EmptySlime

Yeah that doesn't surprise me at all. This has been his M.O. right along.

1. Rule the most egregious shit that pretty much anyone can see where it leads.
2. Call the opposition hysterical when they point out the logical conclusion of his ideas.
3. Pretend to be shocked when the opposition is proved right if he acknowledges it at all.

But hey, just calling Balls and Strikes guys. Nothing to see here.

This particular kind of hearing might not necessarily need to conclude before the election to be impactful. Trump's lawyers arguing with a straight face that his alleged attempt at subverting the election was actually an official act just before the election could be fairly damaging on their own.

My understanding reading this is that they're worried that some of their evidence might have just become privileged and inadmissible via the whole "can't use testimony or communications between the president and his staff" part of the ruling.

I doubt that the SCOTUS ruling actually saves him here. It seems to me at least that the prosecution is agreeing to postpone sentencing mostly to go back and make sure that they aren't likely to lose too much of their evidence on appeal.

The payment by Cohen to Daniels for her story happened before the election. The problem is that a bulk of, if not potentially all of the fraudulent payments to Cohen from Trump to reimburse him didn't happen until he was president. I don't remember exactly when the repayment started.

The worry I guess is that while the crime itself doesn't involve official acts, some of the evidence of the crimes used in the trial might have just become privileged communication that can't be used as evidence. I don't think anything has changed personally reading it, but I'm no lawyer. So they might have agreed to postpone the sentencing as a bit of caution to review everything to make sure that too much of their evidence didn't just become inadmissable. Basically, it seems mostly like a bid to make sure they don't get torched on appeal.

"You guys are reading too much into this... There's no way that any reasonable person would consider that an official act and this hypothetical president would surely be swiftly impeached and convicted. You're worrying over nothing."

• Roberts, probably

They've pulled that one a lot recently, haven't they? I seem to recall one of the other recent rulings, I think it was against the EPA basically being a hypothetical about a proposed rule they hadn't even actually passed yet?

Delaying until after the election was the main point yeah. He did get a couple other goodies from it though to my understanding. Presumption of immunity and not being able to admit testimony or communications of the president and his staff being the big ones from what I'm reading.

But absolutely Remand is the big prize for Trump here. Having the case remanded back to the lower courts all but guarantees that it won't be concluded before the election. Hopefully it doesn't entirely gut the other prosecutions as well but I don't have a lot of faith that it isn't going to basically kill the other cases.

Biden has the chance to do quite possibly the funniest Thing™ in American history.

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear

Yeah. The Roberts Court has been nothing if not the Court of Post-Hoc Justification. They're great at concocting the most batshit crazy of legal theories to reach the outcome they want after shopping for the perfect cases to do so. I'm absolutely positive that if/when he gets an appeal to reach SCOTUS they'll give him exactly what he wants even if they have to tie themselves in logical pretzels or even directly contradict themselves to do it.

Wouldn't be that simple. The Stormy Daniels case was about things that happened before he became president. Sure reimbursing Cohen might have occurred at least in part while Trump was president, but Cohen was never part of the administration. They were disguising the reimbursement as paying Cohen in his capacity as Trump's personal lawyer. So there's pretty much nothing that this ruling does to hamper this case.

That said, I have no doubts that they'd find some way to rule in his favor if an appeal managed to land in front of them. But I think he'd have to go through normal appeals first, he can't just go straight to SCOTUS.

ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!