Interference charges. Now, i will remind you, the court could have just affirmed the u. S. District courts ruling that, no, a president ial does not have absolute immunity. But that was not the decision tonight. And while hearing the case does not mean that ultimately they will rule in trumps favor, the highest court in the land just gave trump something that he has been aggressively fighting for, time. The Oral Arguments in the case have been set for the week of april 22nd, nearly two months from now. Why so much time . And after that, even in a best case scenario, it will be a few weeks before a decision comes down. That is the best case considering we know that there are at least some of the Supreme Court justices who dont agree with the earlier rulings. Otherwise, they would not be hearing the case. And if the court does decide to affirm the earlier ruling, as they should, and hand the case back to District Court judge tanya chutkan, she would need a few months to get the case back on track and a trial. That would take us past july when donald trump is expected to become the partys nominee. And at that point, what will the doj and Attorney GeneralMerrick Garland decide to do. Will they move forward with the trial that would have to get under way during the heat of the general election . Or would they allow trump to yet again evade accountability before the president ial election . Joining me now is a power house legal panel andrew weissmann, former fbi General Counsel and former Senior Member of the mueller probe. Melissa murray, Law Professor at New York University and msnbc legal analyst. Maya wily, former u. S. Assistant attorney and president and ceo of the Leadership Conference on civil and human rights and paul butler, former federal prosecutor, and msnbc legal analyst. A power house panel indeed. Im going to go to those who are at a disadvantage because theyre not here at the table with me, andrew. Im going to start with you. And i am to be honest with you, a bit dejected by this ruling because im not a lawyer. Im a nonlawyer on this panel. But i read the District Court ruling. And it seemed very thorough. I had you on. I had all of you all on. And i think weve all agreed that it was thorough and that it didnt necessarily need the Supreme Court to jump in. But now they have. Can you explain to me why they need until april to actually hear Oral Arguments and what that means for us . I think there are two ways to think about it. One is the substance of the decision about president ial immunity. And the other is the clock, the timeline. As you pointed out, with respect to the substance, it is hard to find somebody other than one of trumps Defense Counsel who is actually with a straight face making the argument that you can kill somebody by ordering s. E. A. L. Team 6 to kill a political adversary and that is official acts of the president that are immune. And so, theres very little substance. And you have two really spectacular decisions of the District Court and the Court Of Appeals. So then you deal with the timeline and this issue of does the Supreme Court somehow think it needs to give sort of the stamp of approval, that shows the highest court of the land, it should weigh in on this issue. There is a lot tonight to be pessimistic about. If the Supreme Court thought that they had the opportunity to hear this case directly from the District Court, if you remember, jack smith had asked the court to take the case directly, to jump over the Court Of Appeals. And they said, no. It should go in the normal order. The other thing they did is they could have said they could have ruled on this quicker. I mean, it took them two weeks to decide just this. And then joy, to your note, is that they have scheduled this in a certain way, in an expedited fashion but not all that expedited compared to bush v. Gore. This is two months. I want everyone to understand, this case has been fully briefed. There are it was briefed at the District Court level. It was briefed at the Court Of Appeals level. And its not like this is a case where the Supreme Court is thinking, oh, you know i hadnt really been following the news. I hadnt really read all these cases. This is one where there is nothing that would have prevented the court from saying, you know what, were going to hear this next week or two weeks from now. So, theres just a lot of reasons to be very pessimistic. Not maybe so much about the ultimate decision, but the ultimate decision is almost irrelevant because even if they were to say that a president is not immune by delaying it so much, they are de facto saying that this former president is immune. And theyre essentially having a sort of de facto veto on the grand jury process and the rule of law by just sitting on the case in the way they have. But i think ive now monopolized this really stellar panel too much. No, you have not. I think your points were very well made and important to make. Melissa, you did clerk for the great Sonia Sotomayor. Michael ludic was on with Nicole Wallace earlier and he said something i think seems true and chilling. He said that for them to have taken this case at all means that it is likely that there are members of that body, of those nine, who actually think that donald trump does have absolute immunity, that theres a question. It is not a unanimous, you know, that they have sort of already conferred and thought about it, yeah, he does, he does have absolute immunity. There are a lot of different ways to read this joy. I want to emphasize something that andrew said. This case has been fully briefed. Both at the District Court level, d. C. Circuit court level and fully believed since February 15th, two weeks ago. They had ample time to consider this and the decision below at the d. C. Court, was very careful, very methodical and went through all of trumps arguments many were specious to the point of being stupid. And they dealt with them fairly. And gave them more attention and frankly they deserve. But here we are. The Supreme Court is going to hear this case on april 22nd. Again, months from now. This is as andrew says, a victory for donald trump, because it is a delay, a significant delay that will make it much harder for this case to go to trial. What does it mean . And what does it say about the internal workings of the court . I think thats harder to say. But, surely we know that there are some members of the court who are perhaps more sympathetic to the position that a former office, once he is out of office, enjoys absolute immunity acts he took during the presidency and they want to hear that question. What andrew said about the d. C. Court, judge florence pan could a president order s. E. A. L. Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and enjoy absolute immunity and the lawyer hedged. I wonder if that was a kind of poison pill that galvanized both the right and left flanks of this court that the right, yes, we will definitely answer that question. And the left, we must answer that question and make clear that is absolutely impermissible and in that way that really devastating hypothetical may have set the stage for making sure the court took this up. I said that when the case was first briefed and decided by the d. C. Circuit that i thought that hypothetical meant that this could would have to take it if only to confirm that was not the case and here we are. And here we are. Let me come to the table. Ill start with you, paul. The judge Tonya Chutkan laid out the amount of time that would be needed to put this case through, to give donald trump and jack smith both enough time to prepare. So were talking about maybe 88 days of preparation for a trial that could last four months, three months. Were now talking about a timeline that takes us way past the july convention, right up to the election. Something like october. Thats where we stand. If it is october, the trial could start then. It would run through the election. But not through inauguration day. Thats our best hope, joy. Our nation has to turn its afraid eyes to judge chutkan. She said that she doesnt care about a defendants day job. She says that a criminal trial must take precedent. And so, however late it is, im hoping based on her belief in the system, the rule of law, and that no person should be above the law, that if the court actually allows this case to go to trial, then it will happen, at least begin before the election. Let me come to you, maya. Im making maya be my anger translator today. I volunteered. Im not making her do it. She volunteered. Shell be my anger translator. If theres not if this is not adjudicated before the election, can you imagine Merrick Garland think about Merrick Garland. Put him in your mind for a moment. Allowing the not potential nominee, but the actual nominee of the Republican Party to go to trial before the election . Well, i will not say what Merrick Garland will or will not do. I will say this, it will be very, very, very, very difficult for anyone in any position of power to not feel some heat from a whole lot of americans that are going to say, i want the ability to see, know and understand what a jury of Donald Trumps peers think about the evidence that he actually engaged in probably one of the most devastating things we have seen in our democracy, certainly in our life times. And so the pressure on that alone would be quite significant. I can just imagine the level of protesting that we might see on the capitol. But we have paul and i were talking in the green room. We have to worry about that in both ways because we have seen the violence and the threats and the danger and the dread that has been created by the way in which donald trump and others weaponize legitimate criminal process including threats against judge chutkan. Against judges, against jurors, against anyone who engages in the process in any way. And that we cant take for granted that we are going to continue to have peaceful processes, whether its the counting of electoral counts, or, or even the proceedings we have in courts because we have already seen that that is one of the reasons i will be your anger translator, joy, is because just think about what Melissa Murray said to us and melissa is incredibly wise and thoughtful, is that it means that were we are such the down under, the deep, dark side that we have to have a conversation and a Supreme Court decision that says you cant call up s. E. A. L. Team 6 . What world do we ever think we need to have a Supreme Court say that. I cant help thinking, andrew, im sorry you and i had this conversation before, that we would not be here were it not for Merrick Garland. Merrick garland took almost three years to adjudicate the case against donald trump, to the point where he allowed him to dance around the system, to create delay after delay after delay, to the point where it appears that the only sanction against him will be in the Hush Money Case where he paid off a porn star and the fact that he now owes 455 million to the state of new york, which he likely will now be able to order the rnc to pay in full because he will be the nominee and because the whole point of the campaign at that point will be to fight a case that begins a month before the election. I cannot help but think about Merrick Garland in a different world prosecuting him right away for the attempted coup. I couldnt agree with you more. The issue of the clock, the timeline, is something that a lot of us who have done longterm criminal investigations were sort of screaming, please pay attention. The clock is everything here. It took too long for the department to get off the stick. Jack smith, to his undying and unyielding credit. Yes. Has really taken up the mantle and acted quickly upon his appointment so it is not on him or judge chutkan. Amen. And i do think that its important now i mean that is sort of theres a lot to talk about there. But in terms of where we are, you know, thinking about if you are jack smith and he has this incredible team, including Michael Dremin who argued so many cases before the Supreme Court, they have to be thinking about what are our various options now. They have to be thinking about a phrase that i know maya is going to be familiar with which is slim to win. They have got to be thinking about what can they do to cut down the case. They had said it might be three months. They got to be thinking, what do we do to get this case to trial if and when they get a green light from the Supreme Court. And with that slimmed down case, you can be sure theyre also going to be thinking about going back to judge chutkan and saying i know youre thinking a one to one, but you had thought seven months was the right amount of time, but were telling you this case is going to be shorter and narrower. So they have to be thinking about, what leverage do they have, all of that, though, is contingent on a Supreme Court thats actually not going to sit on this case. And there are many, many ways they could there could be a decision that either comes too late or a decision that sort of sends it back for fact finding that basically takes those levers that jack myth has and takes it out of his hands. Andrew weissmann, you have been so kind. Youve been trapped on television for hours and hours and hours. Im going to allow you to have your evening. Thank you so much for staying a little bit later so you could talk with us. Thank you. I appreciate you, my friend. Of course. Of course. Ill let you go and keep the rest of the panel. Ill talk about this potential slim down case. Ill have you hold that thought for one moment. I want to go back to melissa and very quickly ask you, once they get this back and there are Oral Arguments, how long does that take . It really depends on the court, joy. I mean, we have seen in Bush V Gore This Court move very expeditiously because they wanted george w. Bush to be president. Lets just be honest. They moved quickly because they wanted to very quickly install the five of them, including some that are working on this court now that were working for the bush side, they wanted bush to be president. Theyre like we have to do this fast. Go on. Sorry. I think another consideration, though, is this court doesnt necessarily want to be in the middle of the election. Right . So thats definitely something that has to be weighing on at least some faction of the court. And it reminds me of what we saw in the trump versus vance and trump versus mazar cases the congressional subpoena, new york grand jury Subpoena Cases that were heard in the middle of the pandemic. Again, in those cases, really hot button issues, could have had a real influence on the 2020 election if the subpoenas had actually resulted in the production of the evidence that was requested from both congress and from the new york grand jury. And instead what the court did was remand both cases back to the lower courts to adjudicate using in the case of the congressional subpoena a new standard that the court had determined, which was really a very similar standard to what likely was used by the lower courts any way and allowed it to go forward in vance. Again, it was such a long and extended timeline that it really had no bearing on the election at all, which i think was by design. This court did not want its fingerprints on the election. And i think thats going to be a consideration here as well. So, i dont know how the court is going to move or how quickly. It could have moved very quickly on February 15th by simply affirming the decision below. Okay. Well go really quick. You seem to have thoughts on this, paul. The court decided bush versus gore in less than a month, u. S. Versus nixon in a month. Bush versus gore is four days. I dont think the fix is all the way in. The conservative justices will have a difficult time buying trumps claim of absolute immunity for anything he has ever done. To slow drag the case, sounds like the conservative justices are doing what they can to help the former president out. The president who appointed three of those justices. To help them out, you have the judge in florida, who seems to be slow walking that case to help him out. You have these Supreme Court justices. I can imagine alito just thinking of all the wonderful trips he could take if it works out for him the right way. Clarence, he love a trip, too. I dont think these people are not i dont think theyre neutral. I think that some of them have feelings that they would like him to be president again. So i dont trust them. But i wanted you to go ahead and answer that question about lets just say this drops on judge Tonya Chutkan in october. How can she speed it up . Or how could jack smith speed it up . Its really jack smith because any criminal case its really the prosecutor that decides how many people am i bringing to trial and how many counts and what counts am i bringing. So really youre always looking at number of people but youre also looking at what am i going after them on. Right. And so, you know, i think if youre a jack smith and paul will