Trump’s Trial-Delay Strategy Yields Results Even He Did Not Expect

As former President Donald J. Trump was indicted a first time, a second, a third and a fourth last year, he and his legal team cycled through disbelief, anger and a recognition that he would have to spend much of 2024 facing juries as he campaigned to return to the White House.

But even as Mr. Trump made the charges against him a rallying cry for his supporters and sought to hijack courtrooms for his political purposes, his lawyers sought ways to delay the trials by using pretrial motions to drive the proceedings into legal cul-de-sacs.

It was not clear even to them that the strategy would work. But they nonetheless threw all kinds of arguments at judges intended to push some or all of the trials past Election Day, when a victory by Mr. Trump would give him ways to further postpone judgment or wipe away the charges entirely.

The substantial success they have had came into clearer focus on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court decided to take up one of his long-shot legal arguments: that presidents are all but immune from prosecution for actions they take in office.

The choice by the justices means that Mr. Trump’s federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, originally scheduled to begin next week, now seems unlikely to begin before September.

On Friday, the timing of another case will firm up somewhat. Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s trial on federal charges of mishandling classified documents after he left office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, is likely to set a new start date for that proceeding, which was originally scheduled to begin in late May.