Well, the best laid plans always get interrupted.

We have been waiting and waiting for the Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit to weigh in on whether

former President Donald Trump has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, and finally it has.

So today, there's more to say about this unanimous opinion

from three judges of the Court of Appeals. Let's situate ourselves in place, time, and purpose.

We're in federal court in Washington, D.C. as part of what we have been calling kind of the January 6th

criminal prosecution of the former president.

Four charges in this case, conspiracy to defraud the US

by overturning election results, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of,

an attempt to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote, and conspiracy against the rights of people to have their votes count.

In response to this indictment, the former president filed multiple motions to dismiss,

the heart of his argument is that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for things he might have done while he was president.

The district court judge, Tanya Chutkin, denied his motion to dismiss.

We discussed her opinion in another episode and we'll link it here if you haven't listened

to it. Judge Chutkin's work was excellent and I really think it's worth spending time with.

So Trump appealed her order and when he did, the Special Counsel did something pretty unusual.

He went to the Supreme Court and asked the Supreme Court to bypass the Court of Appeals

and go ahead and take this case on an emergency basis.

The case was scheduled to go to trial on March 4th,

and Jack Smith's office really wanted to keep that trial date.

But the Supreme Court declined.

Now I happen to think that was the right thing to do.

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