The Supreme Court's pending ruling on presidential immunity, which will determine if a criminal trial against former President Donald Trump in connection with the aftermath of the 2020 election will proceed, will likely wait until next week, with a "middle ground" ruling that won't benefit him, retired Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Newsmax Friday.
"The immunity case is utterly profound," Napolitano said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "The chief justice likes to keep the most hot-button case until the last day. So I don't think it's going to come today. I think it will come a week from today."
Napolitano said he expects that the court's "middle ground" ruling will require that the case be sent back to a trial judge to pick a jury.
"The jury will decide whatever he did on Jan. 6, what acts were personal in furtherance of his own personal interest and what acts were presidential in pursuit of the authority granted to him by the Constitution," he said. "I don't think we're going to get an extreme decision where everything is immune … because the middle ground is based on facts and because only juries, not judges, can decide facts, he's going to be subject to a jury in a jurisdiction that's 90% Democrat in Washington, D.C."
Meanwhile, the delays in the immunity decision will make it more difficult to bring Trump to trial before the Nov. 5 election, Napolitano said.
"It would be exquisitely unfair to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president that he would have to sit in a courtroom again for week after week after week while Joe Biden is out there," he said. "The court would have to recognize the interest the American public has in hearing one of the major candidates."
The court, before the end of this month, will also be making a major decision on the Biden administration's challenge to Idaho's abortion law, in an argument that the ban conflicts with federal law requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing care.
"The federal law says that every hospital that accepts Medicare, Medicaid, or any federal funds, which is about 99% of hospitals, must perform whatever emergency services are necessary to bring the patient in the emergency room to a maximum state of health," Napolitano said.
In Idaho, abortions are only permitted to save the life of the mother, not to enhance her health, he added, resulting in the clash between federal law and state laws.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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