No, Donald Trump can’t get his New York criminal conviction overturned because of SCOTUS
Now that the Supreme Court has issued a bizarre mixed ruling on Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, Trump is (incorrectly) claiming total victory. It’s not clear if his handlers have falsely told him that SCOTUS ruled he’s untouchable, or if he’s merely as confused as ever. But either way, this isn’t going to play out the way Trump wants us to think it will.
For instance, Trump just filed to have his existing New York criminal conviction overturned on the basis of this SCOTUS ruling. But this is not within a million miles of being a real thing. For one thing, the ruling says that a President can be prosecuted for unofficial actions, just not official actions. No one would even try to argue that cooking your own books in order to cover up an affair is an official duty of the President. More to the point, Trump took these actions before he was even in office.
So this appeal on Trump’s part has literally zero chance of working. Nor does it have any hope of delaying anything. Trump’s sentencing hearing will proceed as scheduled on July 11th. The only question is what the sentence will end up being, and whether it’ll involve prison. We’ll find out soon enough. Donate to Palmer Report
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report