A Patient Hearing of Trump Case Is the Right Move

The decision of the Supreme Court to reject the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a rushed appeal on President Trump’s immunities is best read as an acknowledgement that the case presents serious constitutional questions. Mr. Smith sought to depict Mr. Trump’s strategies as a delaying tactic, but the justices want to wait for a bit longer. That patience, we’d like to think, will be rewarded with the crafting of better jurisprudence.What is lost by further cogitation on the privileges conferred on the presidency by the Framers, as Mr. Trump advocates? America has been thinking on these questions for two centuries, after all. Adding to the strangeness of Mr. Smith’s request is that his timeline would have skipped the D.C. Circuit altogether, a forum where Mr. Trump’s foes have thrived. Why deprive the riders of another opportunity to have their say? It would not surprise us if the justices were ultimately swayed by words put to paper in Mr. Trump’s brief to the court. He wrote that “importance does not automatically necessitate speed” and added that “If anything, the opposite is usually true. Novel, complex, sensitive and historic issues — such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — call for more careful deliberation, not less.”Three cheers for that. We understand the special counsel’s rush — he wants, in his words, “resolution by conviction or acquittal” before a potential return to the White House on the part of Mr. Trump. It is difficult, though, for a more political motivation to be imagined. And this, for a lawyer appointed by Attorney General Garland who has time and again protested that 2024 calculus is excluded from his prosecutorial equation.The justices, though, are bound neither by Mr. Smith’s deadlines nor the political calendar. They do not even have term limits, for goodness sake. As our A.R. Hoffman reports, the special counsel’s request arrived to the court, unusually, following a lower court victory for Mr. Smith. Usually appeals are the course of the disappointed, not a way for prosecutors like Mr. Smith to press an advantage. It is Mr. Trump who is owed another hearing.The immunity of the president is no small matter, but it has been only lightly litigated. A combination of carpaccio-thin precedent and hasty decision making hardly seems like the right recipe. Mr. Trump noted to the justices that Judge Chutkan’s trial date of March 4 “has no talismanic significance,” which is true — in this realm, at least. As we’ve noted, it is the “accused” — here, Mr. Trump — who is owed a “speedy” trial.Mr. Smith is no doubt frustrated that his case before Judge Chutkan is suspended while Mr. Trump’s appeal is deliberated. That, though, is not the fault of the 45th president. It is a tribute to the importance of the immunity question that judges, over decades, have seen fit to decide it before a case can proceed. It’s a good thing for both sides, in our view, that the court offers the accused the time to get a resolution that cuts no corners with due process.

A Patient Hearing of Trump Case Is the Right Move

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