Boston the fog of Todays Supreme Court news is the hard fact that donald trump is still scheduled to go to trial In Manhattan On March 25th to Face Criminal Charges in his first Criminal Trial, charges that he tried to effect the results of the 2016 president ial election i by making Hush Money Payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, who will likely become one of the star witnesses against donald trump in that trial, a witness who even Donald Trumps followers will have no problem understanding what she describes donald trump did with her alone in a hotel room while his wife was pregnant. And when she describes how donald trump delivered his Hush Money Payments to her. And i think r. That the Supreme Court did today is helping donald trump get out of the crushing weight of half A Billion Dollars of civil judgments he is now facing in new york. Today, donald trump said cihe i not rich enough to pay those judgments, after previously testifying under oath that he is rich enough to pay those judgments. We will get to those struggles, Criminal Defendant and civil defendant donald trump is facing a new york later this hour. Today, at least four members of the United StatesSupreme Court agreed to hear Donald Trumps appeal arguing that l president ial immunity protects him from criminal prosecution for the charges filed by jack smith against donald trump for crimes leading up to riand on january 6th. It takes only four members of the court to agree to hear a case, and of course it takes a majority of five members of the court to issue an opinion in the case. The Supreme Court threw out half of Donald Trumps appeal today and granted a hearing on the other half of the appeal. The part of the appeal the Supreme Court threw out otoday was donald e trumps claim of Double Jeopardy on the basis that he is now being prosecuted for some of the same crimes he was charged cwith in his secon Impeachment Trial in the United States senate, in which a majority of senators voted to find him guilty, but not the two thirds necessary to convict him. The Supreme Court gave trumps lawyers three weeks to submit their brief and gave jack smith then three weeks to reply to the trump brief, then the Trump Lawyers will get a final week for a ffinal written reply, an a week after that the Supreme Court will hear the arguments in the case on april 22nd. The Supreme Court is not being asked to provide total and absolute immunity for any and all possible criminal conduct by a president. Trump petition to the Supreme Court only asks for immunity for a president s official acts or, quote, those performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility. The argument trumps lawyers make tbefore the Supreme Court could be a rerun of some of what we heard in the Appeals Court. Could a president order s. E. A. L. Team six to assassinate a political rival . Thats an official act, an order to seal team six. He would have to be and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the colonel prosecution. But if you arent,ic there would be bno colonel prosecution, no criminal liability for that . The Chief Justices opinion marbury versus medicine and our constitution and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause all clearly presuppose what the founders were concerned about is i ask you a yes or no question, could a president who ordered s. E. A. L. Team six to assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution . If he were impeached and convicted first. So your answer is no . My answer is qualified yes. Jack smith one a procedural point with a Supreme Court today. Donald trumps lawyers were not actually asking for the Supreme Court to hear the case now. The Trump Lawyers were asking to send for the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Circuit Court of appeals for another hearing there before the full 11 judges of the Circuit Court of appeals. And jack smith s brief to the Supreme Court, jack smith argued there was no need for the Supreme Court to ue hear the case at all. But if the Supreme Court was inclined to hear the case, jack smith asked the Supreme Court not to send the case back for another round at the appeals course, but to set an expedited hearing at the Supreme Court, schedule that expedited hearing. And that is what the Supreme Court now is done. Leading off our discussion tonight is neal katyal, former acting isu. S. Solicitor general and host of the Podcast Courtside with neal katyal. He is a msnbc legal analyst. And neal, i want to begin the way all lawyers begin when they get these notices from the Supreme Court that theyre going to hear your case. They have the Supreme Court identified four the lawyers on both sides the question, and the only question, they want to hear addressed. And i want to give that question to the audience now. The question is whether, and if so to etwhat extent, does a forr president enjoy president ial immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office . How would you address that question . Well, if im jack smith, the prosecutor here, i would say absolutely not, or maybe heck no. And just point to the proud tradition of our constitution, which is at its essence, lawrence, there is one central idea, which is no person is Above The Law. And what donald trump has done throughout his presidency, before and after, is always a basically his arguments amount to im Above The Law. So when he was president and there was the tmueller report, which outlined ten crimes that he had committed, he said you cant indict me because im a sitting president. He then gets voted out of office , and then he commits crimes on january 6th to try to stay in office, and he says you cant prosecute me because im still a sitting president. So none, Congress Goes and tries to impeach him for this. And his lawyers go to the senate and say, oh no, you cant impeach him, you can only prosecute him after he leaves office. So then, jack smith does exactly that. They prosecute him after he leaves office. And he says, oh no, you cant prosecute me, because i was impeached before and i wasnt convicted, so now i can be prosecuted. Its all just a big shell game. It always adds up to the same thing, donald trump evades the law. And unfortunately today, lawrence, the Supreme Court put its thumb on the side of saying donald trump, we are going to help you evade the law. Theres lots of caveats we can talk about there in a moment, but that is, i think, the upshot of where we are today. And do you mean evade the law simply by the delay in the trial . Or are you anticipating, based on what youre seeing in this order intoday, that this court, five justices on this court could actually find some Immunity Provisions to apply to this case . I cannot imagine five justices, lawrence, On The Supreme Iccourt saying donald trump has anything like a serious legal claim here. It is so antithetical to everything we as lawyers, as as citizens, think about our government. And you know, the clip you just showed before illustrates the consequences. A president can go an assassins political rival and say its an official act and you cant prosecute him . Thats looney tunes, to put it mildly. So no, i dont think that is the worry. The Supreme Court agreed to hear this case and set a fairly slow schedule of hearing it on april 22nd. You know l trump wanted a longe schedule, but still, thats a long time. And for reasons that we can talk about, when you start doing the math, there is a real risk that donald trump could revade justice and evade this prosecution. It seems, according to the question that the Supreme Courtr is asking, that this could be a narrower argument in front of the Supreme Court. There might apparently there will be nothing about Double Jeopardy. Because those are the two questions the Trump Lawyers brought to the Supreme Court, the Double Jeopardy and this immunity for official acts, or as the Trump Lawyers put it, acts that are at the outer perimeter of official duties. It seems that discussion about the perimeter and what is an official act will be the focus of this argument. Thats exactly right, Donald Trumps lawyers have made another argument would Double Jeopardy, which was even more bogus then their absolute immunity one. Releasing s something. Youve got to try to come up with gan argument thats weake then the absolute immunity one. But Donald Trumps lawyers managed to find it, and the Supreme Court did not bother wanted to hear that piece of it, youre absolutely right. So it does turn on this t absolute immunity thing. And theun way that the court ha written it it says alleged official acts. And by the alleged official acts, they dont mean what the prosecutor is alleging, they mean what donald trump, the former , president , is alleging and the idea that someone can just stand up and say, while, because i was a former president , im alleging these are official acts, like try to launch a coup on january 6th, thats an official act, and now you have to evaluate my Immunity Claim. That cant possibly, lawrence, be what the law is. So im not worried about the Supreme Court ultimately doing the right thing when they hear this case. Im worried about how long it is going to take for the Supreme Court to Do The Right Thing Urand whether the America Public is going to be deprived in the interim of actually donald trump ever reaching justice. And theres one other point i would make about this, which has to do with prosecutorial norms. Because there is an informational asymmetry here. During this whole delay period, while trump, while the Supreme Court hears trumps case, trump can go out to the cameras and say the case is bogus and attack jack smith and all sorts of stuff. Federal prosecutors dont act that way. They only osget to speak throug their filings and their presentation of evidence. So now f with these months and months of delay, thats great for trump. He is going to get to claim hes being persecuted without Wi The Public ever having the opportunity to actually hear the very Persuasive Evidence against him, or a jury to hear those things. Neal, im wondering why it took the time it took for the Supreme Court to issue this one sentence question, which is what the argument is going to be about. So what rgi am wondering about , as you know the court and as you see what they issued today, is it possible that they were struggling to get to four, that there were three and they were working on getting a fourth and it took them a while tog get t a fourth . Or is it possible that there may be well more than four, including people who have different incentives for this, including possible, you know, justices appointed by democratic president s who think, you know, something this big the Supreme Court should have the last word on it. And then, how long would it take a group of Supreme Court justices to negotiate the exact wording of that question they issued to esthe lawyers today . Lawrence, im totally baffled by why it took this long. The Supreme Court can act more quickly. It did in the colorado case. It can relate the question presented very fast. And i have a lot of institutional respect for the Supreme Court. I was there this morning arguing waa different case with my team. But you know, this is a little bit troubling. The best, i think, point i can come up with is donald trump did something last week which might have put some fuel on the fire of the Supreme Court hearing this case, which is he directed his lawyers in the maralago stolen documents case to file another bogus absolute Immunity Claim there. And what that might have done is say to the Supreme Court, look, this decision that we are being asked to review is from washington, d. C. And yes, its , our nations second highest court, but it only governs washington, d. C. Florida and the court of appeals there might come to a different result, and we could have some conflict on this big legal issue. And so therefore, we, the Supreme Court, should hear this issue to set a rule for the entire nation. Thats the best i can come up with for why the timing is what it is. But i am very concerned that the court has set an april 22nd hearing date here, they couldve moved more quickly. Bush versus gore, that whole case went to the Supreme Court on two different times, all within a 36day period, briefing, decisions, everything. Neal, i want to go back to that point, because our thinking about that t today. You and others raised it, when donald trump raise that Immunity Defense in florida, instantly laura started saying oh, this means the Supreme Court is probably going to have to take it. Because the District Court of appeals in washington d. C. Is not going to be a controlling opinion for the 11th circuit down there, where that cases. So theres a certain logic. My question about that is is that could be an issue that Ketanji Brown jackson wants to handle. Thats one of the areas where it seems to me there is a wide range of members of the court who might say, you know, if hes raising this immunity in two different jurisdictions, we just have to take it. Yeah, i agree with that. I guess the thing i would say to the Guother Side Though is w said it for on april 22nd argument . Why take so long . And neal, is that completely up to the chief justice, the scheduling . Its generally as a matter of practice is, but i dont think you do something without the support of his colleagues. I think maybe the best thing we can hope for is that the chief and other justices feel like, look, there is still a lot of room in the joints, that we can decide this case quickly, and that theres two other actors here could trump create their killer. Just chutkan has said, look, l im going to give trump 88 days from the time the immunity cases decided to the actual start of trial. But she said that well before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. And now trump has got many more months to prepare for trial. And the other is jack smith said this trial could take 2 to 3 months, but he has lots of options available to truncated the trial and make it go more quickly. So its still very possible that the court could hear this case r and still have donald trp tried before the election. But the math is a bit more difficult now. Neal katyal, i cannot thank you enough for extending your workday all the way past ten pm to join us on this important night. Thank you. Thanks, neal. And oucoming up, Harvard Constitutional Law ProfessorLaurence Tribe will join our discussion next. Join our discussion next. Can delight them all. Protect yourself against rsv. With pfizers abrysvo a vaccine to prevent lower Respiratory Disease from rsv in people 60 years and older. Its not for everyone and may not protect all who receive it. Dont get abrysvo if youve had an allergic. Reaction to its ingredients. A weakened Imm