Supreme Court gives Donald Trump’s White House bid another shot of momentum

It took 12 minutes on Monday for Donald Trump to react to the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling granting him broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions as president.

“BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” The decision “should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me”, he said.

The court’s 6-3 ruling, along partisan lines, was a big legal victory for the former president — but it was also a significant political win, all but eliminating the chance that the Republican candidate in this year’s White House race will face another criminal trial before polling day in November.

It puts Trump on a roll. A man indicted by the federal government for trying to upend the 2020 election result appears highly unlikely to face any trial for the allegation before Americans vote in the 2024 rematch with Joe Biden — a vote that polls suggest Trump is in pole position to win.

The Supreme Court ruling came just days after a presidential debate on Thursday that was widely seen as a disaster for Biden, triggering chaos in his party and calls for him to step out of the contest in the days after.

“Thursday, Friday and Monday combined have been the best three days of the Trump campaign so far,” said Republican party operative Ford O’Connell. “Thursday night was a political earthquake. And what has happened since has just given Trump even more momentum.”

The ruling from the court — which includes three justices appointed by Trump — marks another stunning turn in this year’s presidential race. Six months ago, many Democrats, and some Republicans, believed the array of legal problems facing Trump would compromise him in the eyes of American voters and destroy his ability to campaign while he spent weeks on trial. Now he is staring at a clear campaigning calendar until November.

The former president was already enjoying a narrow edge of about 1.4 points, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight polling average, despite his earlier felony conviction in New York. Trump also remains ahead of Biden in surveys of the swing state voters that will decide November’s election.

The Biden campaign on Monday circulated its own internal polling memo showing Trump with a two-point lead in battleground states over the president — a margin aides were keen to point out was unchanged since before Thursday’s debate.

But the campaign also sought to turn the focus away from Biden’s debate debacle and back on Trump, slamming him for his efforts to upend the 2020 election result and his role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

“Trump is already running for president as a convicted felon for the very same reason he sat idly by while the mob violently attacked the Capitol: he thinks he’s above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and hold on to power for himself,” said a senior Biden campaign adviser.

Biden himself made a brief, hastily arranged statement at the White House on Monday night, accusing the Supreme Court of setting a “dangerous precedent” and doing a “terrible disservice” to the nation by making it “highly unlikely” that Trump would face another trial before polling day.

“Now, the American people will have to do what the court should have been willing to do, but will not,” the president added. “The American people have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behaviour.”

But Democrats privately acknowledged that by pushing any trial for Trump’s role in January 6 beyond the November election, the Supreme Court’s ruling was a new low point for the Biden campaign.

The decision shields Trump from criminal prosecution for “official” acts he committed while president, leaving lower courts to define how those acts might differ from personal ones. That time-consuming process virtually guarantees that Trump will not face trial before the election.

“The math is not just daunting, but I think precludes any trial” before November, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School.

If Trump wins the election and returns to office in 2025, he could also order the Department of Justice to drop the case.

Have your say

Joe Biden vs Donald Trump: tell us how the 2024 US election will affect you

Meanwhile, Trump had faced sentencing next week for his guilty verdict in last month’s “hush money” trial — making him the first ex-president to become a convicted felon. But Trump’s lawyers are now seeking to set aside the verdict, and sentencing has been postponed until September 18.

The high court’s decision could also lengthen the delays in other criminal cases where Trump has claimed immunity.

A second federal indictment accusing Trump of mishandling classified information is focused heavily on actions he took after leaving the White House. But Richman argued Trump’s lawyers might seize on the concurring opinion filed in the immunity ruling by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to fight the documents case too.

The judge presiding over that case has in any event already postponed the trial indefinitely amid a pile-up of pre-trial legal battles.

Thomas said the DoJ’s appointment of a special counsel, who is overseeing both of Trump’s federal indictments, raised “serious [constitutional] questions” that needed to be answered before the elections interference case could go ahead — an argument made by the ex-president’s lawyers in the documents case too.

As for the case in Georgia accusing Trump of election interference, Richman said the Supreme Court’s analysis of the president’s constitutional powers would “need to be carried over to that case as well” even though proceedings are at a state level.

That case is also on hold anyway, pending an appeals court’s decision on whether to disqualify Fani Willis, the district attorney overseeing the indictment, over a romantic relationship she had with an outside attorney hired by her office.

All told, in other words, the array of legal problems Trump was facing a few months ago suddenly look much less daunting and much less threatening to his re-election bid.

When it comes to the court of public opinion, meanwhile, Republican operatives insist that the impact of the Supreme Court immunity ruling paled in comparison to the boost for Trump from Biden’s debate disaster.

Bryan Lanza, a managing director at Mercury Public Affairs who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and his White House transition team, said the debate was going to “dominate the conversation” for some time.

“Nothing will be a boon to Donald Trump’s campaign like Joe Biden’s debate performance last Thursday . . . everything after that is almost insignificant,” said Lanza. “People throw away spoilt milk. What voters saw on Thursday was that Joe Biden’s presidency has spoilt.”