The highest US court comes to Trump’s aid – what this means for the elections Looking for an apartment for a year: ‘We have no more claims. We’ll take it all!”

The Supreme Court did Donald Trump a major favor on Wednesday. The nation’s highest court decided to hold a hearing in late April to discuss whether an ex-president can be held criminally responsible for illegal official actions — or whether he enjoys “total immunity,” as Trump claims.

By granting a request from Trump, the Supreme Court indirectly supported Republicans’ delaying tactics. The presidential candidate appointed by the right-wing party wants to do everything he can to avoid being tried before election day on November 5. Polls show that a possible conviction of Trump could hurt him at the ballot box.

That’s why he has his lawyers write papers, or he puts obstacles in the way of the prosecution. Trump has always been successful, although not everywhere. (The trial over hush money payments to a porn actress during the 2016 election campaign is set to begin in late March in a New York state court.)

Special case of Trump

The Supreme Court did not explain Wednesday why at least four of the nine justices granted Trump’s request. However, the interim judgment states that this step should not be over-interpreted; the Supreme Court has not yet dealt with the substance of the case.

This statement suggests that the justices consider the question at the heart of this dispute too important to leave the answer to a lower court. In fact, the dispute that Trump started revolves around the separation of powers, a pillar of the democratic constitutional state.

Trump takes the position that a president deserves absolute protection from criminal prosecution. Otherwise, there is a risk of an endless spiral of bad decisions and revenge attacks by political opponents. (This argument is rather unrealistic, since Trump is the first president in the long history of the American republic to be charged in a criminal case.)

His lawyers therefore said that a president can only be taken to court if he has been successfully removed from office by the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, impeachment proceedings are virtually hopeless in the current political situation in the US. Trump was tried twice in the Senate, and even the trial after his supporters stormed the Capitol ended in an acquittal.

A lawyer for Trump even said before the appeals court: this condition applies even to the hypothetical case if a president were to order the assassination of his political opponent by a special squad.

The legal representatives rejected these arguments in the court of appeal. That would mean the end of the separation of powers, according to the lower court ruling. It is difficult to imagine that the Supreme Court will back away from this prescient decision and seek to elevate the president to the rank of monarch. But the devil is in the details.

The trial will not begin until the end of summer at the earliest

And the time pressure on Special Investigator Jack Smith is increasing every day. Because as early as January 2025, after a possible election victory, Trump could move back into the White House. And stop all federal proceedings against him.

Theoretically, the Supreme Court could make a ruling after a hearing at the end of April before the start of the summer holidays in early June. This would mean that Trump’s trial, which centers on his efforts to stay in power after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, would begin in federal court in Washington at the end of the summer. (The case is currently on hold.)

Trump could not really be happy with the successful delay of the start of the trial; the negotiations in court in Washington would have a major influence on the hot phase of the election campaign. In federal court, a suspect in a criminal case must attend proceedings day in and day out.

If the Supreme Court decides that Trump is immune from legal action, the charges in the election fraud case would be null and void. The allegations in the document affair, which revolves around the misappropriation of classified files, should probably be withdrawn by special investigator Smith.