The Supreme Court has on its plate, or could soon take up, a host of other legal issues related to former President Donald J. Trump. And its decisions on these questions could have a significant impact on the many criminal and civil cases Mr. Trump is facing.
Perhaps most important, the justices agreed last week to hear Mr. Trump’s claims to be immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. In their order saying they would hear arguments in the case the week of April 22, the justices indicated they would answer the question of whether — and to what extent — presidents enjoyed immunity from being charged for anything they did as part of their official duties.
While the court’s ruling on immunity will have an obvious and lasting impact on the scope of presidential power, it had an immediate effect on the timing of Mr. Trump’s election interference trial. The schedule the justices laid out has made it all but impossible for the case to go in front of a jury before about September.
In December, the court announced a separate move: that it was going to review the viability of an obstruction statute that forms the core of election interference case against Mr. Trump — and that has been used against hundreds of rioters who attacked the Capitol as part of a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
The obstruction law — formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512 — sits at the heart of two of the four counts in the election subversion indictment that was filed against Mr. Trump in Washington in August. Those two counts accuse him of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election that was taking place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then actually committing the obstruction.
For more than three years, however, defense lawyers have argued that the obstruction law has been improperly stretched to cover crimes like those that took place at the Capitol. The statute, they claim, was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2022, which was originally meant to curb corporate malfeasance by forbidding things like destroying documents or tampering with witnesses.
If the justices agree that the law has been interpreted too broadly, it could mean that prosecutors will have to pare back on introducing evidence at trial that ties Mr. Trump to the violence that erupted at the Capitol — a key part of their strategy. It could also have a significant impact on the sentences imposed against many Jan. 6 rioters and affect the way that similar defendants are charged moving forward.
Finally, some legal experts have suggested that Mr. Trump could seek to have the Supreme Court consider some of the money judgments he has been ordered to pay in recent civil cases. But that might be a stretch because his lawyers would have to find a constitutional question in the cases that would merit review by the justices.
Still, those cases could include the one in which a jury imposed a penalty on Mr. Trump of $83 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll who claimed he raped her and a separate case in which a state judge in Manhattan penalized Mr. Trump about $450 million after finding that he had spent years fraudulently inflating the value of his real estate holdings.
Another case coming to the Supreme Court could have a big impact on Trump.
Image
A statue of a seated person in front of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court in Washington.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The Supreme Court has on its plate, or could soon take up, a host of other legal issues related to former President Donald J. Trump. And its decisions on these questions could have a significant impact on the many criminal and civil cases Mr. Trump is facing.
Perhaps most important, the justices agreed last week to hear Mr. Trump’s claims to be immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. In their order saying they would hear arguments in the case the week of April 22, the justices indicated they would answer the question of whether — and to what extent — presidents enjoyed immunity from being charged for anything they did as part of their official duties.
While the court’s ruling on immunity will have an obvious and lasting impact on the scope of presidential power, it had an immediate effect on the timing of Mr. Trump’s election interference trial. The schedule the justices laid out has made it all but impossible for the case to go in front of a jury before about September.
In December, the court announced a separate move: that it was going to review the viability of an obstruction statute that forms the core of election interference case against Mr. Trump — and that has been used against hundreds of rioters who attacked the Capitol as part of a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
The obstruction law — formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512 — sits at the heart of two of the four counts in the election subversion indictment that was filed against Mr. Trump in Washington in August. Those two counts accuse him of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election that was taking place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then actually committing the obstruction.
For more than three years, however, defense lawyers have argued that the obstruction law has been improperly stretched to cover crimes like those that took place at the Capitol. The statute, they claim, was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2022, which was originally meant to curb corporate malfeasance by forbidding things like destroying documents or tampering with witnesses.
If the justices agree that the law has been interpreted too broadly, it could mean that prosecutors will have to pare back on introducing evidence at trial that ties Mr. Trump to the violence that erupted at the Capitol — a key part of their strategy. It could also have a significant impact on the sentences imposed against many Jan. 6 rioters and affect the way that similar defendants are charged moving forward.
Finally, some legal experts have suggested that Mr. Trump could seek to have the Supreme Court consider some of the money judgments he has been ordered to pay in recent civil cases. But that might be a stretch because his lawyers would have to find a constitutional question in the cases that would merit review by the justices.
Still, those cases could include the one in which a jury imposed a penalty on Mr. Trump of $83 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll who claimed he raped her and a separate case in which a state judge in Manhattan penalized Mr. Trump about $450 million after finding that he had spent years fraudulently inflating the value of his real estate holdings.
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