Jack Smith strikes back

| 2:35 am EST February 15, 2024
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Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court gave Special Counsel Jack Smith just one week to file a response to Donald Trump’s claim that he has presidential immunity in his criminal trials. It felt obvious that the court was looking to get this over with quickly. After all, a week is a very short amount of time to put together a detailed response to a detailed appeal.

Of course I made the mistake of turning on MSNBC on Tuesday evening during the special election results, and near-immediately heard some doomsday pundit suggest that the one week deadline meant the Supreme Court had decided to move as slowly as possible. Really? This is what MSNBC consists of now? No wonder so many folks on our side are so out of their minds with panic and fear.

In any case, on Wednesday, Jack Smith filed his response. That’s right. Even if the one-week deadline was a sinister plot to delay things beyond the election, Jack Smith managed to defeat that plot by… not taking a week to file his response. It’s funny how these doomsday narratives are always built on the presumption that our side’s leaders are hapless rubes who don’t know how to many anything happen.

Now we’ll have to wait maybe a week or two for the Supreme Court to announce something. Either they’ll say that they’re not taking up the case (best case scenario and Trump’s trial begins immediately), or they’ll take up the case but then rule against Trump fairly quickly (not the ideal scenario but Trump’s trial will still get underway well before the election).

In any case, these “Trump’s criminal trials will all get pushed back the election” narratives are even further out into la la land than ever. Meanwhile back in the real world, Trump is closer to going on criminal trial than ever.