We are not lawyers, so we can’t even comprehend the full ramifications of the US Supreme Court’s decision on Monday, the one that decreed that US presidents have immunity from criminal charges for all “official acts” while in office.

But we can see that the decision served its initial purpose: to delay Trump’s next criminal trial. That would be the federal election interference case, which involves slates of fake electors and the conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The second charge will likely be dropped after last week’s SCOTUS decision, ruling that a Jan. 6 insurrectionist could not be convicted for obstructing a proceeding. Similar charges against more than 300 Jan. 6 defendants will also be affected.

Monday’s ruling could also wipe out the first charge, as long as Trump’s lawyers can show that the fake-electors gambit was an official act.

It could also affect Trump’s other federal criminal trial, the one in which he’s accused of stealing classified documents from the White House and storing them at Mar a Lago. Presiding Judge Aileen Cannon seems favorable to the former president — who, after all, did appoint her to the bench — and has been delaying the trial for months, almost as if she had been waiting for this decision to come down the pipe. 

Anyway, Monday’s decision lends credence to Trump’s claim that he declassified all those documents “by thinking about it.” But if by some miracle he does get convicted, he can merely pardon himself, which is not illegal but was once considered very poor form, like running for office with 34 felony convictions under your belt.

And it provides cover for his other statutory trial, the one in Georgia, where he’s accused of leaning on the secretary of state to flip some Biden votes over to the Trump column. That case, too, has been put off until after the election.

No matter how you view it, all must agree that the former president — the only one who has ever been impeached twice — has benefited from an incredible streak of good fortune as, one by one, his legal troubles melt away.

It could not have gone any better if he planned it this way. But that would be collusion, wouldn’t it?

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