminal case.

I'm apparently too dense to understand his angle. I know it's there. I can't see it.

“[B]oth cases center on the former President’s actions in the lead up to and on January 6, 2021,” Metha [sic] agreed. “But Defendant overstates the significance of that factual overlap in the present posture of these matters.”

[...]

Only one category of evidence in the civil case might implicate Trump’s Fifth Amendment rights, Mehta continued: his tweets from Jan. 6. But Mehta said he will not require Trump to admit whether he drafted any particular tweet, alleviating the concern that he might be forced to admit to conduct that could incriminate him.

It's a shame that a person has to juggle two cases that could each incriminate him in the other.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week on the immunity issue in the criminal case.

They've already aided him by taking the case and delaying hearing it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No surprise here

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.