What to expect in Trump's court cases this week

As former President Donald Trump balances campaigning for a return to the White House with battles on a number of different legal fronts in multiple open criminal cases, one legal analyst says Trump’s main legal strategy appears to be stalling until after the November Presidential election.

Because if Trump does manage to win a second Presidential term, the Presidential immunity that comes with it would delay all of those trials at least another four years.

And Presidential immunity itself is the tool with which Trump’s legal team hopes to turn back the prosecution in the various cases tied to the riots of January 6, 2021 – riots that prosecutors say Trump incited – and his efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election won by current Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden.

Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan told KCBS Radio that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently set to decide just how successful Trump’s legal stall tactics will work.

McCuan said SCOTUS is set to “decide Trump's claim that he's immune from prosecutions for actions he took as President. Those actions, do they constitute private action or are they official acts? That is the dividing line.”

He said that a number of conservative justices appear to be leaning towards at least some of Trump’s immunity arguments, but that it’s likely the case would get passed back to the lower courts to decide which of Trump’s actions fall under Presidential and personal acts, and that would obviously take quite a bit more time to adjudicate.

“It's pushing out the timeline, perhaps even past, the November election, but nonetheless getting some form of immunity for official acts, and then going back and forth with lower courts about what constitutes private action,” McCuan said. “And the conservatives on the court look to be positioned to, favor that argument.”

To hear the full audio of McCuan’s breakdown of Trump’s arguments before the Supreme Court, click the link above.