Why does the Trump immunity decision further delay the trial?

Question

Why is Trump heralding this as a victory, and why are Democrats and the liberal justices saying this puts the president above the law?

There’s another excellent question on the Trump immunity decision with a lot of answers, but I still have questions. That question is more about the facts and substance of the ruling, whereas I’m struggling to find answers about the implications of it.

Thanks to that other question and its answers, I think I’m au fait with the facts and substance of the decision. Basically they’ve found that the president enjoys near total immunity for official acts as president (total immunity for some acts, partial immunity for others; I can’t quite remember the distinction.)

But wasn’t that the status quo before Trump’s appeal? Isn’t that just how presidential immunity worked? My understanding was that it didn’t put the president above the law because criminal acts would never be official acts of the president and the president’s official duties would never include criminal acts.

Surely the indictment against Trump alleges criminal acts well beyond his official duties. So how does this decision contradict the indictment?

It’s been sent back to the prosecutor, prompting another delay (probably what the conservative justices intended), but how does this delay things? What is it that Chutkan has to decide or clarify or amend for the trial to go ahead?

And how is the president above the law now? Surely, like I said, there’s no way criminal acts could be construed as official presidential duties, right?

Answer 1

Basically, the issue is that the immunity issue needs to be briefed in light of the newly established SCOTUS immunity test, after the deadline for rehearing of the SCOTUS decision expires. SCOTUS articulated a test but didn't rule on how it applied to this case leaving that to the lower courts in the first instance.

Then, since it is a question of immunity, however, once the trial judge rules on the immunity question, it is an immediately appealable order. So the question would then appear before the D.C. Circuit and receive a full briefing and oral arguments there. There could also be a petition for certiorari again, to the U.S. Supreme Court, if a party was unhappy with how the D.C. Circuit ruled. Certiorari might or might not be granted at that point depending upon the D.C. Circuit's ruling.

Once the immunity issue was finally decided, then pretrial preparations would begin again, on schedule. But with four months and four days until the election on November 5, 2024, all of this is very unlikely to happen and be completed prior to election day. SCOTUS Blog reviews the timeline of the current appeal in the case, which illustrates how long a summer-fall rerun of the first round of immunity briefing and appeals might take. Realistically, it might take six months for that process and another three months of pre-trial preparations for a trial and the trial itself.

The possibility of this kind of delay in the timing of the trial was widely anticipated when the U.S. Supreme Court initially granted certiorari in this case.

If Trump does not win the Presidential election in 2024, all of these things will run their course, and a trial will probably be held sometime in 2025. But if he is elected, a standing Justice Department policy of not bringing criminal cases in federal court against a sitting President could complicate the case procedurally in yet another unprecedented way.

Incidentally, Trump is not a young man at 78 years of age. If he died, perhaps of natural causes in old age, before a criminal trial and all appeals from it were completed, any convictions entered at trial would be vacated and the case would be dismissed.

Answer 2

Surely the indictment against Trump alleges criminal acts well beyond his official duties. So how does this decision contradict the indictment?

It's worth noting that the Supreme Court's decision does not just create (two kinds of) immunity for the president's official acts. It also hinders prosecution of a president's private acts, by forbidding his official acts being entered into evidence and presented to a jury.

A president's official acts, for which he has immunity, may nonetheless provide evidence of his state of mind. A concrete example in the January 6th case is Trump's discussions with Justice Department officials, in which he allegedly pressured them to lie to the public about the evidence of voting fraud. The prosecution does not allege that such pressuring is itself criminal, rather they intended to use it as evidence showing that Trump knew his claims of voting fraud were false. However, a president's discussions with Justice Department officials are certainly official acts, hence the immunity ruling precludes those discussions being used to show Trump's mens rea when prosecuting him for unofficial acts.

This most likely means the prosecution need to rethink their strategy for convincing a jury, since much of the evidence they intended to present is now off-limits. Even if they are able to assemble a convincing case with the remaining evidence, this will be another factor adding to the delay of the trial.