The Supreme Court got its ruling in Trump v. Anderson out just before Super Tuesday. Heading into this past weekend, it wasn’t clear when the decision on Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility would come, but then the justices abruptly announced Monday as an opinion day. That seemed to telegraph a ruling in the ballot case, and so it was (in Trump’s favor, as expected).
I recount that brief history because timing is a crucial factor in another Trump case on the high court’s docket: his immunity appeal. If Trump v. Anderson’s timing is any indication of how soon an immunity decision could come, it doesn’t necessarily bode well for special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution in the federal election interference case.
While everyone knows that a Trump presidential victory in November would empower him to crush the prosecution, that practical reality isn’t formally at issue in the immunity appeal. Indeed, the justices don’t seem overly bothered by further delay in the Washington prosecution, because they could’ve just rejected Trump’s immunity appeal and sent it back for trial, or they could’ve scheduled arguments for sooner than the week of April 22. To be sure, if they had wanted to punt the case definitively past the election, they could’ve taken more aggressive delay measures. But the high court’s actions have put the viability of a lengthy trial before the election in question, to say the least.
So if Super Tuesday was the court’s deadline for Trump v. Anderson, what’s the deadline in the immunity appeal (officially “Trump v. United States”)? There really isn’t one, as far as the justices are concerned. They typically issue the term’s final decisions by July, and it’s reasonable to view the court’s moderately expedited late April hearing date as a sign they will rule by that unofficial late June deadline.
But the court has many important cases to resolve at that point in the calendar. That’s when the most contentious decisions arrive because they take the most effort to sort out. With Trump v. United States now added to that end-of-term crush, the question is whether and to what extent the court prioritizes the immunity appeal. And, assuming the ruling goes against Trump, any dissenting justices could add further delay. Ultimately, if it takes the court until the last minute of its unofficial end-of-term deadline, like it did with the ballot case ahead of Super Tuesday, that could make a federal election interference trial before the election all but impossible.
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