CNN’s Jake Tapper may think the U.S. Supreme Court handed former President Donald Trump a “big win” when it declined Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to quickly hear Trump’s bid to have his election interference case dismissed based on presidential immunity, but according to attorney George Conway, it’s no “big deal.”
“I want to issue a correction from your opening and from something you said at the end of the last segment, that this was a ‘big win’ for Donald Trump,” Conway told Tapper following the court’s Friday decision. “I don’t think this is a big win. I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
(Video: CNN)
“I think it’s not a big deal because I don’t think it’s going to affect the schedule that much, and I think it actually shows the — likely, I think it shows the weakness of Donald Trump’s immunity claim,” Conway explained. “And I say that as somebody, as Norm Eisen pointed out in the green room to me, I’m the only person in the universe who ever won, wrote a brief that won a Supreme Court immunity case for a president, against the president… Bill Clinton, Paula Jones. And so, I can go through how this works.”
“We’ve got the D.C. Circuit which has acted really, really, really fast in prior appeals,” he continued. “They’ve set this case down for argument on January 9th. I would not be surprised if we saw a decision from them in a matter of days.”
“Really?” Tapper asked.
“Yes,” Conway confidently replied. “I think, if I were on that panel and I were the presiding judge, I would be writing the opinion now because I just don’t think — I just don’t think there’s anything there to the claims that Trump has been making. I mean, I could go into that, but we don’t have time. And so, I think this case will be disposed of in the intermediate appellate court by the middle of January, by the third week in January at the latest. And I think at that point, the stay — I mean, if the mandate issues a technical board — the stay will lift and they can immediately start proceeding toward trial in the district court.”
The “never-Trumper” seemed to brighten Tapper’s mood.
“In March?” Tapper asked. “As soon as March?”
“As soon as March,” Conway assured him. “And what will happen at that point is that the onus will shift to Donald Trump and his lawyers to go to the Supreme Court, go to the Circuit justice, Justice Roberts, the entire court, and say, ‘Stop this! Stop this train now!’ So, all of a sudden, you’re going to see a reversal, and Trump is going to say, ‘You’ve got to move fast! You’ve got to move fast!’ And at that point, the Supreme Court, they could stay the case.”
“They could grant certiorari,” he said. “They’re going to hear the case pretty quickly too. And even if they heard the case and had argument in February or March, they could still decide this case by April or May or even June, and this case could still get tried in the summer.”
Deep into the joy of his own musings, Conway suggested another possible negative outcome for Trump.
“But there’s another possibility that I wouldn’t discount,” he told Tapper. “Which is, this case is so meritless that the Supreme Court could just decide, we’re not going to hear it right now, we’re going to deny it. And I know, Jack Smith —”
“Meritless because your argument is there is no way that what he was doing, trying to overturn the election was in the —” Tapper eagerly joined in.
“Correct,” Conway agreed. “And there’s no — the cases he relies on are civil cases, and that just does not carry on over to immunize a president from committing crimes against the very country that he’s sworn to uphold the laws of.”
“But to go back to the point,” Conway continued, “they could easily just decide, oh, he got his crack in the court of appeals, we’re not going to hear this case now. And what’ll happen is he will still get a chance to go to the Supreme Court but after he’s convicted. So, like every other criminal who is convicted in the United States district court, he can have his arguments heard, the immunity argument and any other argument after he’s convicted and sentenced.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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