The number of caveats and conditions discussed in Trump counsel's defense and raised by justices appear to a reflection of the justices SEEKING caveats and exclusions that provide immunity to a President rather than hewing to the "no man is above the law" concept most of us thought we learned in school.

I've stated previously that the laws, principles and short-hand logic in this area of law and politics shouldn't be subtle and nuanced in order to protect the rights of a candidate or politician to be in power.

I think there's a lot of conflict between people's expectations of how legal processes work, and the reality of how they work.

Taking a criminal defendant from arrest to the end of a trial and exhaustion of appeals can be enormously complicated and time-consuming, filled with countless motions and hearings and disputed points of law and procedural hurdles. But unless you're involved with that process in some way, you probably don't have that perception. Partially that's because they never show that part of the process in TV shows or movies or news about the criminal justice system. You won't see scenes of attorneys spending three weeks drafting a motion for partial protective order to exclude some questions from a witness' third deposition. The news almost never has breathless coverage of pre-trial motion practice of criminal cases. They'll announce the indictment of a high-profile criminal defendant (like Elizabeth Holmes, indicted June 2018) and the beginning of the trial of that defendant more than a year later (originally hers was set for December 2020) - but they're not covering the intervening two years very much, so people don't internalize that "yes, it can take a couple of years to get a wealthy defendant with a team of lawyers to trial".

That's especially the case in white collar crimes, where there is not just a dispute over facts, but disputes over whether the alleged conduct was unlawful. It can be really complex to prosecute crimes where people are doing things that they're generally allowed to do (oversee money, make public statements about a company, talk to other government officials and make legal arguments) but you're alleging that they did them in an illegal way. Hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat is illegal most of the time, so the trial is usually about proving whether the defendant actually hit the person in the head with the baseball bat. Giving speeches and hiring lawyers to make arguments and lobbying congressbeings is legal nearly all of the time, so the trial is mostly about convincing judges that these particular speeches/lawyerings/lobbyings were illegal.

None of the laws governing those things are explicit, clear, or unambiguous. Because the underlying behavior is legal in nearly all circumstances, whether a particular instance is criminal often involves subtle or nuanced arguments. Which is why it's not all that surprising - or even unusual - that Trump might not get to a trial within a year of the indictment.