For most people, sitting in court at their own criminal trial would represent a defining moment of their life. But Donald Trump’s return to his hush money trial Thursday does not even represent the most critical courtroom drama of his day.
The ex-president’s attention is certain to stray from what he has repeatedly complained is a “freezing” court in New York to the neoclassical splendor of the US Supreme Court.
Justices will be hearing oral arguments in his sweeping immunity case that could have profound implications for his legal fate and poses never-before-resolved questions about the powers of the presidency.
The double court date will represent yet another unfathomable twist in the saga of the presumptive Republican nominee, who is again stretching America’s judicial and constitutional systems to their limits as he runs to reclaim the White House.
Trump has left no doubt he’d much rather be on the grander stage in Washington, watching Supreme Court justices debate his claim that, as an ex-president, he cannot be prosecuted for any actions that he took in office.
It would be a far more colorful spectacle for a presidential campaign that has morphed with his legal defenses than the increasingly repetitive press gaggles he holds in the dingy corridor outside the Manhattan courtroom hearing his first criminal trial.
But Trump has no choice but to listen to more testimony in New York from former tabloid publisher David Pecker, a key witness for prosecutors who allege the ex-president tried to mislead 2016 general election voters by covering up an affair that he denies.
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