NBC -The Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments about whether former President Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over criminal election interference charges threw a new wrench in the trial proceedings. It leaves open a startling possibility — that a former president charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress and disenfranchise millions of Americans in an effort to stay in the Oval Office may not have to face a trial before he is given a chance to return to the White House. Before the Supreme Court's announcement yesterday, a trial could have been underway as soon as early May, with a verdict potentially handed down months before Election Day. Now, there are significant doubts that the case will even go to trial before voters go to the polls in the general election.
Guardian - The court had the option of rejecting Trump’s appeal without hearing the arguments. Instead, it set oral arguments for the week of 22 April. That means even if the justices come to a speedy decision – say, in early May – the trial would be pushed off until mid-summer at the earliest. That might not be enough time to actually hold the trial before the election, and plays right into Trump’s explicit legal strategy of trying to delay his criminal trials. The court will consider whether, and to what extent, “a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office”.Lower-court judges have unanimously ruled against Trump, writing withering opinions of his arguments; legal observers widely expect that the US supreme court, which has a six to three conservative majority, will agree. The issue is the timeline.The DC trial is on hold until the justices issue a ruling – and as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell wrote on Wednesday, the best estimate of the trial date will come “by adding 87 days to the date of the supreme court’s final decision”.
By those calculations, even if the court issues a rapid decision in early May, the case may not be ready for trial until August. But that assumes they move that fast. The supreme court’s term doesn’t end until early July, and if they don’t issue a decision until then it would probably prevent the trial from happening at all before the election since that would set things up for early October, right before the November vote. The trial is expected to last at least a month, and it’s unclear whether the US Department of Justice will decide its unofficial “60-day rule” against bringing politically charged cases too close to an election applies in this case. If Trump wins the election, he’ll have enough executive authority to make the case go away.
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The political decision of the Supreme Court is why people think it is a tool of the fascists
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