This is special coverage, the Supreme Court Presidential Immunity Hearing.

I'm Brian Lehrer on WNYC with you for the next 20 minutes.

Then we'll hand it off to NPR when their network special coverage begins at

950. The oral arguments themselves are scheduled to start at 10 o'clock. And what's it all about?

Well, the nine justices of the Supreme Court, three of them appointed by Donald Trump, are hearing

arguments today on Trump's claim that he is immune from the charges filed against him by special counsel Jack Smith for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The justices will decide if a jury can even consider whether Trump tried to defraud the government and the people of the United States into keeping him in the presidency after an election he lost.

Can he even potentially be held accountable if he committed that democracy destroying crime while

in office? With us for more context is Melissa Murray, NYU Law Professor, co-host of the Legal

Affairs Podcast, strict scrutiny, and co-author of the Legal Affairs Podcast, Strict Scrutiny, and co-author of

the Trump indictments, the historic charging documents with commentary. She was a guest on my show

last month for that book, and Melissa Murray has a New York Times op-ed in advance of today's hearing

called The Supreme Court has already botched the Trump immunity case.

And if we have time, we'll touch on election interference, indictments in Arizona yesterday,

and maybe the gag order ruling expected today in the New York so-called hush money case.

Professor Murray, I know this will be a busy day for you, so thanks for some time.

Welcome back to WNYC. Thanks for having me, Brian. So I'll bite on your Times headline. How could the Supreme

Court have already botched this immunity case before they even heard it? Well, I should say

the authors don't always write the headlines, but I do think that the court has botched this because the real question

here is timing. No legal scholar imagines that the court is going to credit Donald Trump's

broad argument that he's entitled to absolute immunity from criminal liability. So the real

question is, when is the court going to simply affirm that view, which it's very

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