Conservative lawyer George Conway poured cold water on Donald Trump’s Supreme Court win on Friday.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to take up Trump’s criminal immunity case in the federal election subversion case. Trump’s lawyers argue that he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for alleged crimes committed while he was in office.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s immunity claim earlier this month, ruling that he does not have a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”
Trump’s lawyers appealed the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, while Special Counsel Jack Smith took the case directly to the Supreme Court in an effort to keep the trial on schedule.
The Supreme Court declined to expedite the appeal which means the DC Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case first on Jan. 9 2024.
On CNN Friday, host Jake Tapper said the Supreme Court handed Trump “something of a win, rejecting the special counsel’s request to urgently decide the issue of presidential immunity.”
Conway pushed back, saying the ruling is “not a big deal” and is unlikely to change the schedule.
“I want to issue a correction from your opening and from something you said at the end of the last segment, that this is a ‘big win’ for Donald Trump,” Conway told Tapper. “I don’t think this is a big win. I don’t think it’s a big deal at all.”
“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 weakness of Donald Trump’s immunity claim,” he said, adding “I’m the only person in the universe who ever won, wrote a brief that won, a Supreme Court immunity case… that was against the president — Bill Clinton, Paula Jones.”
Conway predicted that the trial will start on its scheduled date of March 4, 2024.
“I just don’t think there’s anything there to the claims that Trump has been making,” Conway said. “I think this case will be disposed of by 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 will lift and they can immediately start proceeding toward trial in the district court.”
