Experts: The Walls Are Closing in Fast on Trump After Immunity Ruling
Things are not looking good for Donald Trump after a federal appeal court completely destroyed his presidential immunity arguments.
Donald Trump’s legal team has until Monday to appeal to the Supreme Court over his recent immunity ruling—but according to legal experts, there’s little that they, or any judge, or any court, can do to reverse course for the GOP front-runner.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court unanimously voted against all three of Donald Trump’s presidential immunity arguments in his January 6 case, finally and formally dubbing the former president as simply “citizen Trump.”
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman noted that’s all you need to know about the ruling.
Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe told CNN the ruling is “bulletproof,” and a case that will “be studied by law students for generations.”
George Conway, a conservative attorney and husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, called the ruling “airtight.” In a piece for The Atlantic, Conway described how the court “patiently, painstakingly, and unsparingly” dismantled Trump’s legal arguments for immunity.
“How does the Supreme Court read this?” CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked Conway on Tuesday.
“This opinion is so good, and so clear, so comprehensive, there’s nothing in it that could be possibly attacked. I don’t see how even the Supreme Court could write—I don’t see how any judge, any court, anywhere, including the Supreme Court, could write a better opinion that more accurately states what the law is and should be,” Conway responded.
“I don’t think it’s worth the court’s time to deal with it at this point. If Trump is convicted, which I think he will be, they can actually review this after his conviction,” he added.
The ruling was “masterful because it combined so many elements” like “constitutional text, judicial precedent, history, and just sheer logic and the party’s own concessions—Trump’s own concessions—just to make an absolutely cohesive whole opinion that just inexorably leads you to the conclusion that he is not immune,” Conway explained.
And Trump’s February 12 turnaround is so quick it “puts him in a box,” according to former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman.
“Given thoroughness and unanimity of opinion, we will have lost only about six weeks should the Supreme Court deny the stay application, which we should look to it to do by around February 19. If it takes the case, mandate doesn’t return to Chutkan until early July,” Litman posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.