Dem
51
GOP
49
Donald Trump claimed that presidents are like kings: They are above the law and cannot be prosecuted, even when they commit crimes. He asked the Supreme Court to support this claim. It is expected that the Court will release its ruling on the matter today. It could rule that yes, presidents are like kings; no, presidents are not like kings; or sometimes presidents are like kings. The latter option could be that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts (e.g., killing civilians in drone strikes they ordered) but could be prosecuted for private acts (e.g., shooting someone on Fifth Avenue). We will probably find out today.
But in a larger sense, by delaying the case so long, Trump may already have won, no matter what the ruling. Trump filed his claim on Feb. 12 and it took almost 5 months for the decision to be handed down. Even if it comes today, the trial on his egging his supporters to invade the Capitol, which was originally scheduled for March 4, is unlikely to happen before the election. That is what he wants. If he wins, he will just order the DoJ to drop the case. Of course if he loses, a trial will happen. This motivates Trump very much to win, by hook or by crook.
Is the Court in the tank for Trump? When the Colorado secretary of state ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment precluded Trump from being on the ballot because he incited an insurrection, the Court did the bunny hop and ruled on the case within a month. But on the simple case of whether a president can even be tried for allegedly committing a crime, it took 5 months. Strange, no? No matter what the ruling is today, it is only about whether a trial is even allowed. It is not about whether Trump committed a crime.
If the ruling is that official acts cannot be prosecuted but private ones can be, the Court is likely to order U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold hearings to determine if egging a mob on to attack the Capitol is part of the job description of the president. She might decide to hold the hearings this summer. Trump might try to appeal the timing, but Chutkan might rule that appeals of timing decisions cannot be appealed. If hearings commence before the election, they could be quite damaging, since Special Counsel Jack Smith would then formally present all the evidence against Trump to show that giving a political speech is not an official presidential act. We will probably know more later today. We'll have a rundown of this, and all the other rulings the Court has handed down in the past few days, tomorrow. (V)