The potential unraveling of all of the criminal cases against Donald Trump continued on Saturday, even before the Supreme Court puts into effect its decision this week granting broad legal immunity to the former President.

A federal judge in Florida, who has for months moved very slowly in handling the criminal case charging Trump with mishandling of highly secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago provate club, put the case on an additional hold in a Saturday order.  The order was issued at the request of Trump and his lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon of West Palm Beach suspended almost all filings and procedural deadlines in that case while she considers Trump’s newly filed plea to delay the case and allow both sides to file their views on the impact of the Supreme Court decision in Trump v. U.S.

That ruling by the Court is not expected to be formally put into effect until later this month, but Trump’s legal team has moved rapidly to try to take advantage of it.

The development in Florida marked the second time this week that the Trump team had gone to lower courts with new requests to end cases against him based on the Justices’ immunity decision.  On Tuesday, a state judge in New York, who presided over the trial in which Trump was convicted of 34 crimes, put off the sentencing of Trump for the time being.  That case is based on charges involving Trump’s action surrounding his 2016 election.  The judge said he will rule by early September on how the Justices’ ruling may affect Trump’s convictions.

The case that led to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling involves Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol – a violent uprising attempting to set aside his defeat in the 2020 election and keep him in office.

The immunity issue may also arise in the future in the fourth criminal case against Trump, the state charges pending against him in Georgia – also related to 2020 election challenges.  That case, too, has slowed down as a state appeals court reviews pre-trial issues.

In Saturday’s new order in the Mar-a-Lago secret documents case in Florida, Judge Cannon required Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to file by July 18 an answer to the Trump team’s new legal maneuvering. Trump attorneys are to reply by July 21.

Those filings are to cover two questions:

• Should the case be put on hold, for almost all further proceedings, until the judge decides Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s new decision means that he is immune to all 40 charges against him in Florida and, separately, decides another Trump argument: that the entire case must be dismissed on the theory that Prosecutor Smith’s position is unconstitutional and thus he had no power to pursue any charges against the former President.
• Should the judge call for full written briefs on those two arguments, or should she forgo those and make a decision based only on the points the two sides make in their documents due July 18 and 21.

If she does order further briefings, that would mean additional delay because those might not be completed until September, under a schedule that Trump’s lawyers suggested.  That would add to the prospect that the Mar-a-Lago trial would be delayed until well after election day, November 5.

Throughout the 20 months since Trump began his campaign to win election this year, his legal team has been very successful in obtaining delays of trials of his criminal cases.   So far, the New York state trial is the only one that has been held.  Trump faces 54 additional charges in other cases.

The fate of the New York guilty verdicts and of the charges not yet put on trial has been made far more uncertain by the Supreme Court’s sweeping immunity ruling.  The judges in all of the cases must decide —  before any case can move further forward — what the immunity decision actually means and how it will affect each piece of evidence that lies behind the 88 counts.

In the New York case, because the trial is over, the judge must examine all of the proof that the jury relied upon in finding Trump guilty on all counts.

In the other cases – in West Palm Beach in Florida, in Washington, D.C., and in Atlanta – the judges must go over all of the actions that are the basis of the charges and decide whether prosecutors could – or may not – offer that evidence to try to gain convictions.

The Supreme Court spoke of three levels of evidence that must be assessed in deciding whether it can be used against Trump:

• First: if a charge is based upon actions by Trump that qualify as part of his “core” constitutional duties when he was President, that cannot be used at all because it is shielded by “absolute immunity.”
• Second: if a charge is based on actions that still qualify as “official,” but were somewhere outside of “core” presidential duties, that evidence will be “presumed” to be excluded by immunity, but prosecutors may try to convince the judge that they were beyond the outer range of official duties.
• Third: if the evidence is based on private conduct, it can be used at the trial – unless it is somehow related to official duty – in which case, it would be barred.

Trump and his lawyers have insisted that everything that he did that is charged as a crime in any of the four cases was official in nature, but the Supreme Court rejected that unlimited claim in its ruling.  It did not provide a great deal of guidance, however, on how to deal with the three levels of evidence.

The four judges almost certainly will be seriously challenged as they try to sort out how to classify any piece of evidence and how to draw lines between what is “official” and what is “private” conduct.  Those  tasks could take up weeks, if not months.

Moreover, if Trump or prosecutors are dissatisfied over how those processes turn out, they could pursue new, time-consuming appeals in higher courts, and ultimately to the Supreme Court before the cases could go on trial – or, in the New York state case, before it could be tried again.

For Judge Cannon in Florida, the immunity question is only one task that she must now undertake in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. That is Trump’s other constitutional argument: that Prosecutor Smith’s appointment is invalid under the Constitution, so he lacked any power to investigate or prosecute

Trump’s team contends that, since Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland (in 2022), his office is void.  The Constitution, according to this theory, requires that a federal government official with power to investigate and prosecute must be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on the legality of Smith’s appointment.  The Court was asked, in the Trump immunity case, to rule on that issue by two conservative former Attorneys General and conservative law professors or activists.

However, the decision on Monday did not react to that request.  Justice Clarence Thomas, in a separate opinion, argued that lower court judges must decide that constitutional question before Smith’s prosecution could go to trial.  Because no other Justice supported that, it is not binding on lower courts.

Trump’s lawyers, though, did rely on Justice Thomas’s opinion in pressing Judge Cannon to dismiss the entire case.  If the judge were to dismiss the charges, Prosecutor Smith could appeal; if she refuses, Trump could appeal.

At this point, it appears that America’s voters will not have final answers to any of these historic constitutional questions before they go to the polls to vote on the Presidency just 121 days from now.  That could be of real political value to candidate Trump.