The ‘bank shot’ Trump pins his hopes on

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a Get Out The Vote rally at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C., Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Breath is bated among special counsel prosecutors and defense attorneys on Donald Trump‘s roster alike this week as the parties await a significant decision from the U.S. Supreme Court: Will the justices agree to delay Trump’s election subversion trial while he appeals the question of his immunity from criminal prosecution?

“It’s a 60-40 chance that they do answer it,” Brookings Institute senior fellow and legal analyst Norm Eisen said in a phone interview with Law&Crime on Friday. “They shouldn’t grant cert. They should today treat the filings that have been made as a petition for certiorari and summarily deny it.”

He cautioned, however, the justices on the high court “may not be able to resist” wading into the debate.

But even if they do decide to take up the question, triggering a new flurry of legal filings and splitting the attention of some of Trump’s lawyers yet again — some on his defense team in Washington also represent him in other venues where he faces indictment — Eisen is confident it will not spell doom for the prospects of the election subversion trial now on hold. It was originally slated for March 4.

“It doesn’t necessarily throw things out of whack because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s 2016 election interference and hush money case [against Trump] is set for March 25 … that will occupy April and May and if the Supreme Court moves at a reasonably abbreviated timetable, then they will be able to dispose of the case and get [the election subversion trial] back on the docket for this summer,” Eisen said, recalling that the presiding judge in the matter in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, has already forecast that the parties will need just 90 days to deal with pretrial motions.

If the Supreme Court does go to the trouble of answering Trump’s question, Eisen said he is confident they court will reject the premise.

“There is no absolute immunity in American law. It’s a pure delay game that Trump is endeavoring. That’s really all it is and I think there are sufficient votes up there to interdict that,” he said.

Eisen said he imagines oral arguments would be a “fiasco” for Trump, just like it was when his attorneys tried their luck with the appellate panel and found themselves unanimously rejected. It could potentially be a devastating blow.

“The evidence is very negative for him. He’s got a bad judge from his perspective — which is what everybody else would call a good judge — a jury pool that is not going to be well disposed to him. So you can understand why he has put such a desperate effort into this immunity event. Its really only a question of whether he can do a bank shot: delay this trial, win the election and then order the case dismissed or pardon himself. That’s his only hope,” Eisen said.

Law&Crime takes a look at those developments and others in Trump’s cases in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York.