Trump Lawyers Demand Indefinite Pause on Documents Case in Wake of SCOTUS Ruling

Former President Donald Trump's lawyers have asked Judge Aileen Cannon to pause Trump's classified documents trial after a U.S. Supreme Court decision affirmed presidential immunity for official acts.

Trump's lawyers requested a pause on all proceedings in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith except those dealing with Smith's requested gag order on Trump. 

Smith has poured substantial resources into gagging Trump in order to keep him from talking to supporters about the case.

Now it is likely that the trial will be paused until Judge Cannon can apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling to the facts of the case.

It's expected that the decision will have a massive impact on Smith's case against the former president. Some suspect that the indictment could fall apart entirely thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling that has sent Democrats into a raging fury.

Smith In Limbo

Trump's lawyers filed a request with the court on Friday that read, "Consistent with President Trump’s pending motion to dismiss based on Presidential immunity, the Supreme Court explained in Trump that it would ‘eviscerate the immunity we have recognized’ if a prosecutor could "do indirectly what he cannot do directly — invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution to nonetheless prove his liability on any charge."

The Supreme Court recognized that the tangled web of charges and evidence that has been brought against Trump could very well run afoul of presidential immunity.

Even if not all parts of Smith's indictment fall under presidential immunity protections, the effect of even parts of Smith's indictment being wiped out will likely bring the whole complicated prosecution down.

The filing continues by saying, "Thus, ‘even when an indictment alleges only unofficial conduct,’ which is not the case here, prosecutors cannot ‘[u]se evidence' of official acts. Based on this reasoning, like the trial court in the Trump case, Your Honor must undertake the ‘necessarily factbound analysis’ regarding whether alleged conduct ‘is official or unofficial.'"

The trial will have to be paused while Judge Cannon works to determine which evidence covers official acts, and therefore cannot be used, and which evidence pertains to unofficial acts.

The trial was already delayed, but this development could push things well past the election in November, which is horrible news for Democrats. Trump is crushing Biden in the polls right now, and a criminal conviction could have potentially helped Biden's prospects.

Democrat Lawfare Fails

Democrats have been trying to convict Trump ahead of the election in order to give an assist to Biden. Now there is virtually no chance of that happening anytime soon, and should Trump win in November, there's virtually no chance of this case going anywhere.

All of that comes before you even consider whether Trump is innocent or guilty based on the facts of the case alone.

Smith's case was a long shot from the beginning, and it needed a favorable judge in a friendly state. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had those favorable factors going for him, but that conviction is now also up in the air due to the SCOTUS decision.

Judge Cannon has been impartial and isn't helping the prosecution along while the case is being tried in the red state of Florida, so Smith doesn't have nearly the advantages that Bragg had.

While Smith's case isn't officially dead, for all intents and purposes, it is as far as this election cycle is concerned. As far as regular Americans go, this is great news, as Smith's indictment is the encapsulation of the corruption in our justice system today.