There was very bad news for Donald Trump in Monday’s Supreme Court decision, and arguably even worse news for candidate Trump. That’s because Mike Pence is going to walk into a federal courtroom, raise his right hand, take an oath to tell the truth, and testify against Trump in this case in September for an evidentiary hearing.
What Monday’s decision did was give Trump absolute immunity applying to one paragraph of the indictment. The rest of the indictment goes back to Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom, where the Supreme Court has ordered her to have a hearing about the evidence in the case to determine whether Trump’s actions were “official acts,” meaning they may be protected by immunity, or not. That goes for everything in the case, except for one conversation that Trump had with the acting attorney general.
In this hearing, basically there’ll be some briefs on each side. And then the judge will schedule a day and say, “OK, we start today, Mr. Smith. Who’s your first witness?” It’s exactly like a prosecution.
Sometimes, pretrial, in the evidentiary process, prosecutors don’t want to turn over all their cards. But Jack Smith is going to have to turn over every single one of them. Because the Supreme Court has said to him, in effect, “We need to see every single one of your cards.” So every witness he has, he’s going to bring them into that courtroom. They’re all going to be under oath and the defense is going to be able to cross-examine them. The defense probably won’t bring in any witnesses at all. So you’re going to see this incredible Jan. 6 hearing on steroids possibly for six to eight weeks in September to October. This is an adapted excerpt from MSNBC’s special coverage of the presidential immunity Supreme Court ruling on July 1.
Lawrence O’Donnell hosts “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” at 10 p.m. ET on MS NOW. His latest book is “Playing With Fire: the 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics.”
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