Just got finished reading the decision in United States v. Trump, which you can read here.
Like some others, I thought that the Republican judge on the panel was holding things up indefinitely, and I still sort of think that the other two judges had to work on her to get her to join in what is definitely a strong decision.
One ironic thing in the decision is that the most difficult issue facing the court, and the one most likely to prevent them from issuing a decision at all, was a jurisdictional argument made by one of the amicus briefs, to the effect that the issue was such that it could not be raised until after the conviction, i.e., that an appeal was not yet in order procedurally. The court spent a lot of time dealing with that issue, and I think it was the only issue raised by anyone that had a chance to prevail over the government’s position. Trump couldn’t argue in favor of it, since he was the appellant, meaning he’d taken the appeal in the first place, and he could hardly argue that the court had no jurisdiction over his appeal. Actually, with Trump and his lawyers you never know.
The rest of the opinion makes long shrift of Trump’s absurd immunity arguments, in that it devoted more ink to them than was logically necessary, though not politically. None of his arguments make sense, particularly the double jeopardy argument that, having been acquitted in an impeachment, he could not be tried again. The argument is absurd on its face, but the court treated it, along with the other frivolous arguments, as if it was a serious issue, but did get in the fact that Trump’s lawyers made the exact opposite argument at his impeachment trial.
I’m fairly hopeful that with the exception of Clarence, the Supreme Court (even Alito) will take a pass on Trump’s inevitable appeal to that august body.
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