Donald Trump has been jubilant over the US supreme court’s decision to consider his presidential immunity claim in the federal election interference case in Washington, especially as he has been told by his team that it could mean there might not be a verdict before the 2024 election, people close to him said.
The former US president has hoped for months that the trial itself might not occur before November, after his lawyers managed to put the case on hold and scored an extended delay while his immunity appeal worked its way through the US court of appeals for the DC circuit.
But Trump was buoyed last week by the supreme court’s move on Wednesday – he has raised it repeatedly every day since – after his lawyers suggested even if the trial does occur before the 2024 election, a jury might not return a verdict before voters decide whether to give him a second term.
The Trump campaign has long been tracking how a conviction in the four criminal cases Trump faces – the New York hush-money case, the Florida classified documents case, the Washington election case and the Georgia election case – might play with undecided voters.
The fact that there might not be a verdict in the case brought by the special counsel Jack Smith is potentially significant for his electoral prospects because internal and public polling has indicated a conviction in any of his criminal trials could be fatal for his campaign.
In a recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll of seven critical swing states, for instance, as many as half of voters said they would be very unwilling or somewhat unwilling to vote for Trump if he was convicted in any one of the criminal cases.
But while the Trump campaign has long been confident that they will be effective in downplaying the hush-money case by conflating it with his recent civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, they have struggled to come up with a messaging plan for the federal election case.
As recently as last week, Trump advisers privately conceded they were mostly stuck with claiming it was a political prosecution and trying to say the Washington jury pool skewed Democratic, a strategy that might work for Maga voters but not independents, a person familiar with the matter said.
The supreme court may have solved his problem.
The nation’s highest court on Wednesday set oral arguments in the presidential immunity claim for the week of 22 April, meaning that even if the justices ruled expeditiously by the middle of May, the probability of a trial concluding before the election has become slim.
That is because Trump has 88 days, or roughly three months, left on the clock to prepare his trial defense – the clock paused when Trump appealed his immunity claim to the DC circuit on 8 December – given the now-scrapped trial date was 4 March.
The trial itself is expected to take another three months. Prosecutors estimated their case in chief would take between four to six weeks, Trump’s defense could take another four weeks, jury selection could take at least a week, and deliberation might take another week: roughly 12 weeks.
In the best-case scenario for the special counsel, if the supreme court were to reject Trump’s immunity claim in May, that would pave the way for a trial to start in August, and a verdict by November – potentially going just beyond election day.
In the worst-case scenario for the special counsel, the supreme court takes longer to issue a decision, perhaps at the end of its term in July, then even though a trial could still start before election day, a verdict might not come until months after the election.
