Supreme Court delivers mixed Trump immunity ruling, Trump criminal trial still possible before election
As expected, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the Trump immunity case that ended up being somewhere in the middle. The court ruled that the President does have immunity for official acts but not for unofficial acts, and sent the case back to the lower court to determine which of Donald Trump’s acts were indeed unofficial.
Major media outlets are already tripping over each other to put the most negative spin possible on this ruling (which they were going to do no matter what the ruling ended up being), because that’s what’s best for ratings. But back in the real world, this puts things in motion in the Trump case.
Jack Smith will now have to swiftly decide which aspects of the January 6th criminal charges against Donald Trump are still valid (in reality he’s likely already done this in expectation of a mixed SCOTUS ruling). So now we simply wait for Smith to amend the Trump indictment. From there, Judge Tanya Chutkan will need to hold hearings so she can decide whether she agrees with Smith’s interpretation of the new SCOTUS groundwork. And then it’ll be up to Smith and Chutkan to try to put Trump on trial before the election.
So we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, remember three things. First, look for the media’s usual pattern on these kinds of things. Today and tomorrow the media will go with the biggest doomsday hyperbole spin it can come up with. Then later the media will begin to quietly admit that the legal consensus is somewhere else entirely, and will begin presenting reality as some kind of contrarian take. Your job, as always, will be to ignore the media’s entire dance. It’s always just for ratings.
Second, you’re about to see a lot of faux-clever internet memes claiming that “because the President now has absolute immunity, Biden should just do [blank].” These are fun but they’re not in any way based in reality. Don’t allow yourself to get sucked into believing that Biden now has some magic wand for making Trump disappear, and that Biden is simply refusing to wave it. This is the stuff of utter nonsense.
Third, remember that none of this changes anything. We saw what happened with Trump’s first criminal trial. It incrementally drove his overall numbers down and put Biden in the lead in national polling. Trump’s upcoming sentencing hearing in ten days should serve to further dent Trump’s numbers, particularly if he’s given prison time. But this stuff is always incremental. There are no magic wands or trap doors. If the Republicans really want to go through with nominating this guy, that’ll be their problem. And it’ll be up to us to put in the kind of work that always wins elections: small dollar donations, volunteer shifts, phone banking, and helping drive voter registration. Now let’s get back to work. Donate to Palmer Report
