Former President Donald Trump's lawyers have requested that Trump's classified documents trial be paused after a U.S. Supreme Court decision granting presidents immunity for official acts.
Lawyers representing Trump requested a pause on all proceedings in the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith except those dealing with Smith's requested gag order on Trump.
They want the trial paused until presiding Judge Aileen Cannon can apply the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling to the facts of the case.
It's expected that the decision will have a massive impact on Smith's indictment. Some suspect that the indictment could fall apart entirely thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling.
Trump's lawyers filed a request with the court on Friday that read, "Consistent with President Trump’s pending motion to dismiss based on Presidential immunity, the Supreme Court explained in Trump that it would ‘eviscerate the immunity we have recognized’ if a prosecutor could "do indirectly what he cannot do directly — invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution to nonetheless prove his liability on any charge."
The Supreme Court recognized that the tangled web of charges and evidence that has been brought against Trump could very well run afoul of presidential immunity.
Even if not all parts of Smith's indictment are not covered under presidential immunity, the effect of even parts of Smith's indictment being wiped out will likely bring the whole complicated prosecution down.
The filing continues by saying, "Thus, ‘even when an indictment alleges only unofficial conduct,’ which is not the case here, prosecutors cannot ‘[u]se evidence' of official acts. Based on this reasoning, like the trial court in the Trump case, Your Honor must undertake the ‘necessarily factbound analysis’ regarding whether alleged conduct ‘is official or unofficial.'"
Basically, the trial will have to be paused while Judge Cannon works to determine what evidence covers official acts, and therefore cannot be used, and what evidence covers unofficial acts.
The trial was already delayed but this could push things well past the election in November which is horrible news for Democrats.
Democrats hoped to get a conviction of Trump before the election in order to help President Biden. Now there is virtually no chance of that happening anytime soon and should Trump win in November, there's virtually no chance of this case going anywhere.
All of that comes before you even consider whether Trump is innocent or guilty based on the facts of the case alone.
Smith's case was a long shot from the beginning that needed a favorable judge in a friendly state. Judge Cannon has been impartial and isn't helping the prosecution along while the case is being tried in Florida which is a very red state.
While Smith's case isn't officially dead, for all intents and purposes, this case is dead as far as this election cycle is concerned.
