American politics
The Supreme Court gave Trump a big victory
Wolfgang Hansson
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Updated 09.11 | Published 08.51
EL PASO, TEXAS. The Supreme Court's announcement that it intends to test the question of whether Donald Trump is completely immune from prosecution is a major victory for the ex-president.
In practice, this likely means that the more important trial against Trump will not be held before the presidential election.
If he wins in November, Trump can make all the charges go away for good.
Most things seem to be going Trump' Trump's way right now.
He is on pace to sail toward his party's presidential nomination faster than any other non-incumbent candidate. By mid-March, he will have the number of candidates needed to have an unassailable lead over Nikki Haley before the Republican convention.
An even bigger bonus is that it is becoming less and less likely that several of the four trials against him will start before the presidential election.
The supreme Court must be apolitical and interpret the constitution. But it very much looks like HD is working as an election locomotive for Donald Trump.
Lower courts have unanimously ruled that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution for criminal acts committed while he was president.
HD could have chosen not to take up the case. Then the decisions of the lower bodies had stood firm.
Instead, it was decided yesterday to take the case up for trial at the end of April. This means that a decision will probably come in June at the earliest. With just over four months left until the election.
It is probably not enough to get a trial in the prosecution that Trump tried to change the election results, among other things, by urging his supporters to storm Congress in January 2021.
Contributes to delay
It also likely means that the indictment that he took classified documents from the White House and stored them in his private home Mar-a-Lago in Florida is postponed.
It is only if HD determines that Trump is not immune that such a prosecution can proceed.
Most legal commentators here in the United States agree that HD cannot possibly conclude that a president is immune from all prosecutions, regardless of the nature of the crime. But with the country's highest court taking up the issue, they are helping to delay two of the federal trials against the ex-president.
Mar-a-lago. Photo: Steve Helber/AP
Which is exactly what Trump has been trying to achieve all along. His tactics are to delay all trials until after the presidential election. The charge of conspiracy to commit election fraud was actually supposed to begin on March 4. Now, it may not start until after the November 5 election.
If Trump wins and becomes president again, he can pardon himself or appoint an attorney general who will drop all charges.
Trump's chances in the presidential election increase if he is not convicted before the election. Opinion polls show that at least a third of Republican voters would hesitate to vote for Trump if he were convicted of a serious crime.
To add to the matter, during his four years as president, Donald Trump succeeded by a happy coincidence in appointing as many as three conservative judges who now serve for life. Thus, the court has a conservative majority of 6-3.
Charges are pending
Because they are appointed for life, the judges do not have to care what Trump thinks, but many still see the court's decision as support for the ex-president. And it's not the first time. The court's reputation is in sharp decline.
Trump can also be happy that the state prosecution in Georgia is hanging in the air.
There, Trump stands accused of trying to turn the 2020 Georgia election loss into a win by pressuring local officials to cheat.
Fanny Willis. Photo: Alyssa Pointer/AP
But right now it is uncertain whether the prosecutor Fanni Willis will be allowed to continue pursuing the case. She has been in a relationship with another prosecutor she hired to help her on the case. Trump's lawyers claim that she benefited financially from it and thus should be removed.
Right now, a judge is considering the matter. He has already taken a very long time. An indication that Willis may be removed from the case. If so, it must be posted to another court in the state. In any case, this means a significant delay in a trial that would have started in August at the earliest anyway. In the best case for Trump, it could mean that the prosecution is dropped altogether.
Bought silence
The ex-president's trial for paying to buy a porn star's silence ahead of the 2016 presidential election appears to be proceeding as scheduled with jury selection on March 25 because the alleged crime was committed before Trump became president.
But that charge is the least serious of the four brought against Trump.
Which makes me think of a local activist I met in South Carolina about a week ago. He had nothing left for the ex-president but had his opinion clear.
- Trump will never be convicted of any crime and not have to pay a cent in fines. He is untouchable.
HD's decision undeniably makes it look that way.
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