The Supreme Court docket dominated on Wednesday that Trump’s DC prison trial, the one regarding his try and steal the 2020 presidential election, have to be delayed for at the least one other two months. The Court docket already successfully delayed his trial for an extra two and a half months in an order handed down final December.
This order is a colossal victory for Trump, and will doubtlessly permit him to evade prison accountability for his makes an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election altogether. Trump’s aim is to delay his trials till after Election Day. Ought to he prevail in that election, he can then order the Justice Division to drop all federal prices in opposition to him.
Trump was in a position to safe such an order from the justices by exploiting the truth that the federal judiciary ordinarily doesn’t permit two totally different courts to have jurisdiction over the identical case on the similar time. So, when a celebration to a lawsuit or prison continuing appeals a trial court docket’s determination, the trial court docket typically loses authority over that case till the attraction is resolved.
The ostensible cause for the Court docket’s order placing the trial on ice is that the Court docket wants that point to contemplate a weak attraction difficult a ruling by Decide Tanya Chutkan, the decide presiding over his DC prison trial.
In keeping with Trump, the Structure forbids any prosecution of a former president for any “official acts” he engaged in whereas in workplace. The implications of this argument are astounding, and Trump’s attorneys haven’t precisely tried to cover them. Throughout one court docket listening to, the previous president’s lawyer instructed a decide that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted even when he had ordered “SEAL Crew 6 to assassinate a political rival,” until Trump had been additionally impeached and convicted by the Senate.
It’s arduous to think about the Supreme Court docket signing onto this argument, which has already been rejected by two different courts.
But Trump has now, with Wednesday’s ruling, leveraged this ridiculous authorized argument to delay his DC trial for at the least 4 and a half months, and the delay will doubtless lengthen for much longer as a result of the Court docket will want time to supply an opinion. The Court docket will hear oral arguments in late April.
Merely put, Wednesday’s order is a catastrophe for anybody hoping that Trump might face trial earlier than the November election. And, as a result of the nominal cause for this order is to offer the justices extra time to resolve if the president is totally above the regulation, this determination raises severe doubts about whether or not this Court docket might be trusted to supervise Trump-related circumstances in a nonpartisan method.
