Rolling Stone reports:

Donald Trump‘s inner circle doesn’t expect the Supreme Court to go along with his extreme arguments about executive power in the immunity case before the justices. But what the high court does now is almost beside the point: Trump already won.

Three people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers have already accepted that the justices will likely rule against him, and reject his claims to expansive presidential immunity in perpetuity. Bringing the case before the court — after a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., shut down their arguments on executive power — was a delaying tactic designed to push Trump’s criminal election subversion trial past Election Day this fall. The strategy paid off so much more than MAGAworld anticipated.

“We already pulled off the heist,” says a source close to Trump, noting it doesn’t matter to them what the Supreme Court decides now. [Continue reading…]