This morning the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Trump v. United States (the caption says it all) in which the former President argues that he is immune from any criminal liability for the charges brought in that case. The argument (as all Supreme Court arguments) will be live-streamed on the Court’s website (https://www.supremecourt.gov) and will be available in both audio and transcript form later today. (After the argument I will edit the foregoing sentences to provide the links.)
It is clear of course that Donald Trump’s strategy all along has been delay, delay, delay, hoping that he can run out the clock to prevent any of the criminal trials to proceed before he hopes to be re-elected. Although it has not worked perfectly (the New York state trial is on-going as I write this), he has been largely successful, a disappointment to those who were hoping for some magic bullet to prevent either his re-election or the Hobson’s choice between him and President Biden.
Whatever one ultimately thinks about the merits of presidential immunity, it is an important question that the Supreme Court is going to have to answer and so here I part ways with those who argue that the mere fact that the Court has taken this case is proof of its partisanship. See, for example, Ankush Khadori’s Politico column, How to Know If the Supreme Court Is in the Tank for Trump.
Jay Bohn
April 25, 2024