Jonathan Turley: While Trump Lost His Motion for Presidential Immunity, He May Still Be Winning the Battle to Delay the Trial

Trump wants to delay most of these trials until after the election.

He may at least have that wish granted:

Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley

In a 57-page opinion, the D.C. Circuit has rejected, as expected, former President Donald Trump's sweeping immunity claim. Many of us anticipated this result....

...Notably, the panel rejected the claim of many critics that there should be no appellate review. However, it categorically rejects the claim of Trump that he is entitled to immunity as a private citizen...

...Crunching the numbers, Trump can seek corrections in the short term but, even without a correction to the opinion, he has 45 days to seek an en banc where the government is a party. He then has 90 days after the rejected of any en banc decision. ...

"En banc" means the entire DC Court of Appeals -- not just the three-judge panel picked to hear this appeal -- sitting as a group to reconsider the matter.

And this is before any appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump can ask for a rehearing just from the full DC Circuit Court of Appeals itself.

...So, even without factoring in review time for the circuit, Trump could extend this process 135 days absent a successful move to expedite. The 90 day period alone would put a petition into May. Any rejection of appeals, without an expedited calendar, puts this into the summer...

...That is without delays or a successful grant on by the D.C. Circuit (unlikely) or the Supreme Court (uncertain). After that appellate line is tied off, the parties would have to return to the trial court to resume the pre-trial work, which could take months. That puts the trial very close to the election and would raise obvious concerns given the long-standing DOJ policy to avoid trials with a few months of an election.

The Very Special Counsel has previously moved for the Supreme Court to expedite the motion process, and the Supreme Court refused.

Turley notes that Jack Smith will move to expedite again -- but why would the Court reverse itself?

...While Smith will likely try again to expedite, the question is why the Supreme Court would suddenly see a need to curtail the time or process when it previously denied such efforts. There is no longer a scheduled trial on the docket and Smith is the prevailing party. That is not ideal for a motion to expedite further appeals.

Interesting:

...Notably, in a footnote at the end of the decision, the panel declines look at the merits of the threshold challenge that "the appointment of Special Counsel Smith is invalid because (1) no statute authorizes the position Smith occupies and (2) the Special Counsel is a principal officer who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate."

How could they just have blown that off?

That might be what ShipwreckedCrew was referring to when he said this decision was written almost to invite the Supreme Court to review it.

Note that the DOJ has "policies," they say, that restrain them from pursuing (or announcing) actions during campaign season. They have invoked these "policies" as their excuse for refusing to acknowledge the Hunter Biden laptop was real, for example.

Once Trump delays this until the summer, then the DOJ policy says -- unless the DOJ suddenly discovers a Special Exception -- that the trial must be delayed until after the election. The Very Special Counsel Jack Smith is a DOJ appointee and presumably bound by their "policies."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:47 PM

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