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 at all the Trump trial–related developments you might have missed the previous week.
Last week, the Supreme Court considered the question of whether Donald Trump should be shielded from federal prosecution by presidential immunity, and a majority of the conservative justices seemed ready to side with the former president. Meanwhile, in New York, Trump’s hush money trial continued, with prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg introducing their first witness. And in Arizona, the state attorney general announced a new criminal indictment over the Trump team’s fake electors scheme.
The Supreme Court might grant Trump some immunity
Last week, the Department of Justice and Trump’s lawyers argued over presidential immunity at the Supreme Court in a case that could make or break special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference indictment. And after nearly three hours of oral arguments, a majority of justices seemed poised to give the former president a hugely consequential win.
John Sauer, Trump’s attorney, argued the “presidency as we know it” would be over if presidents were not granted immunity from criminal charges, claiming that vindictive prosecutors would target them for any controversial decisions made in office as soon as they leave it. He also reiterated an argument that Trump’s legal team has used to push back against all of his criminal indictments: Congress must impeach and convict Trump before he can be criminally prosecuted. Meanwhile, Michael Dreeben, a lawyer representing Smith’s office, emphasized that the Supreme Court has never recognized absolute presidential immunity and that the Constitution already has multiple checks to prevent vindictive prosecution of a former chief executive.
The justices ultimately focused on whether a president’s “official acts” could be criminally prosecuted—and if so, what distinguishes “official” acts from “private” ones. Justice Brett Kavanaugh (a Trump appointee) suggested that prosecutors could only charge a former president under criminal statutes that explicitly state they can be applied to presidents, which justice Sonia Sotomayor quickly pushed back on. “If we say a president can’t be included in a criminal law unless explicitly named, then that would bar the Senate from convicting him for high crimes or misdemeanors,” she argued. “Because that means that [Trump] is not subject to the law at all.” (As Sotomayor also pointed out, there are only a tiny handful of criminal statutes today that explicitly name the president.)
In an analysis of the day’s oral arguments, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained that the court’s conservative justices made it clear they disapproved of Smith’s indictment of the former president. “To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act,” they wrote.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a final decision in June and could end up kicking part of Trump’s appeal back to the US Court of Appeals to reconsider. The procedural back-and-forth means Smith’s already slim chances of putting Trump on trial before the November election are looking even slimmer.
Arizona indicts Trump’s inner circle
It’s been nearly one year since Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes launched a criminal investigation into the fake electors scheme—in which Trump supporters plotted to overthrow their state’s 2020 election results for Joe Biden—and it has finally produced a criminal indictment.
Mayes has indicted 18 people, including former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and John Easton, adviser Boris Epshteyn, and aide Mike Roman. The former president himself is not named in the indictment, but is most likely “Unindicted Co-conspirator 1.”
Arizona is now the fourth state to announce a criminal indictment stemming from the fake electors scheme, joining Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada. Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, and others allegedly pressured Arizona GOP officials to keep Trump in power, leading to 11 Trump supporters organizing in the days after the 2020 election to send a false certificate to Congress certifying Trump had won the state of Arizona. (He didn’t; Biden won by 10,457 votes.)
Arizona was an especially sensitive loss for Trump; Fox News was the first network to call the state for Biden, with about 73 percent of the vote counted. Trump then declared the election was a fraud and said states should just stop counting any votes and leave it up to the Supreme Court to decide.
The hush money trial continues with a key witness
David Pecker is the former CEO of American Media Inc. and was a key ally to former president Trump—until now. During last week’s hush money trial, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg introduced Pecker to the jury, and the former executive offered pretty damning testimony.
Pecker outlined a strategic effort by then-candidate Trump to influence the 2016 election by controlling what stories would get published in tabloids owned by Pecker, like the National Enquirer. The two men held meetings where Trump checked in on the status of hush money payments to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Trump. Once elected, Trump even held a “thank-you dinner” for Pecker at the White House. (Here’s a refresher on who is who in Trump’s hush money trial.)
Slate’s Jeremy Stahl, who is in court covering the trial, explained that Pecker’s testimony enabled prosecutors to “tie Trump directly to the conspiracy to influence the election—a crucial element of the case that elevated the record-keeping offense to a felony.”
The prosecution also brought in Rhona Graff, Trump’s personal assistant who worked for the Trump Organization for 34 years. She testified that she had a “vague recollection” of seeing Stormy Daniels at Trump Tower and confirmed Trump had both Daniels’ and McDougal’s contact information.
It has now been two weeks since Trump’s hush money trial began and Bragg’s strategy is becoming clear: He’s making the case that Trump and his allies deliberately organized a scheme to keep damaging stories about him out of the press in order to protect his political image leading up to the 2016 election. And it wouldn’t be a true Trump trial without a battle over a gag order, which started after Trump publicly criticized witnesses across 10 separate posts on his Truth Social account. Meanwhile, the former president is continuing to complain that the courthouse is “freezing.”
