Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - The Trump Trials Doomsday Clock Just Ticked a Second Closer to Midnight
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
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After weeks of waiting, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down a decision in Donald J Trump’s appeal for sweeping immunity from prosecution for any of his actions while in office on grounds of a kind of post-presidential enduring presidenty-ness. The panel of three judges wrote: “We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,”
In this extra episode of Amicus, exclusive to our Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern and Slate’s jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl to answer the huge questions this decision now sparks - will the Supreme Court step in? If so, when? Are there votes to stay the decision while the court mulls, or to expedite a hearing? All of this, of course, is set against the countdown to November 2024 and whether Donald Trump will be tried for alleged criminal acts to overturn the 2020 election before the American People go to the ballot box this time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome back to Amicus. |
| 0:06.5 | This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and democracy and the Supreme Court. |
| 0:13.0 | I am Dahlia Lithwick. |
| 0:14.4 | I cover those things for Slate. |
| 0:15.8 | And we are out with an unscheduled midweek episode of amicus to discuss the much-awaited 57-page decision |
| 0:24.6 | that came down from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday in the Jack Smith criminal case that is connected to the events of January 6, 2021. |
| 0:37.1 | Now, that case, which was supposed to open next month, has been on a long pause as Donald |
| 0:43.3 | Trump's lawyers appealed a very broad claim of presidential immunity that had been decided |
| 0:49.5 | against him by Judge Tanya Chutkin. |
| 0:52.9 | On Tuesday morning, in an unsigned, Per Curium opinion, |
| 0:56.8 | three judges decisively rejected. Trump's claim that the former president is immune from any |
| 1:03.3 | criminal prosecution, first of all, based on principles of separation of powers, and secondly, |
| 1:09.2 | because the impeachment judgment clause prohibits his prosecution |
| 1:13.0 | unless he has been impeached and convicted for that conduct first. |
| 1:18.8 | Joining us today are Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern and our jurisprudence editor, Jeremy Stahl, |
| 1:25.5 | who are going to help pick through the significance both of |
| 1:29.1 | this ruling and also to understand where Trump's immunity claims can possibly go from here. |
| 1:35.9 | Slate Plus members have access to the full version of this episode. If you're not a Slate Plus member, |
| 1:42.4 | we're going to share a little taste of that conversation. |
| 1:45.7 | You can head to slate.com slash amicus plus to become a member and to listen to this episode in full. |
| 1:53.0 | That's slate.com slash amicus plus. Hi, Mark and hi, Jeremy. Welcome to the bonkers paloosa that is Trump collision cases at the Supreme Court. |
| 2:06.3 | Hey, Delia. Hey, Mark. |
... |
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