Commentary on the DJT immunity case

Various sources are talking about their analyses of the slow decision the USSC made to hear DJT's crackpot immunity claims. Ruth Marcus opines for the WaPo (not behind paywall): 

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s audacious claim of presidential immunity from prosecution — with oral argument a leisurely seven weeks off — all but guarantees one of two terrible outcomes. Either the former president’s trial on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 election, a trial that was supposed to start next week, will now not take place until after the 2024 election, or it will be held in the final months before Election Day. The justices are not entirely responsible for this mess, but they have just made a bad situation far worse than it needed to be.

My beef isn’t with the court’s decision to hear the case — it’s with the outrageously lethargic timing. It would have been far better for the court to have taken up the issue back in December, when special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court. Now, two and a half months have gone by. It took the justices two weeks after Trump sought their intervention to announce that they would hear the case. Worse, they set oral argument for the week of April 22, a delay that means a decision could easily take until May or even linger until the term finishes at the end of June.

Worst of all, especially given this timetable, the justices could have allowed trial preparations to go forward while the case was briefed, argued and decided. That would have prevented Trump from accomplishing what has been his aim all along: to use the immunity claim as a ploy to delay his trial until after the election.

Instead, the court engaged in a weird procedural dodge. It didn’t do what Trump’s lawyers had asked and grant a stay of the appeals court ruling against him. Instead, it issued an unusual order to the appeals court that ends up having the same effect — without having to satisfy the stringent standards that are supposed to apply when a stay is sought.

That analysis fits with the criticism that the court for pulled off a partisan move to protect DJT by delaying. Marcus makes the point that, after dithering for weeks, the USSC side-stepped the usual process for granting a stay. The court’s action here looks like partisan USSC moral rot to protect DJT.