Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. It was another week of waiting for big rulings — from the D.C. Circuit on Donald Trump’s immunity claim and Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York civil fraud case. Neither came, but briefs arguing against Trump’s ballot eligibility poured in ahead of the historic oral argument coming Thursday in Washington.
But seriously: Where’s that immunity ruling? Regular readers will recall that I kicked off last week’s newsletter with this same question. And here we are still, closing in on a month since the argument without a decision from the three-judge D.C. Circuit panel. The clock keeps ticking in the federal election interference case; on Friday, Judge Tanya Chutkan officially vacated the March 4 trial date. So it’s all the more likely now that the first of Trump’s criminal trials to go forward will be later next month in the New York “hush money” case — which, I’ve noted, is also an election interference case of sorts.
In the fraud case, Engoron didn’t rule by the end of January, which he had previously floated as a possibility. Now it’s looking like early to mid-February for the judge’s decision on the fate of the Trump business empire (which will likely be finally determined on an appeal). My colleague Lisa Rubin explains how a mysterious loan could factor into the case, while reports of a possible perjury plea for former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg could figure in the drama as well.
In the E. Jean Carroll case, the former president seems to be in the market for appellate lawyers. Apparently, Alina Habba won’t be handling it after stumbling through the trial and then raising and quickly withdrawing a baseless conflict-of-interest claim this week. But whichever brave legal soul takes on this quest for perhaps the nation’s most difficult client, could they succeed in upending the eight-figure damages? I explored the possibility here.
In the Georgia case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis finally responded to conflict allegations there. She conceded a personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade but denied any legal conflict stemming from it. Her filing provided a strong rebuttal to the salacious allegations — denying that she personally benefited financially from hiring Wade, which is what matters legally — but next we’ll see if Judge Scott McAfee insists on holding the evidentiary hearing he previously set for Feb. 15, which Willis hopes to avoid.
In the Mar-a-Lago case, it was a week of “hidden” news. Prosecutors had a sealed hearing with Judge Aileen Cannon and, separately, we learned that the FBI might have missed some evidence when agents searched the former president’s property back in 2022. ABC News reported that special counsel Jack Smith’s team “has questioned several witnesses about a closet and a so-called ‘hidden room’ inside the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago that the FBI didn’t check.” But if it doesn’t have current proof of criminal evidence in those areas, the government will be hard-pressed to search there again, so we may never know what, if anything, was there. Yet, prosecutors don’t need more evidence in that already strong classified documents case — they need a judge who’ll bring it to trial in a timely fashion, which they don’t seem to have in Cannon.
Looking ahead, the Supreme Court will hear one of its most important cases ever on Thursday, over whether Trump can hold the presidency again. The 14th Amendment bars insurrectionists who previously swore to support the Constitution from taking office. Briefs supporting Trump’s disqualification have made a compelling case that the insurrectionist ban should keep him off the ballot, as I told Alicia Menendez on “Deadline: White House.” Trump has one last shot to convince the justices otherwise, with a final reply brief due Monday, ahead of the argument that should give us a sense of where the high court is headed on this crucial question.
