Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he watches play on the 18th hole green during the final round of LIV Golf Miami, at Trump National Doral Golf Club, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A nonpartisan watchdog organization is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hurry up and decide former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch appeal for presidential immunity over his Jan. 6 charges.
In a brief filed this week, Common Cause says the high court’s own schedule, so far, has “facilitated” Trump’s “strategy of delay.”
“To avoid the appearance that this Court is favoring the election of Mr. Trump by indulging his requests for delay, it should decide this appeal as soon as possible after oral argument and issue its mandate forthwith,” the amicus, or friend of court, brief filed Monday reads.
In February, Trump asked the nine justices to indefinitely stay the federal case against him filed by special counsel Jack Smith. After some back-and-forth with the government, the court paved the way for an eventual, precedent-setting ruling on presidential immunity. Oral argument in the case was later scheduled for the very last day arguments could be held during the court’s current term.
The upshot of the court’s scheduling means their opinion could come sometime in late June. And, based on prior pretrial scheduling decisions by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — who will be overseeing the trial — such a late-coming ruling could push the start of the trial to just before or even after the 2024 presidential election.
A potential timeline is supplied in the filing, at length:
By the time of oral argument, there will just over six months left before the 2024 election. Without decisive action by this Court, the calendar would then pose a near-insurmountable problem. The district court has indicated that the parties will have 88 additional days to prepare for trial once the case is returned to it, and trial is expected to last up to two months. If this Court takes until the end of the Term before issuing its decision (i.e., the end of June), and allows its mandate to issue in the ordinary course (i.e., the end of July), and the trial court adheres to its statement that Mr. Trump will then have three months more of trial preparation, then the trial would start no earlier than November 1. In that event, a preelection verdict would be impossible regardless of the outcome of this appeal.
“Because of this Court’s tolerance for Mr. Trump’s delay tactics, his strategy is at the brink of succeeding,” Common Cause argues.
The amicus brief says any laggard decision-making by the high court on the Trump immunity issue will necessarily be contrasted with the court’s relatively-quick decision to allow Trump to remain on the GOP primary ballot in time for Super Tuesday voting this year.
“[I]f this Court allows Mr. Trump’s groundless claim of immunity to delay trial until after the election, just months after rushing to issue a decision in Mr. Trump’s favor before Super Tuesday in a case raising related issues, it risks being seen as placing a thumb on the scales in favor of his presidential campaign,” the brief argues.
The brief compares the two cases as having “potentially outcome-determinative effects” on the upcoming election. The brief then contrasts them and argues the high court “has treated the two cases in dissimilar ways that seem to favor Mr. Trump.”
The 45th president is facing four distinct collections of criminal charges in four different jurisdictions — New York State; Georgia; Washington, D.C. and the Southern District of Florida. In each case, Trump’s defense attorneys have availed their client of various procedural rights in an effort to delay trial for as long as possible.
Critics have warned that should Trump succeed in pushing back the start date of his two federal trial — in D.C. and Florida — past the election, and should he also win the election, a newly-minted, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney General would drop the federal cases.
Common Cause says, if such events transpire in the Jan. 6 case, the U.S. public will — and should — blame the justices.
“If this Court rejects former President Trump’s immunity defense, but it proves impossible to try Mr. Trump on the pending indictment in this case, that result — profoundly against the public interest — will be largely the consequence of this Court’s scheduling decisions,” the amicus brief goes on. “Just as importantly, it will be viewed by much of the American public as the consequence of those scheduling decisions. As a result, this Court is at serious risk of being perceived as attempting to influence the 2024 election in favor of Mr. Trump.”
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