The Supreme Court’s Trump immunity muddle

When the Supreme Court set out to decide Donald Trump’s bid for presidential immunity, the justices were aiming to establish “a rule for the ages.”

Instead, the court left a muddle that both Trump and his prosecutors now hope to exploit — and their efforts may send the case hurtling right back to the justices, perhaps within months.

The July 1 immunity ruling was widely viewed as a major victory for Trump because it declared him “absolutely immune” from being prosecuted for some of the actions he took while attempting to subvert the 2020 election. But the ruling is littered with ambiguities, ill-defined standards and unanswered questions about many of the other acts Trump undertook, constitutional experts say.

For now, the case is back in front of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who must figure out how to take the high court’s fuzzy pronouncements and apply them to the specific allegations in the election indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith.