Two favors, actually.
The post Donald Trump Demands SCOTUS Do Him A Favor Though appeared first on Above the Law.
(Photographer: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The once and future president is breaking shit in all the courts at once. He’s hoping to get SCOTUS to nix his sentencing in New York, even as he tries to persuade the Eleventh Circuit to bottle up Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report long enough for incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi to burn every copy.
In New York, Trump demands that his sentencing be adjourned so he can pursue an interlocutory appeal of the denial of his motion to dismiss on immunity grounds. He insists that the conviction for creating false business records to cover up a hush money payment rests on official acts evidence, and thus he is entitled to an automatic stay until 2029 (or preferably never). Alternatively, his lawyers John Sauer and Todd Blanche have invented a theory of president-elect immunity that they can just about argue with a straight face.
So far, they’re not getting any takers. Justice Merchan just rolled his eyes, after which Trump filed an filed an emergency petition with the New York’s Appellate Division, which was summarily rejected by Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer after a brief hearing on Tuesday. Trump then made a token feint in the direction of the New York Court of Appeals before racing to SCOTUS and demanding that it enjoin his sentencing, which is currently scheduled for Friday morning.
“Forcing President Trump to defend a criminal case and appear for a criminal sentencing hearing at the apex of the Presidential transition creates a constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security and America’s vital interests,” vamped future Deputy AG Blanche and future solicitor general Sauer. “By contrast, the State of New York’s asserted interest in proceeding with the criminal sentencing of the President-Elect of the United States on politically motivated charges at breakneck speed at the apex of a Presidential transition should be accorded no weight.”
They blame the trial court for the last-minute filing, omitting to mention that Trump himself demanded three delays of sentencing, which was originally scheduled for July, and then waited three weeks after Justice Merchan rejected his immunity claims to assert said “automatic” stay: “Because it is highly questionable whether the New York Court of Appeals will act in the next 48 hours, filing applications in both courts appears to be the only viable option.”
Justice Sotomayor, who fields emergency requests from New York, has given District Attorney Alvin Bragg until 10 a.m. Thursday to respond. Then we’ll find out if the Supreme Court’s six conservatives want to hang Trump v. People of New York next to Trump v. US on its wall of shame before the outrages of the next four years even get underway.
Meanwhile in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon purported to stay the release of the special counsel report, despite apparently lacking jurisdiction over the documents case. Trump’s dimwit henchmen, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, simultaneously filed in the Eleventh Circuit, where they bizarrely asserted rights under the Presidential Transition Act and the Executive Vesting Clause. This may have something to do with the fact that at least one lawyer representing them, Stan Woodward, is headed to a job in the upcoming Trump administration.
The Eleventh Circuit, which does have jurisdiction, gave the DOJ until this morning to respond. And so today the government warranted that it will not be publicly releasing Volume 2 of the Special Counsel report detailing Trump’s efforts to steal government records and hide them in his pool locker until such time as the pending case against the dimwit henchmen is resolved.
“The essential premise of defendants’ emergency motion—that, absent this Court’s intervention, ‘Attorney General Garland is certain to make [the Final Report] immediately public’ and thereby cause irreparable prejudice to defendants’ criminal proceedings (Mot. 1)—is thus mistaken,” the prosecutors write, adding that “Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira have no cognizable interest in that volume of the Final Report, however, nor any plausible theory of Article III standing that would justify their asking this Court to grant relief with respect to it.”
This highlights the absolute insanity of allowing a trial judge who dismissed the case to order the DOJ to do anything at all, much less retain jurisdiction over the Justice Department for three days after the Eleventh Circuit’s disposition of the emergency motion.
“To avoid the potential need for further emergency litigation in this Court, the United States respectfully requests that this Court make clear in denying the motion that its resolution of this question should be the last word (absent review by the en banc court or the Supreme Court),” the DOJ notes pointedly. “The United States respectfully requests that, if this Court agrees that no injunction against the Attorney General is warranted, the Court should say so in an order binding on the district court and vacate the district court’s temporary injunction.”
Nauta and De Oliveira offered to respond to the DOJ’s motion by 10 a.m. tomorrow, only to be told that they can get their homework in by 5 today. Will they be asserting henchmen-to-the-president-elect privilege?
Probably!
US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener]
US v. Trump [11th Circuit Docket via Court Listener]
