An Arizona grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday charging 18 people with crimes related to the attempt to ruin the 2020 presidential election for former President Donald Trump. The list of defendants includes not only the 11 Arizonans who were designated as “false electors” in that state but also lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Christina Bobb, members of the Trump campaign’s inner circle.

Although Trump is not directly named in the indictment, but is listed only as “unindicted co-conspirator No. 1,” the timing could not be worse for him. The Arizona charges were unsealed the day before the former president’s lawyers appeared before the Supreme Court to claim that his actions after the election were all official and therefore covered by blanket presidential immunity. But the Arizona allegations serve as an important reminder that Trump’s actions after the 2020 election were not a mere byproduct of Trump’s performance as president. Instead, Trump was allegedly the head of a criminal enterprise, as the Georgia indictment calls it, and his efforts cannot be dismissed as part of the job.

The Arizona allegations serve as an important reminder that Trump’s actions after the 2020 election were not a mere byproduct of Trump’s performance as president.

The charges that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes requested and the grand jury returned focus on one facet of the broader scheme that a Washington grand jury, at the request of special prosecutor Jack Smith, said existed in a federal indictment of 2023. As part of the attempt to cast doubt on the election results, according to that federal indictment, Republicans in several swing states where Joe Biden won cast fraudulent votes in the Electoral College declaring Trump the winner.

Fake electors cast votes in seven states, and Arizona is the last of the seven to conclude its investigations into the scheme. Three of the state’s bogus electors are co-defendants with Trump in a sprawling conspiracy case in Georgia. State attorneys in Michigan and Nevada have also charged people accused of being false voters. (The Wisconsin investigation is ongoing, but many of the participants there have admitted their role in settling a civil lawsuit.) Only prosecutors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico declined to file charges. They have noted that participants there insisted that their certificates included language that made clear that they were true contingencies and not “real” Electoral College votes.

At the time, the Trump campaign’s public claim was that these “alternate slates” of electors were mere backups in case a court ruled that Trump had won those states. But as the Arizona grand jury concluded, there was a clear belief among the defendants that the real reason for producing the false election certificates was to turn Trump’s false claims about election fraud into a vehicle for him to remain in office.

Thursday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court took place in that context. Arguing for Trump, D. John Sauer asserted that hidden in the Constitution is complete immunity from criminal prosecution for presidents after they leave office for their official acts. His argument depends on an extremely broad interpretation of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Nixon v. Fitzgerald, who determined that presidents have immunity against civil lawsuits filed in response to their decisions, including those made within the “outer perimeter” of their official capacity.

It’s an argument that should carry little weight given how clearly even Trump’s actions taken as an official, rather than as an office seeker, were undertaken with a personal agenda. Talking to the vice president or making calls about election integrity to the Arizona Legislature might be things a president might be expected to do, but not as part of a plan to overturn the will of American voters. Despite that, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch seemed extremely willing to consider Sauer’s arguments and look beyond the facts of the current case to imagine a hypothetical dystopian future in which all presidents are paralyzed by fear of being criminally prosecuted once they leave office.

The Supreme Court would do well to focus on the immediacy of the present rather than hiding behind hypotheticals.

Fortunately, Smith prepared for such a possibility. In his brief, he argued that even if the court determines that some form of immunity for official acts exists, sufficient not official The indictment still included the conduct that the case should be able to proceed immediately to trial. When Judge Amy Coney Barrett addressed Smith’s brief, Sauer was forced to admit that several of the things the special counsel listed are, in fact, private acts. Take, for example, the fact that Trump hired private lawyers (including Giuliani) to spread false rumors about the election results and continue the fake electors plot.

As Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown noted, questions about what qualifies as an official act go beyond what Trump has requested, which is a ruling on whether there is absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. Anything beyond that question, which he should quickly answer in the negative, is just another way to delay his judgment.

However, the justices seemed unlikely to issue a quick decision, despite the authorization Smith has given them to split the difference and allow the trial to continue. As eager as some of the conservative judges were to ignore the facts of the case, the unveiling of the charges in Arizona on Wednesday is a reminder to everyone paying attention that there was a real attempt, involving the president of the United States , to overturn the results of an American election. The Supreme Court would do well to focus on the immediacy of the present rather than hiding behind hypotheticals.