The US supreme court’s Wednesday decision to hear Donald Trump’s claims that he cannot be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election marked the court’s direct entry into the 2024 presidential election. The decision to hear the case and delay his criminal trial in Washington DC was unquestionably one of Trump’s biggest legal victories to date.
Fending off the 91 criminal charges against him, the cornerstone of Trump’s legal strategy has been to try to delay each of the four criminal trials against him until after the election. If he wins the presidency, he would have the power to install an attorney general who would dismiss the federal cases against him. His claim of immunity in the federal election interference case brought by Jack Smith, the justice department’s special counsel, is seen as novel and a long shot, but it nonetheless has succeeded in slowing down the case against him.
