Trump Indicted for Conspiring to Overturn the 2020 Election

[N.E. Brigand]

Suppose this trial is not over as of Election Day, Donald Trump wins the election, and he is convicted just a few days later. When does sentencing happen? Probably not before his inauguration on Jan. 20th, right? But the wheels of justice will continue to go on until then, no? If there's a trial, albeit a delayed one, that likely means the Supreme Court has ruled against his immunity claims. Is Judge Chutkan likely to say, in light of presidents not having immunity, that a mere president-elect should be granted any deference before he takes office?

He can't pardon himself until inauguration. Many people don't think he can pardon himself at all. But only he can pardon people convicted in federal court. If he does, who has standing to challenge that decision? If he doesn't, does the sentencing itself get postponed for four years? Or just the sentence? Could he be ordered to report to jail in 2029? Does he serve out his term knowing that it will be quickly followed by ten years in jail?

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On the other hand, if the Court rules that Presidents are immune for prosecution for official acts which are otherwise criminal, what happens between now and November?

[N.E. Brigand]

Bush v. Gore (2000) was appeared to the Supreme Court on Dec. 8 and an opinion was issued on Dec. 12. The Court can move very quickly when it wants to.

A better comparison might be United States v. Nixon (1974).

That was appealed to the Supreme Court on May 24, which agreed on May 31 to hear the case. That's 7 days. It took 16 days for the Court this time (from Feb. 12).

Oral arguments were set for July 8. That's 38 days after agreeing to hear the case. In this case, the Court set a date for 53 days from today.

The Nixon opinion was issued on July 24. That's 16 days after arguments.

If there's a pattern here (15+(15-9)=21), the Court in this case will issue an opinion 37 days after April 22, which is May 29.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Bush v. Gore is not comparable; there was a hard deadline within which a decision needed to be made. I agree that U.S v. Nixon is a better comparison, but it was still a different circumstance (and, of course, a very different court).

I (and most of the legal commentators that I follow) think that the court won't issue a decision until the end of the term at the end of June. I think if they were going to try to make a decision sooner, they would have expedited it more. But if you are right, and they do issue a decision by the end of May, that would significantly increase the likelihood that a trial could happen before the election (unless the Florida document case gets in the way).

[N.E. Brigand]

I've seen commentary again today that "the courts are not going to save us." Fair enough: defenders of democracy should not rely on courts doing the right thing. But when the commentary extends to "It's not the courts' job to save us," I agree with this respondent that "of course it’s their f*^&%$# job to save the country from a criminal gang if they can."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

I think there's a reasonably good chance that Trump is actually on trial and stuck in a courtroom for a month when he would otherwise be campaigning.

The question is: does that help or hurt his chances? Quite a few people have argued that the more people see Trump ramble on, the worse he does.

[N.E. Brigand]

Marcy Wheeler thinks she knows why the Supreme Court took the case: because neither Jack Smith nor Judge Chutkan nor the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals fully addressed the question of why Trump's alleged crimes differ from other controversial actions by presidents that are sometimes claimed to have been illegal.

Which leads me to grab this post from another thread about something cited in Trump's brief asking for SCOTUS review:

These people either don't know or assume others won't know that Donald Trump launched many more drone strikes than Barack Obama.

The "Hillary the Hawk, Donald the Dove" myth from 2016 lingers on.

To be fair, I am not aware of Trump authorizing any drone strikes on a U.S. citizen, which Obama did do.

It was with that distinction in mind that I cited the three respondents to Don Jr.'s tweet as well as his own, and I'm glad you called it out. My position is that if military strikes against al-Qaeda were legal, then Anwar al-Awlaki was a legitimate target, just as an American who joined the German army in World War II would not be entitled to special protections that German soldiers serving alongside him didn't get. And a lawsuit brought by al-Awlaki's father against President Obama was dismissed. And of course, President Trump clamped down on reporting details about U.S. drone strikes -- but if an American had been killed during his term, we probably would have heard about it anyway. That said, this is a fraught subject that deserves continued scrutiny. And I think it matters that Donald Trump is often wrongly portrayed as having been a peacenik.

Wheeler points out something I had forgotten or didn't know: eight days into Donald Trump's presidency, on Jan. 29, 2017, he authorized a raid by U.S. commandos on an al-Qaeda base in Yemen that killed Nawar al-Awlaki, the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in 2011. Like her father, Nawar was an American citizen. Unlike her father, but like her brother Abdulrahman, who was killed in another 2011 drone strike at the age of 16, Nawar was not the target of the operation. (She was shot in the neck during the raid and bled to death.)

What "distinguishes such actions from those charged against Trump"? Wheeler thinks it's probably "the conversion of the Presidency to one's own personal benefit," and she notes that it would apply to the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case as well.

[N.E. Brigand]

I give credit to Nikki Haley for saying that all Donald Trump's trials should be scheduled so as to conclude "before November" and the election, because "We need to know what's going to happen before it, before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don't think any of it's going to get heard." I also think this should be a valid argument for prosecutors to make in court: Trump is hoping to use delay to avoid a trial entirely.

The problem is that that is a political argument, not a legal one.

If Donald Trump wins the election and then orders the Department of Justice to drop the two federal prosecutions and they do it, isn't that a legal action?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No that would definitely be a political act.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oral argument has been scheduled by the court for Thursday, April 25, 2024, the last day that the court will hear oral arguments this term. It is amusing to see more outrage when in fact, the other days that week already had arguments set, so it was always going to be that day when they said that it was going to be the week of April 22.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Excellent article on presidential immunity, the limits thereto, and why it clearly should not apply to Trump.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is really bad lawyering. The way to appeal to a judge or justice is not to quote what they said previously in a way that is obviously inapplicable and can actually easily be shown to support the other side.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This may be the most amusing amicus brief ever submitted to the SCOTUS. I particularly like page 8, where the writer compares Trump to the God Emperor of Dune (complete with picture).

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... dBoyle.pdf

[N.E. Brigand]

This may be the most amusing amicus brief ever submitted to the SCOTUS. I particularly like page 8, where the writer compares Trump to the God Emperor of Dune (complete with picture). https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... dBoyle.pdf

"Trump is a criminally-indicted shoe salesman".

Are the giant margins in the briefs meant to make it easier for the justices to write notes on the pages?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I guess so. That is the correct format for SCOTUS briefs. And beneath the amusing rhetoric, David Boyle's brief is actually quite balanced and sensible. As the conclusion says, "The Court should neutrally, with patriotism and justice, decide on fair parameters for presidents’ and ex-presidents’ criminal immunity, and do so without unfair haste or needless delay." You can ask for more (or less) than that!

[N.E. Brigand]

New York Times article on the history of this investigation: "Inside Merrick Garland's Effort to Prosecute Trump." The overall theme:

In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Mr. Garland might have made one big one: not recognizing that he could end up racing the clock. Like much of the political world and official Washington, he and his team did not count on Mr. Trump’s political resurrection after Jan. 6, and his fast victory in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which has complicated the prosecution and given the former president leverage in court.

Probably the two most interesting facts are that the Dept. of Justice was looking pretty early at "Trump allies who gathered at the Willard Hotel ahead of Jan. 6 — John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Roger J. Stone Jr. — and possible connections to the Trump White House," and that DOJ efforts to "follow the money" failed to turn up anything incriminating, although as described, it sounds to me like they were looking in the wrong places:

Department leaders believed that the best way to justify prosecuting Mr. Trump and the Willard plotters was to find financial links between them and the rioters — because they thought it would be more straightforward and less risky than a case based on untested election interference charges, according to people with knowledge of the situation. But that conventional approach, rooted in prosecutorial muscle memory, yielded little.

The problem was that the individual rioters seem mostly to have been self-funded and traveling cheaply.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

More fodder for Trump's attorneys. I really think that the NY Times and the Washington Post are on his payroll.

[Dave_LF]

More fodder for Trump's attorneys. I really think that the NY Times and the Washington Post are on his payroll.

: strokes beard in wizard : His arm has grown long.

Just unsure whether "he" is T himself or the various people who own him.

[N.E. Brigand]

This story in the NewYork Times is about Donald Trump telling Mike Pence on the morning of Jan. 6th that Pence's political career would be over if he didn't certify the votes that day, per testimony from a White House valet who was with Trump that day.

The valet was also asked if Trump ever destroyed documents. All the time, was the answer. Trump's way of indicating he was done with a document was to tear it up. This extended to photographs.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet the Republicans had been pointing to the valet's testimony as somehow supporting Trump (because he doesn't confirm all of the details that others have testified to, even though he admitted that he was present at all times).