Legal expert lays out 3 paths Supreme Court could take with Trump immunity decision

30 June 2024

Two months after the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments from Donald Trump lawyers seeking immunity from prosecution for the former president, the justices are expected to issue a decision on Monday, July 1.

Their ruling will come just ten days before the MAGA candidate is set to receive sentencing in his Manhattan hush money trial.

On Sunday, criminal defense attorney and CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson laid out three different ways the high court could potentially rule.

"This is likely to be the most talked about ruling from the Supreme Court this year," CNN correspondent Isabel Rosales emphasized, speaking with Jackson. "How do you think the nation's highest court will decide tomorrow?"

Noting the justices heard oral arguments from the ex-president's team in April, "were there any hints or clues there as to how they might go with this?" Rosales asked.

"I think the clue was that they won't go the standard route, and they'll do something a little different than we expect," Jackson said. "So let me lay out what I perceive to be the path forward. The one path would simply be to say that there's no immunity. And I think that there would be a legal basis for that. Remember, at the district court level, we had a trial judge to say that a president is not a king. There are rules, no one's above the law. That was really sustained by not only the district court, but the appellate court, that is the court of appeals, who said essentially the same thing — that there is no immunity from the prosecution. And so the Supreme Court could take that route and say, 'There's no immunity, nothing to see here, let's go.' That probably won't happen."

The veteran defense lawyer continued, "The second thing that they could do is something a little bit more nuanced. Remember that a significant decision the court needs to make, I think, is what's official and what's unofficial. And so you could see this nuanced decision as it relates to the president's immunity, as it relates to official act, but it's no immunity, as it relates to unofficial act. And if they did that, that gets to the third point, which is the Supreme Court can then remand it down to the trial court for further findings consistent with that opinion. Consistent how? Consistent with making there be a determination from the trial court as to what's official and what's not."

"I'll go a step further," Jackson added. "They could even les out a standard for what that means, and that standard could be a factual determination, which would be a jury determination, and not a judicial determination. And that would lead to even more confusion. So there's a lot of options here. But the one option that I would note is that the one thing we should note is yes, this is immediately about Trump, but remember, Supreme Court speaks to the entirety of the country, and it speaks not only to the issues that are presently before them, but it speaks to future generations. And so when you say, Isabel, that it's a 'significant ruling,' wow, is this a very significant ruling that we all await on Monday."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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