WAIT WHAT?? Trump Cites Baseball Legend Yogi Berra In Supreme Court Appeal Demanding Absolute Criminal Immunity

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team opened their Supreme Court appeal with an eye-opening citation: late baseball legend and renowned wordsmith Yogi Berra.

Five weeks ago, at a stunning appeals court hearing, Trump’s attorney argued that a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and not face prosecution unless he were impeached and convicted first.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Trump’s appeal in a 57-page opinion last Tuesday in a blistering opinion that stunned many analysts with its force and clarity. They gave Trump a deadline of Feb. 12 to file a notice of appeal or the DC case would proceed.

On Monday, Trump’s team filed an application with the Supreme Court demanding they stay the Jan. 6 trial being presided over by Judge Tanya Chutkan. Special Counsel Jack Smith has until Feb. 20 to file a response.

Trump’s application opened with a doozy of a citation from the New York Yankees legend responsible for famous gaffe-orisms like “It ain’t over til it’s over” and “90 percent of baseball is half mental”:

This application is “déjà vu all over again.” Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, “Yogi-isms,” https://yogiberramuseum.org/about-yogi/yogisms/.

Two months ago, after the district court denied President Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity in this criminal case, the Special Counsel filed a petition for certiorari before judgment asking this Court to undertake an extraordinary departure from ordinary appellate procedures and decide the vital and historic question of Presidential immunity on a hyper-accelerated basis. This Court correctly chose to follow standard judicial process and declined to do so. Now, at the Special Counsel’s urging, a panel of the D.C. Circuit has, in an extraordinarily fast manner, issued a decision on President Trump’s claim of immunity and ordered the mandate returned to the district court to proceed with President Trump’s criminal trial in four business days, unless this Court intervenes (as it should). App’x 58A. This Court should stay the D.C. Circuit’s mandate to forestall, once again, an unprecedented and unacceptable departure from ordinary appellate procedures and allow President Trump’s claim of immunity to be decided in the ordinary course of justice.

The Trump filing goes on to breathlessly insist “Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.”

Trump’s team also explicitly demands the trial be delayed until after the election to protect Americans from being denied Trump’s campaign message:

Conducting a months-long criminal trial of President Trump at the height of election season will radically disrupt President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden—which appears to be the whole point of the Special Counsel’s persistent demands for expedition. The D.C. Circuit’s order thus threatens immediate irreparable injury to the First Amendment interests of President Trump and tens of millions of American voters, who are entitled to hear President Trump’s campaign message as they decide how to cast their ballots in November.

The Supreme Court could decide to hear the case on an expedited basis, grant Trump’s demansd to take it up under the normal course of business, or deny cert and affirm the appeals court ruling.