After Immunity -- What Might Be Next In The Florida and DC Trump Prosecutions?

Cases Begun Rashly and With Bad Decision-Making Usually Cannot be Fixed With Just a Few Tweaks at the Margins.

The ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States exactly one week ago are only beginning to be understood and appreciated.

But one conclusion is almost inescapable — neither federal case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith will get before a jury prior to election day. The same is certainly true of the case brought by Fulton County DA Fani Willis in Georgia.

What impact the decision will have on the convictions suffered in New York State court weeks before the decision is covered at the end of this article.

As for the three cases that have not yet gone to trial, leaving aside for the moment the issue of the disqualification effort involving DA Willis, I want to focus on the hurdles created by the Court’s decision in trying to get any of these three cases to trial having to do with presentation of evidence in a courtroom to a jury - no matter how hungry that jury might be to “skip to the end” and vote to convict.

1. Justice Thomas’s Concurring Opinion — coming out of nowhere — basically instructing Judge Cannon in Florida on how to write her opinion granting the Trump Defense’s motion to disqualify Special Counsel Smith for not occupying an office “created by law.”

2. The indictments in all three jurisdictions — District of Columbia, Southern District of Florida, and Fulton County — are all potentially compromised by the improper use of factual evidence before the grand juries that will likely fall within the boundaries of Presidential immunity. There is no clear answer on if/how the filed indictments can be salvaged, and each case may be forced to start over from the beginning without using that material — including many of Trump’s public comments — in order to obtain new indictments.

3. How the pretrial proceedings in any of three courts will now undergo a prolonged and highly contentious process of isolating and removing any official conduct by President Trump that were within the boundaries of Presidential immunity. Not only will the decisions rendered by each judge likely be processed under different procedures and standards. There will eventually have to be a reconciliation — likely back in the Supreme Court — of any inconsistencies in the outcomes with regard to how the boundaries of “official acts” are determined.