Donald J. Trump’s lawyers want to argue that a Supreme Court decision giving presidents immunity for official acts should void his felony conviction for covering up hush money paid to a porn star.
My understanding reading this is that they’re worried that some of their evidence might have just become privileged and inadmissible via the whole “can’t use testimony or communications between the president and his staff” part of the ruling.
I doubt that the SCOTUS ruling actually saves him here. It seems to me at least that the prosecution is agreeing to postpone sentencing mostly to go back and make sure that they aren’t likely to lose too much of their evidence on appeal.
It effectively guarantees an appeal though. “Evidence shown to the jury was inadmissible” isn’t something a few months of delay changes, so it feels like they should just do the sentencing and start the process. Even if the judge rules that those weren’t official acts, that ruling will be appealed and the good liberal judges in New York will feel obligated to play the Supreme Court’s game regardless of how made up their BS is. Which again puts consequences beyond the election.
My understanding reading this is that they’re worried that some of their evidence might have just become privileged and inadmissible via the whole “can’t use testimony or communications between the president and his staff” part of the ruling.
I doubt that the SCOTUS ruling actually saves him here. It seems to me at least that the prosecution is agreeing to postpone sentencing mostly to go back and make sure that they aren’t likely to lose too much of their evidence on appeal.
It effectively guarantees an appeal though. “Evidence shown to the jury was inadmissible” isn’t something a few months of delay changes, so it feels like they should just do the sentencing and start the process. Even if the judge rules that those weren’t official acts, that ruling will be appealed and the good liberal judges in New York will feel obligated to play the Supreme Court’s game regardless of how made up their BS is. Which again puts consequences beyond the election.