When we leave he gives us a hard. There you go. Thanks, steve. It means a lot. Wisdom borne of age. And friends born of a hes a mud duck. We are so happy that matt found his flock. Im so grateful that my colleague megan found this story, that mauro produce it and then boyd shared. It and please remember, it costs absolutely nothing to be kind, and i can assure you any nhl team owner that i know, ill be emailing you the segment tonight. You sure as hell better stand this man some cool gear. With that i wish you a good night. From all our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with me. Today the Supreme Court made a momentous decision, one that has significant implications for the rule of law in this country. At five pm eastern, this afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to take up former President Trumps claims of president ial immunity. These are not credible claims. That has been thoroughly litigated in District Court and federal Appellate Court. By nearly deciding to do this, by side setting side whatever the courts final ruling, is the court has upended the attempt to hold on trump accountable for his actions to subvert democracy. In fact, the court may have ended that attempt entirely. This decision is almost certain to reshape the 2024 president ial race, and it will likely pay a Determinative Role in its outcome. But as much as the significance of this ruling is already apparent, the full consequences here hinge on the timing. Now in its ruling tonight, the court said it would hear Oral Arguments in the case the week of april 22nd. Now april 22nd is not close to today. And we will get into why exactly the court didnt choose a day that is a lot sooner than that. But april 22nd, on its face, seems pretty far from the november election. Its not. Because when you start crunching the numbers and looking at how a trial could actually timeout avid the Supreme Court makes its decision here, the window in which trump could face trial, the window for that happening before the november election, is incredibly small. The first thing you have to take into account is that the prep time that the judge, who was overseeing this case, judge tanya chutkan, the prep time she alerted for trump and his lawyers has been effectively stalled. Judge chutkan initially gave donald trump and his team seven months to prepare for this case, from the day he was indicted, to the original trial date in march. Back in december, on december 7th, trumps legal team asked for a pause, a stay in this case, while trumps Immunity Claims were appealed, and judge chutkan granted it. That pause didnt just freeze the case. It also paused all the prep time is well. Trumps team still had 88 days left to prepare before the case was paused, and the expectation now is that they would still get those 88 days or something similar to prep when this case is an paused. So thats point number one. Even if the Supreme Court rules this case can go forward, the day after they hear Oral Arguments, the trial cant just start right away. Trumps team would get another 88 days. Point number two is about how long a trial would actually take. Last year, before the case had been paused, potential jurors for the case in the d. C. Area received this pre screening form. You see it there on the screen. It specified the trial would last approximately three months after Jury Selection is completed. Special counsel jack smith and judge chutkan have also signaled we, are looking at Something Like a threemonth trial for this. So just to ballpark this really quickly, lets assume 88 days for trumps team to finish their prepped before the trial. Then lets assume the three months needed for the trial itself is a nice round 90 days. That comes out to 178 days. That is how long it would take for this trial to actually conclude after we get a decision back from the Supreme Court. So lets go back to the calendar. The election is november 5th. An Oral Argument on trumps president ial community claims that the Supreme Court is set for the week of april 22nd. This would be the fastest possible scenario here, is everything stands at present. The Supreme Court meets monday, april 22nd and, they make a decision the next day, tuesday, april 20 served. If we are 178 days to tuesday april 23rd, that would mean the trial would finish on wednesday, october 16th, 20 days before the general election. That is what we are working with here, in the bestcase scenario. Joining me now, neal katyal, former acting solicitor general of the United States and under president obama and dahlia lithwick, Senior Editor at slate, covering the courts. Thank you both for being here tonight. I just first want to start with your reaction to the courts decision here. And your level of optimism about this trial actually happening before the election. I have a lot of institutional respect, alex, for the Supreme Court out there this morning. With my team arguing a different case and yet i find myself greatly concerned by this decision by the Supreme Court to hear the case and wait until april iron dome gravely concerned for the rule of law. Don trump has a bogus legal argument here. The Supreme Court is spending precious months trying to hear it. The courts known for a lot of things and certainly efficiency is not one of them and i think the best that can be said is that without schedule is everyone a little unhappy, too fast for donald trump but too slow for jack smith, it creates far too much uncertainty about the preservation of the rule of law in the outcome. Later we can talk about those dates, the hundred 78 days, 90, 88 days. I think there is still a strong possibility the case could be tried against donald trump before the election. I can go into detail later about that, but i certainly think right now i am concerned. I want to talk about the mechanisms by which both the doj, Special Counsel, and judge chutkan might try and shorten that 178 days. But first, dahlia, neil raises a point. In the world of possibility the Supreme Court thinks that somehow reaching a compromise decision here by having this on a timeline its faster than trump wants, which is next never rory, and slower than jack smith which is would like, which wouldve been in march. Yeah, i mean i think we were hoping we were hoping a week or two ago that the compromise was that trump might prevail in the colorado case and lose absolutely in this Immunity Case. That was supposed to be the ground bargain. Now we are doing a z knows paradox we were taking smaller and smaller halves of what we thought might be a win. I think that the real issue for me, and neal just made this point, of the court knows how to act quickly when it needs to. It certainly acted very quickly in that colorado bumping them off the ballot case. In fact it acted much more quickly. So i think one of the things that worries me about this case is the sense that the court tells us what an emergency is, and it has done that in case after case over the last couple of years. It doesnt seem to feel that there is any emergency or any exigent kind of shock clock going on here. For those of us who are doing the math that you are doing and that neal is doing, trying to eke out some kind of case on the merits before the election, what the court did today with sort of advance almost no concern for the fact that its kind of democracy itself against this shock clock. It seems to be that they are not bothered by either of those. Neal, to dahlias point, judge chutkan sees the clerk. You mentioned there might be ways to shorten the timeframe 178 days. Lets start with what judge chutkan might be able to do. Is there a way to narrow the prep time window, the 88 days that trump team has, assuming a court that the Supreme Court does not rule in trumps favor on the Immunity Claim. Even before we get to judge chutkan, the question is, when is the court gonna decide the case . I think dahlia makes such an important point in saying look, this is a court that moves quickly. For example i was a lawyer and bush versus gore, that was a 36 day start to finish. I remember the first case of the Supreme Court we had like four days to brief it. So we had gone from four to like 40 in this supposedly expedited case. So that does concern me. Having said that, i do think the court, and i hope they listen to the pressure of the American Public, to decide this thing quickly after they hear the case unable 22nd. Judge chutkan in the interim does some options. She said shes gonna give long trump 88 days to prepare for his trial. But she said that well before trump had the Supreme Court grant hears Immunity Case. And trumps lawyers can walk and chew gum at the same time. They dont need all of those 88 days. And so judge chutkan can even now say if this case comes back to me, donald trump, youre not going to get the full 88 days. That was in a world in which you didnt have months and months of preexisting delay, like you do now. Dahlia, in addition to the prep time that she could shrink, is there something that jack smith could do . I know Andrew Weissmann had suggested they trim the charges against trump. Is that likely . If it is, what may be taken out . In some sense jack smith has doggedly made the case, time after time, to the court, youve got to do this more quickly. And in some sense, as we have said, we had a little bit of a split the baby today where he doesnt get where he wants, but don trump doesnt get what he wants. Whether he can, i dont, know hive of some of this. This was a pretty tight case as compared to the Fani Willis Sprawling case in fulton county. This was a pretty tight case. I suppose there is a way to tighten it, but i think The Real Thing we have to ask ourselves is, are we going to wait for weeks and weeks and weeks for somebody to write a dissent in this case of the Supreme Court and then its coming down at the end of june. What i worry about more than anything is that no matter what judge chutkan or jack smith can do, if you have four votes at the Supreme Court, or three votes, that want to do the run out the clock play, i think that they can kind of keep this thing starved for much much longer. Do you read neil, to dolleys point, the fact that they dont seem to be working expeditiously and they know how to work quickly when they want to . Do you read anything in that in terms of how much they are going to favor trump in all of this . It seems clear that they understand the political reality here. How could you not . Do you think that suggests they might actually find in his favor on these ludicrous claims of president ial immunity . Now, alex, because they are so ludicrous. No i do not expect any justices to side with donald trump on the merits of his claim. Its crazy. And he even said so. His lawyers, back when he was being impeached, after january six, he says you cant impeach me. The only remedy is to indict me after i leave office, so thats what dak smith did, and now hes complaining and saying you cant indict me because i have absolute immunity. It has all been a long long shell game. I take dahlias point about the court and maybe a desantis Something Like that. But i think that when the court hears this case and realizes just how bogus Donald Trumps claims are, they will decide it quickly. And even if there is a dissent, the Chief Justice has the power where the members of the majority to release the majority of opinion without waiting for the dissent. In a case like this, with the American Public deserving so much on what happened on january six on a formal trial to get to a bottom of it, i sure hope thats what will happen once we get there. To the rulings that have preceded the Supreme Court taking it up, dahlia, the Appellate Court ruling was, i think you call it a bench slap. There was no room for entertaining any legality in trumps argument. I dont Supreme Court is taking it up. If youre sitting on the Circuit Court of appeals, and youre one of the judges that took your time to write a very thoughtful wideranging opinion about how this team did not hold water, this Immunity Claim, sort of like, what are the implications there that the Supreme Court decided to take it up anyway . Ill go you one better. Dont forget when the colorado case was argued, when anderson was argued at the Supreme Court, the court didnt want to touch the question of the insurrection and on trumps responsibility for the insurrection. In fact Donald Trumps own lawyer was like, yeah that was super bad. So we dont even have a court that wants to touch the merits of how barren january six was. And i would add to that, the American Public has seen the january six commission, has seen the impeachment trial. They have seen two e. Jean carroll verdicts. They have seen a verdict in new york in the trump financial misconduct case. There is a pile of and refuted evidence, including the finding and the colorado Supreme Court that donald trump insurrection. All that stuff has not been touched, as best as i can see, by the u. S. Supreme court. Im not confident they want to touch it. Two neals point, its important to understand, when you get to the merits, when you get to the past the shell games about timing and court feeling it needs to weigh in on this, it couldnt do a summary. We havent had a single signal from the Supreme Court that that three judge opinion that came out of the d. C. Circuit is anything but bulletproof. I think it is still bulletproof. I think were just trying to figure out how to get there. I have to say is, maybe the Supreme Court judges does should look at how judging goren, how judge kaplan, oh judge marchand have handled their cases here in new york where we get things done when it comes to Holding People accountable. Not saying, just. Saying neal katyal and dahlia lithwick, thank you so much for coming tonight. Really appreciate it. We have lots more ahead this evening, including the Breaking News that an illinois judge has disqualified donald trump from the 2024 president ial ballot over his actions on january six. 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