Ask Me Help Desk - How do recent SCOTUS decisions impact Trump cases ?

NY case . I speculated that after a delay Judge Merchan will rule that SCOTUS has no impact because it was a local case that had nothing to do with Executive acts . He will sentence Trump when it hurts Trump the most ;in the middle of the Fall Campaign.

Florida document case . It is very impactful. Judge Cannon has to decide which acts Trump did were official acts. But even more significant was Justice Thomas' concurring opinion that questioned the legitimacy of the Jack Smith appointment to Special Council. Cannon could just toss the case and let the Appeals and SCOTUS decide the outcome.

The DC election interference case. This one is delayed . I suspect Judge Chutkan will allow most of the charges to go forward claiming Trump was acting in self interest and not as President. Trump will appeal and also use the Cannon dismissal as a reason for a dismissal of this case. SCOTUS may have punted on the specifics but will eventually have to determine charge by charge

The Georgia election interference case . The added complication is this is a state trial . Judge McAfee has the same problem as Chutkan in sorting out official from non-official acts . Many acts involved in the Georgia indictment are not covered in the federal case.

To add complications ;Trump's codefendants were close advisors . Charges against them will have to be evaluated too.

Let's say that Trump becomes President and shuts down the Federal cases against him. This will not affect the Georgia case. They would probably have to postpone it until after his term. We may be looking at a 2029 trial

Judge Chutkan has denied Trump's petition for dismissal of the DC Jan 6 case . Most likely she will schedule some proceedings in September and October tying Trump in court instead of on the campaign trail as early voting begins. There will be no conclusion of the case until after the election . Jack Smith will present a streamlined prosecution based on the SCOTUS immunity decision that will have enough meat to put Trump in jail if convicted .
First meeting is set for August 16 ; 3 days before the Dem convention.

Trump will be in jail before October . SCOTUS refused to intervene in the sentencing of Trump in the NY" hush money " aka non-disclosure agreement ; case Trump was convicted in a show trial where the star witness ;Michael Cohen was a convicted perjurer .

Doesn't matter A DA who ran a campaign to get Trump ;hand picked a judge who's daughter fund raises for Kam the Sham and held the trial in a district where Clueless Joe won in 2020 in a landslide. The results were predetermined .

And now SCOTUS will not delay sentencing .

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The ruling ensures that, barring any postponement, Trump’s sentencing will proceed as scheduled on Sept. 18, and the limited gag order will remain in place, barring him from publicly speaking about prosecutors, court staff, and their families.

Supreme Court rejects bid to halt Trump’s sentencing in hush money case : NPR

I reposted much of that on Facebook. They sure seem terrified of a Trump presidency.

Alvin Bragg "deferred " to Judge Merchan the sentencing decision. Why ? Because he knows Merchan ;who's daughter is a Kam fund raising activist ;will sentence Trump and order him to prison before the election .

Dug deeper . Not only did he defer ;Bragg told Merchan it would be prudent to delay sentencing. Bragg conceded that much of the evidence he used in the trial falls under the SCOTUS immunity ruling evidence that was introduced at the time despite Trump's lawyer's objections . This despite the fact that he knew SCOTUS was going to hear the immunity case. This despite knowing that the DC case had been suspended due to the immunity hearings. This knowing that in the hearings of the immunity case ;several justices expressed sympathy to Trump's arguments and that a large degree of immunity would be approved.

That will not likely stop Merchan . He contributed to Clueless Joe's 2020 campaign despite it violating state judicial ethics laws . His daughter is a fundraiser for the Kam the Sham campaign.
He strategically scheduled sentencing 2 days after early voting begins in pivotal state PA.
But then again . Bragg and Merchan have been a tag team on this case all along. Perhaps Merchan will delay. Maybe they have their fingers in the political winds . Trump gained momentum during the trials . Kam the Sham grabbed some of it back with the ousting of Clueless Joe. Maybe the puppet masters are afraid of disrupting her momentum by turning Trump into a martyr .

As predicted ,Jack Smith rewrote the DC Jan 6 indictment against Trump ;and got a fresh Grand Jury panel to rubber stamp it .

It is basically the same indictment with a whole bunch of the evidence removed . But the premise is that Trump was not acting in his Presidential capacity .He was acting as a candidate . Smith also makes a point in suggesting that Trump really did not believe what he was saying and that constitutes a conspiracy to defraud the US . (because Trump had a right to lie under the 1st amendment but not to conduct a conspiracy to defraud .)

Andrew McCarthy can explain much better than I

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The obvious, major change in the superseder is that Smith has dropped the allegation that Trump used his control over the Justice Department to further his alleged crimes.

Trump Election Interference Case: Superseding Indictment Returns Case to Square One | National Review

Quote:

My sense, at first blush, is that the Supreme Court would see Smith’s superseder as insufficiently attentive to its Trump ruling. The prosecutor’s patent conceit is that Trump’s presidential acts as charged — in particular, his communications with Pence and with state legislators and officials — are at best only arguably official. Ergo, Smith’s reasoning goes, any presumption of immunity can be overcome by evidence that these acts principally served Trump’s interests as a candidate and not his duties as president.

To the contrary, the Court majority (sans Barrett) approached the matter from the opposite direction. Roberts made clear that the Court’s default position was that official acts of the presidency are immune. The majority said that core executive acts are absolutely immune; with respect to other official acts, the majority explained that, at this preliminary stage of the proceedings, it did not need to go any further than holding that such acts are presumptively immune. Nevertheless, the majority elaborated that, at a later, more developed stage of the proceedings, it might find that those acts are absolutely immune, too.
That is to say: While Smith intimates that presumptive immunity is far from an insuperable obstacle for prosecutors, the Court intimated that where there is presumptive immunity, there is probably absolute immunity.
Furthermore, I believe the most significant part of the majority opinion — because it deeply discourages future partisan lawfare crusades — is that prosecutors may not examine a president’s motives for performing official acts. If an action is ostensibly official, presumptive immunity cannot be overcome by claiming that a president had a corrupt purpose in taking it.

SCOTUS will still find issue with it .A trial if it happens won't begin until after the election.

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Trump will need to be arraigned on the superseding indictment. Judge Chutkan will now know that she must quickly examine the new indictment and decide which allegations implicate official acts. Whatever ruling she makes will be appealed.

I am standing by my prediction that Judge Juan Merchan will sentence Trump to prison on Sept 18 to begin serving immediately . But this is why Trump won't go to jail

He can , get bail pending appeal .If the appellate court denies he can immediate take it to NY Supreme Court, If that doesn't work he can immediately appeal to SCOTUS They won't take the case until after the election.