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(Photographer: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg)
The Supreme Court docket simply stuffed an enormous Christmas current in Donald Trump’s stocking. With no registered dissents, it denied Particular Counsel Jack Smith’s petition for certiorari earlier than judgment searching for to expedite evaluation of Trump’s declare of presidential immunity.
The Court docket, which as soon as granted cert earlier than judgment to permit Trump to execute a prisoner earlier than leaving workplace, has determined that the problem of prosecuting a former president who tried to thwart the peaceable switch of is unworthy of particular consideration.
When Trump appealed the denial of his movement to dismiss on grounds of presidential immunity, Decide Chutkan stayed all deadlines, throwing the case into limbo simply ten weeks earlier than the March 4 trial date. Any additional delay will doubtless take it off the calendar till after the November election, notably with Decide Aileen Cannon squatting on the docket for Could, regardless of making it nearly not possible for the case to go to trial as deliberate.
Trump is at the moment scheduled to make his immunity argument to the DC Circuit on January 9. His declare that he was doing official president enterprise when he tried to get Mike Pence and Congress to toss out professional swing state electoral votes is unlikely to prevail, notably with a panel consisting of Judges Henderson, Childs, and Pan. Certainly, ultra-conservative Decide William Pryor of the Eleventh Circuit simply demolished comparable claims by Mark Meadows with respect the identical course of conduct. However even when the appeals court docket retains up the tempo of its lightening-fast briefing schedule and guidelines expeditiously, it can doubtless be third week of January earlier than it points a mandate returning the case to Decide Chutkan.
Trump will then have 90 days to hunt cert from the Supreme Court docket, which might then challenge a keep of its personal.
With so many potential roadblocks, it appears more and more unlikely that this case will go to trial in March. However former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner says that the Supreme Court docket’s resolution as we speak might not make that a lot of a distinction.
“If the justices had needed to, they may have granted cert and nonetheless made it not possible to go to trial by March 4,” he stated, suggesting that the Court docket might have set out a briefing schedule stretching by means of February which might have definitively knocked it off the calendar.
However Epner, a accomplice at Rottenberg Lipman Wealthy PC, famous that the Particular Counsel lately added Supreme Court docket veteran Michael Dreeben to his staff: “Michael Dreeben is essentially the most highly-experienced prison appellate litigator in america. Jack Smith will not be going to get out-lawyered on this one.”
US v. Trump [District Docket via Court Listener]US v. Trump [Circuit Docket via Court Listener]US v. Trump [SCOTUS docket]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she writes the Legislation and Chaos Substack and seems on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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