March 1, 2024
On Wednesday, February 28, the Supreme Court laid out a hearing schedule on former President Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity that raises significant doubts that the election interference case against him will go to trial before the 2024 election—a major win for Trump in his effort to stave off legal consequences for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, reports NBC News.
SCOTUS’s decision to hear oral arguments the week of April 22 about whether Trump is entitled to presidential immunity left open a startling possibility: that a former president charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress and disfranchise millions of Americans in an effort to stay in the Oval Office after having lost an election may avoid facing trial before he is given a chance to return to the White House.
Until Wednesday evening, there had been a chance that Trump’s trial in Washington, DC—based on an indictment returned in August—could go to trial as soon as May, with a likely verdict potentially handed down months before Election Day 2024.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan originally had set a trial date for March 4, saying she would give Trump’s team seven months to prepare for trial. But that timeline was delayed when the case was frozen in December following an appeal from Trump’s team. Trump had 88 days left on that preparation timeline, which meant that—had the Supreme Court simply allowed an appeals court’s decision on presidential immunity to stand—the case would have been underway in Chutkan’s courtroom as soon as early May.
Prosecutors for Special Counsel Jack Smith previously estimated that they would need “no longer than four to six weeks” to present their case, while potential jurors received letters saying the trial “may last approximately three months after jury selection is completed.”
SCOTUS could rule before the end of June, but it would depend in part on whether the nine justices are unanimous. It typically takes longer for the court to resolve cases when they are divided, with justices writing separate dissents.
“You’re talking about a time frame in which you’re really pushing up against the general election,” Andrew Weissmann, an MSNBC legal analyst who was on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, said Wednesday on “The Beat with Ari Melber.”
Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. solicitor general, said that he was also very concerned about the timeline but that the Supreme Court could expedite things.
The Supreme Court hearing will be held the week after the justices consider another case of relevance to Trump, concerning one of the hundreds of people charged with offenses relating to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Defendant Joseph Fischer is seeking to dismiss a charge accusing him of obstructing an official proceeding. Trump is charged with the same offense, and his lawyers mentioned Fischer’s case in urging the justices not to rush his case to trial.
Trump’s lawyers wrote in court papers that it “makes no sense to conduct a complex criminal trial while a case is pending in this court that might invalidate half the charges in the indictment.”
Trump pleaded not guilty to that charge, as well as the three others he faces in the election interference case.
Hours before the Supreme Court announced the April hearing, Chutkan was in her courtroom for a hearing for one of Trump’s fellow January 6 defendants—Michael Foy, who assaulted officers with a hockey stick and a sharpened metal pole on January 6.
“I’m not getting into that,” Chutkan said with a smile, prompting laughter in the courtroom.
Research contact: @NBCNews