'Surprise' detail buried in immunity ruling leaves Trump trial 'torn to shreds': expert

The federal election interference case against Donald Trump has likely been "torn to shreds" by a surprising detail in the U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling.

The court ruled 6-3 that the former president had absolute immunity for core presidential acts and limited immunity for acts outside his official duties, but Chief Justice John Roberts surprised CNN's Elie Honig by also granting "evidentiary immunity," reported Newsweek.

"It was no surprise that the Supreme Court said to prosecutors, 'you can not charge somebody based on an official act,'" Honig said. "What caught me by surprise, is that they said, and you can't even introduce as evidence an official act as part of your trial presentation.

"When you're trying a case as a prosecutor, you're often presenting information that's not a crime, in and of itself, but it's necessary to tell the story and explain the narrative, explain the context."

The election interference case was sent down to a lower court to determine which actions alleged in the indictment should be considered official acts and which should not, but Honig said the immunity ruling had badly damaged special counsel Jack Smith's case.

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"Now, in the Jan. 6 case, Jack Smith can't even let the jury know about Donald Trump's communications with the DOJ, which is an essential part of the whole story," Honig said. "So, that indictment is going to get torn to shreds by the time the courts are done with it."

There's "no chance" the election interference case will be tried before this year's election, and the former federal prosecutor said any rulings made by District Judge Tanya Chutkan against Trump in determining what should be considered an official act would almost certainly be appealed.

"Okay, so can't Judge Tanya Chutkan hold that hearing in the next couple weeks and get this thing back on track for an early fall trial?" Honig wrote for The New Yorker. "Nope. Because the Supreme Court went out of its way to specify, several times over, that Trump has the right to appeal the trial judge's determinations on this issue before the trial. That'll blow this case out until well after the November 2024 election."