Come Monday morning it will have been a week since the far right Supreme Court further throttled Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s conspiracy case against convicted felon former President Trump for his failed post-2020 election coup attempt and, minus one federal holiday for the Fourth of July, about three and a half working days have gone by without any response from Smith’s team on what the next step is going to be in the pre-trial motions that can now continue.
Most in the media are, not entirely incorrectly, more focused on the fact that the Supremes just gave the fat fuck a blank check to do whatever he wants if elected again, but the whole reason they made that ruling in the first place is that Team Orange successfully gamed the system he had already rigged and got their interlocutory appeal for “presidential immunity” decided there.
It’s far from over though. Most legal commentators see libs getting a consolation prize of a “mini-trial” in which Smith will have to present to Judge Tanya Chutkan evidence to see if it colors inside the lines of the MAGA majority’s intentionally vague definition of what is and isn’t an official act, all of it expected to be at least as politically damaging on the scale of the House January 6th Committee hearings. Maybe worse, if you want to indulge in some speculation floated earlier this year.
Another option fewer commentators have raised is that the trial is still doable in September if Smith rips out everything that implicates an official act and files a superseding indictment covering only what Trump did as a candidate but it’s unlikely to work given the way the ruling was precision designed to make seemingly everything Trump did potentially an at least “semi-official act” and thus subject to appellate review, allowing him to keep running out the clock past November.