The First Trump Criminal Trial Was Supposed to Start by Now. Instead, SCOTUS Handed Trump Another Big Win.

Keeping up with Donald Trump’s court schedule is a dizzying task, since he faces two federal trials, a criminal trial in Georgia, and two separate civil and criminal trials in New York. (Oh, and he’s running for president.) To make it easier to follow along, each Monday we’ll be looking back on all the Trump trial–related developments you might have missed the previous week.

Today was supposed to be the start of Trump’s federal election interference case, but instead the Supreme Court decided to take up the former president’s absolute immunity appeal, leaving that trial on hold until the summer. And speaking of the high court, they also decided on this fine Monday morning that states cannot disqualify Trump from their ballots because of his alleged engagement in an insurrection. In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon might finally be moving toward assigning a new trial date in special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case, while Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants a gag order on Trump ahead of his hush money trial that’s kicking off in exactly three weeks.

On Monday morning the Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from its primary ballots and ruled no state may unilaterally remove a presidential candidate from national office—a power that “rests with Congress and not the states.”

It’s a huge win for the former president, who has been kicked off three state ballots, with more than 10 states embroiled in ongoing legal challenges to his candidacy. These challenges are based on Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment, which says that any former officeholder who engaged in insurrection is disqualified from regaining public office. Colorado was the first state to use this clause to remove Trump from their ballot, and his appeal quickly landed before the Supreme Court.

Though the justices issued a unanimous decision in the Colorado ballot case, they were divided on their reasoning. The court’s most conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, plus Chief Justice John Roberts—joined an unsigned majority opinion declaring that only Congress may enforce Section 3 against federal candidates for office through some kind of enabling legislation. The liberal wing of the court—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—concurred in the judgment only, arguing the majority was overstepping and could not join an opinion “that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that the majority overreached, meaning the court really split 5–4 on the heart of the decision. (Mark Joseph Stern breaks down why the majority went further than it needed to, and the broader consequences that will have.)

As soon as the court’s decision came out, Trump was on Truth Social, posting with glee: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!!”

The highest court in the land granted another one of Trump’s wishes last week: The justices are making it very difficult for special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case to wrap up before the election. After taking over two weeks to consider Trump’s and Smith’s filings, the justices agreed to keep Smith’s case on pause while they consider whether the trial should be dismissed, as Trump has argued, because of presidential immunity.

A federal appeals court recently shut down Trump’s immunity argument, noting that presidential immunity is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution and therefore Trump is not shielded from criminal charges for actions he took in office. As expected, Trump fought that decision by first asking SCOTUS to pause the appeals court ruling while he works on filing a petition for review. Smith then filed a reply brief asking the justices to treat Trump’s request for a stay as a petition for review in order to fast-track this process. The justices agreed and now they get the final word.

Regardless of how the high court rules, it’s a big win for the former president. That’s because SCOTUS has bought Trump a lot of time, scheduling oral arguments for the week of April 22, and they likely won’t issue a decision until the end of June. And given that Judge Tanya Chutkan has suggested in court papers that Trump should get one extra day to prepare for every additional day his trial is delayed from her original March 4 trial date, Smith may end up having to wait until after November to try the former president. If Trump wins in the presidential election, it’s safe to assume he will try to dismiss Smith’s entire indictment.

The high court’s decision in this case could also impact Smith’s classified documents trial and the Georgia election interference case, where Trump has also claimed presidential immunity. The claim is not at issue in the New York hush money case.

Attorneys for Trump urged Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss Smith’s classified documents case, pointing to how special counsel Robert Hur decided not to prosecute President Joe Biden for classified documents he held on to—and Smith called foul.

“Trump, unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings,” wrote David Harbach, assistant special counsel. “And the evidence concerning the two men’s intent—whether they knowingly possessed and willfully retained such documents—is also starkly different.”

Harbach is referencing Hur’s report which concluded that, because Biden had cooperated with the Department of Justice and had “significantly limited” memory, it was unlikely jurors would be convinced Biden willfully held on to classified documents. That stands in stark contrast to Trump, according to Harbach, who argued that “the defendants have not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted.”

Last Friday, Judge Cannon held a hearing to consider when Trump should go to trial in Smith’s classified documents case, months after she suggested that her initial May 20 date wouldn’t hold because of potential overlap with the other trials Trump is facing. Prosecutors and the defense each presented their cases for when the former president should face a jury, and they unsurprisingly offered two very different timelines.

Smith’s team proposed that Trump’s trial should begin on July 8—one week before the Republican National Convention—while also dropping big news: The DOJ’s 60-day rule—an unwritten policy of avoiding prosecution close to an election—does not apply to the classified documents case because Trump has already been charged, and because the trial date is set by a judge, not prosecutors. Cannon signaled that a July trial would be “unrealistic,” given that there are numerous pretrial motions to be decided on beforehand.

Trump’s attorneys proposed that the trial should begin on Aug. 12, but noted that their first preference would be to delay the trial until after the November general election. Smith’s team accused them of putting out “fake dates” that they expect Cannon to end up pushing back again until after Election Day. “We just need to bring this case to trial this summer,” said Jay Bratt, prosecutor on the special counsel’s legal team.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, insisted that forcing a trial before November “is a mistake and should not happen.” He argued that it would force Trump off the campaign trail “for blocks of time for really no reason.”

The former president tried appealing the bond terms of his New York civil fraud case judgment, requesting to post only $100 million along with a promise to pay the full $450 million (and counting) judgment at a later time through a bond company. An appellate court judge turned him down, but did open another door for him.

As part of New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s decision, Trump not only has to pay $450 million for filing fraudulent financial documents, he’s also banned from getting a loan from a New York bank for three years and cannot run any New York–based companies. But in order to afford bond, Trump would need to rely on a loan, making the terms of Engoron’s verdict “impossible.” Appellate court Justice Anil Singh recognized that, and though he denied Trump’s initial payment plan request, he did pause the part of Engoron’s verdict that would prevent Trump from securing a loan.

Trump has until March 25 to cough up the $450 million fine, and if he cannot pay, New York Attorney General Letitia James has said she’s ready to seize his assets, specifically his New York properties.

Like many of the prosecutors trying the former president, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to get ahead of the inevitable: Trump attacking people associated with his criminal cases. So last week, Bragg filed a request for a gag order that would ban Trump from publicly attacking witnesses or exposing jurors’ identities in his New York hush money case. (This trial will start on March 25.)

Bragg argues that, given Trump’s “longstanding history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him,” the former president must be legally barred from “making or directing others to make” public comments about witnesses and jurors in this case. Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in the first degree. It goes back to the days of 2016 when Trump was campaigning for president the first time and allegedly arranged, then lied about, payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to stop them from publicly speaking out about their alleged affairs with Trump. (Trump denies the affairs and claims the payments to Michael Cohen were not criminal.)

Judge Juan Merchan is overseeing Bragg’s case, and if he approves the requested gag order, it’s likely that Trump will appeal it. Steven Cheung, spokesman for Trump’s presidential campaign, has already criticized Bragg’s move, calling it a “restrictive gag order, which if granted, would impose an unconstitutional infringement on President Trump’s First Amendment rights.”

It’s been two weeks since the start of hearings into a series of misconduct allegations against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the special prosecutor she hired, Nathan Wade. They’ve been filled with dramatic testimony, and last week was no different, as Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former business partner and divorce attorney, took the witness stand.

Bradley was less than thrilled to be testifying, but after receiving a subpoena he was forced to show up in court. He was considered a key witness for defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who initially filed the misconduct allegations against Willis and Wade last month, alleging the DA improperly hired Wade because he was her boyfriend and that the couple have a conflict of interest in prosecuting her client, Mike Roman. Trump quickly joined Merchant’s motion, and both defendants want Willis, Wade, and the DA’s entire team disqualified from the election interference case and all of their clients’ charges dismissed.

Both Willis and Wade have already testified and admitted to dating while working together, but argue there is no conflict. The hearing spent a considerable amount of time focusing on trips the couple took together with funds Wade earned through his work for Fulton County, which the defense argues is evidence of a conflict of interest. Both prosecutors testified that Willis paid Wade back for that travel, and Willis announced the couple was no longer dating.

Merchant grilled Bradley about the timeline of Willis and Wade’s relationship—both testified they started dating in 2022, about a year after Wade was hired by the DA—and he remained adamant that he had no “knowledge of it starting, or when it started.” But Merchant presented a text message exchange between herself and Bradley from January where he responded “Absolutely” to Merchant asking if Willis and Wade began dating before she hired him in 2021.

Yet on the witness stand, Bradley insisted he was just “speculating” about the couple’s relationship timeline. After Merchant repeatedly failed to get Bradley to divulge more information about the meaning behind his January text message, Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow also failed to get Bradley to explain why he would speculate when Merchant asked him a direct question. “I have no answer for that,” said Bradley, to which Sadow retorted, “Except for the fact that you do, in fact, know when it started and you don’t want to testify to that in court. That’s the best explanation.”

Closing arguments were presented later that day and Judge McAfee announced he would make a final decision about Willis and Wade’s roles in this case within the next two weeks. If he rules that Willis is disqualified, her entire office would be forced to step down too, and a new prosecutor would be assigned by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. Though it is exceptionally rare for a prosecutor to be disqualified, it does happen. In that event, there is no guarantee that the scope of Willis’ indictment would hold or when a replacement prosecutor would get assigned.