Rioters await pardons as SCOTUS rulings linger

The Supreme Court had no gift to give Donald Trump on Friday, his 78th birthday, and though recess for the current term is near, the justices are still silent on the question of whether the former president — barreling toward the 2024 election as the GOP’s nominee and front-runner despite 34 felony convictions — can claim “absolute” immunity from prosecution around his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021.

The week also came and went without the court answering an arguably equally important and inextricably linked question in Fischer v. United States, a decision that could upend the status of hundreds of convictions for Jan. 6 rioters and potentially wipe out two of the four criminal charges Special Counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump in the Washington, D.C.-based election subversion case.

While the nation waits for the court to rule on either question, Trump has continued to spread the message that if reelected, he will make pardoning Jan. 6 defendants a plank of his administration.

With both questions before the court potentially leveraged — or disadvantaged — by the other depending on how the justices rule, that means all Trump or Jan. 6 rioters now in prison have is time.

Rioters await pardons as SCOTUS rulings linger

And hope.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Trump’s campaign spokesperson said Trump would consider pardons for rioters on a “case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House” though there were no details provided on how those potential grants of clemency would be parsed.

Would he, for example, forgo pardoning the far-right extremists convicted of seditious conspiracy or those defendants who were particularly violent? Or would he pardon only lower-level offenders? It seems highly unlikely he would split the difference given his regular proclamations that all Jan. 6 defendants are “hostages” and that he, like them, is a “political prisoner,” a Trump campaign message posted on his website this May screamed following his conviction in New York.

Law&Crime takes a look at key developments in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.

NEW YORK

CRIMINAL

Trump, now a felon convicted on 34 counts, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 where he faces anything from probation to up to four years in prison. This week, he was scheduled to appear virtually for an interview with a probation official with his attorney Todd Blanche at his side.

Trump, who defied New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s gag order while the trial was ongoing just shy of a dozen times, also asked this week that his gag order be dropped ahead of sentencing since he is campaigning for the White House. Merchan hasn’t ruled yet.

The Justice Department sharply responded to Trump allies in Congress this week who demanded the department turn over records that they insist proves Trump’s prosecution in Manhattan by district attorney Alvin Bragg was politicized and guided by the Biden administration.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Carlos Uriate slammed the “conspiratorial speculation” and “completely baseless” allegations House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has made and said they conducted a “comprehensive search” at their request but found zero evidence of the collusion that Jordan, Trump and others allege.

CIVIL

After a warning from her lawyer that another lawsuit could be on the table should Trump keep attacking E. Jean Carroll and denying the realities of his defamation defeat to her — twice — the former president has been mum about Carroll. No news on his appeal of the $91 million verdict.

FLORIDA

CRIMINAL

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon keeps smiling on Trump. This week special counsel Jack Smith and the former president brawled in court documents over the impact a recent Supreme Court ruling could have on Trump’s claims that Smith is unlawfully appointed and funded. And she also agreed to strike an allegation from the indictment that Trump showed off a “classified map.”

Those motions were on order from Cannon this May. A hearing is coming up on June 21 in which amici curiae, or nonparty “friends of the court,” will be allowed to argue for or against Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.

Incidentally, she denied a request just this week to hear arguments from ‘activists from progressive issues’ who claimed the case against Trump was a waste of money and a “miscarriage of justice.”

Did you know that the clock ticking down on the mandatory start date of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case has not moved a single day in more than a year? Jack Smith does, and this week he filed his 17th Speedy Trial report. The reports are required under local rules and were ordered by Cannon back in September 2023. Smith wrote to Cannon this week, saying just 70 days remain on the clock under the Speedy Trial Act.

Speaking of timelines: Despite Smith’s opposition, Cannon — for a third time — gave Trump and his co-defendants, valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, more time to reveal their expert witnesses.

GEORGIA

CRIMINAL

One of Trump’s co-defendants in the fake electors and racketeering case, former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton, was dealt a blow this week when she lost her bid to pause her case.

Last week, pretrial matters were paused altogether after the Georgia Court of Appeals ordered it to be so as Trump and eight of his co-defendants seek to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. 

OF NOTE: Another Trump co-defendant in the fake electors case in Georgia and also indicted in Arizona, the legally-beleaguered Rudy Giuliani, had a rough week in bankruptcy court: While denying he committed “bankruptcy crimes,” he fervently resisted demands by creditors that he appoint a trustee to oversee his finances while proceedings play out. Giuliani also claimed he has a “lung disease” possibly linked to 9/11. On the subject of 9/11, bankruptcy lawyers are looking to expose any financial ties between the former NYC mayor and the 9/11 charity Tunnel to Towers. A subpoena is apparently on deck for Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman as attorneys representing creditors want to understand what Goodman might know about Giuliani’s finances as well as any insight he has on contracts, agreements, payments, transfers, gifts or other assets the men share. When Goodman was asked about his compensation in an email in December as Giuliani publicly griped about the $148 million a judge ordered him to pay two election workers he defamed, Goodman told Law&Crime his work with Giuliani “wasn’t contingent on a paycheck.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

SUPREME COURT

The high court’s 2023 term is nearly over and summer recess approaches. Rulings are expected before the end of this month, but no later than early July.

The biggest question left to answer this year, arguably, is whether the court will rule in favor of Trump’s claim to “total” immunity from prosecution.

There’s also the case of Fischer v. United States case, in which Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer argues the obstruction statute he was charged with should not have applied to him nor hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants. If the court rules in favor of Fischer, it will not only upend hundreds of Jan. 6 convictions, it could potentially wipe out two of the charges Trump faces in his election subversion indictment.

OF NOTE: Steve Bannon is begging an appellate court to let him stay out of prison as he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction. The similarly situated Peter Navarro failed repeatedly when he tried this maneuver so it seems highly unlikely Bannon will have any success with the justices. Separately, it was revealed this week that Justice Clarence Thomas has received some 47% of all known gifts given to the high court in the modern era, likely totaling well over $5.8 million. New docs this week also revealed Thomas took three undisclosed trips on a private jet with a Republican billionaire. 

CRIMINAL

No news on Trump’s four-count election subversion indictment until the Supreme Court acts.

OF NOTE: Hundreds of Jan. 6 convictions later, just 15% of the nearly $3 million in damages to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have been repaid, leaving taxpayers mostly on the hook for the carnage. 

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