Trump's immunity arguments and the experiences of the justices who might support it

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's nearly three-hour oral argument Thursday, it seems apparent that at minimum, there will be no Trump trial on charges of obstructing the 2020 election until after the election this November.

Perhaps it's Trump Derangement Syndrome that led lots of legal eagles, from liberal to conservative, to believe that former President Donald Trump's claim of immunity from criminal prosecution was preposterous. But it's more likely that court observers didn't properly account for the personal experiences of the conservative justices.

Five of the six conservatives spent much of their lives as denizens of the Beltway. As young men, the five served in the White House and Justice Department, working for Republican presidents, often seeing their administrations as targets of unfair harassment by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

You can hear echoes of those experiences in some of Thursday's questions about the conspiracy to defraud charge against Trump.

Kavanaugh and Alito's experience

Justice Brett Kavanaugh worked for George W. Bush for five years, three of them as staff secretary, a position that's been described as the "nerve center" of the White House. "Conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used against a lot of presidential activities, historically, with a creative prosecutor who wants to go after a president," Kavanaugh cautioned.

Indeed, he volunteered his view that a 1988 case, in which the court upheld the now-defunct independent counsel law, was a "a terrible decision for the presidency and for the country."

Justice Neil Gorsuch had a much more personal taste of Washington's instinct for criminal prosecution, seeing it as a blood sport. His mother was the Reagan