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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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So this gets complicated but essentially the question before them is whether he has immunity for official acts, as the trial judge decided he did not.
My guess is the court will wait until the last day of their term, in July, to decide that he does have immunity for official acts. Then it'll get sent back to the trial judge who will fairly obviously rule that these were not official acts. Then Trump's attorneys get a couple more months of delay while they appeal it up the chain losing. This easily pushes his federal cases beyond the election.
After the election, depending on the results, this will 1) all be settled and he will face trial or 2) he becomes President and self pardons or otherwise kills the prosecutions.
Nowhere does this court case align with acts that the president performed in an official capacity - rather this is about things outside of the scope of his duties. Campaigning for example, is not an official duty. Attempting to subvert the outcome of an election is not an official duty. Trump is claiming that these things are on the "outer orbit" / fringe of his duties, so he's trying to argue that these are official acts, but that is not the case.
The argument that interfering with any part of an election is ANYWHERE associated with a President's official acts is farcical at best, and this should have been dismissed right out of the gate.
I completely disagree with how you are framing this as an argument about official acts (and I could have just misinterpreted I suppose). It makes it sound like the argument is whether he has immunity for official acts. Presidents DO have immunity for official acts, that's not the question here. It's a question on whether unofficial acts like electioneering are part of a president's duties, and they are squarely not.
The argument is over official acts because of the ruling of the District Court. The judge very specifically didn't rule on whether or not these were official acts but ruled that there's no immunity even for official acts. So in this case right now before the Supreme Court that's all they're going to evaluate. They spell it out in the grant of the writ of certiorari.
I think there's a substantial chance that there will be immunity for official acts. But that's also why I think it's fairly obvious that once it gets back to the District Court the judge will find these aren't official acts. It's just unfortunately going to burn up more time to get there.
I see that now after re-reading part of the ruling, thanks for guiding me there. What a mess.
Executive immunity isn't limited to official acts in any case. That limit has been theorized, but existing case law has not established it. The outcome of this SCOTUS case will likely be the official answer - and the only hope of any good outcome is that the court granted cert because they intended to establish that limit to limit presidential power.
While possible, I'm not optimistic that this is the intent.