Sacks @ 01:25:10Wrong
politicsgovernment
In the federal January 6th‑related criminal case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, Donald Trump may be convicted at trial in D.C. but will ultimately prevail on appeal, with the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the conviction on the grounds that the prosecution relied on an impermissibly novel legal theory.
by the way, I think Trump is actually going to win this case. Maybe not in the D.C. jury pool, but I think he'll win it on appeal, because I just think... I think he has to take Supreme Court. He's going to win it because this is a novel legal theory.View on YouTube
Explanation
The specific scenario Sacks predicted did not occur.
- In United States v. Trump, Jack Smith’s federal election‑obstruction / January 6–related case in D.C., Trump was indicted in August 2023 but never went to trial. Proceedings were delayed by litigation over presidential immunity and other pretrial issues.(en.wikipedia.org)
- On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court decided Trump v. United States, recognizing significant presidential immunity for official acts and remanding the case for further proceedings, but there was no trial, no conviction, and thus no criminal appeal from a conviction for the Court to overturn.(en.wikipedia.org)(congress.gov)
- After Trump won the 2024 election, Smith moved to dismiss the D.C. case without prejudice, citing longstanding DOJ policy not to prosecute a sitting president; Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the dismissal on November 25, 2024.(en.wikipedia.org)(ap.org) Later reporting and Smith’s own final report confirm that prosecutors believed they could have obtained and sustained a conviction had the case gone to trial, but they closed it because of Trump’s return to office, not because the Supreme Court overturned any conviction as a “novel legal theory.”(ap.org)(reuters.com)
Bottom line: Trump did "win" in the sense that he avoided conviction in this case, but he did not do so via the path Sacks predicted. There was no D.C. jury conviction, no appeal from a conviction, and no Supreme Court decision overturning such a conviction on the ground that the prosecution’s theory was impermissibly novel. On the normalized prediction — which centers on that conviction‑then‑reversal sequence — the outcome is therefore wrong.