Trump goes to USSC to request stay of Circuit Court order that limits his appeal options.

The Circuit Court provided a limited time for Trump to appeal directly to the USSC or they would lift the stay on the trial itself moving forward.

So Donald Trump brought a fairly longshot filing suggesting he is immune from prosecution for things he did as President. Most analysts believe he is unlikely to prevail on the merits and is clearly using this to stall the trial.

Now the courts ruled originally (and correctly) that the trial must be paused until the issue has been settled. The USSC also previously ruled against cutting Trump's options for appeal. But the Circuit Court ruling works to undermine that with a threat to lift the stay unless he bypassed the en banc review from the full court and appeal directly to the USSC. They did not say he could not go through the normal appeal process, just that they would resume the trial if he did.

Under the normal procedures, Trump would have a given amount of time to ask for the full Circuit Court to review his request and if that failed he would be given a certain amount of time to appeal to the USSC. Generally any stay would remain in place while the appeal process moved on.

It doesn't really matter whether or not the full Circuit Court or if the USSC decided to hear the case, the amount of time Trump could use to drag this out could make a huge impact on whether or not he could face trial prior to the election. If he took the full amount of time to file these appeals and if (for instance) the USSC decided to hear his appeal, then the chances of Trump being tried prior to election day would decrease dramatically.

But the Circuit Court in this case decided to be clever and push his appeal along to try to close the gap between now and a potential trial. The reasoning behind this is not gauged in any reasonable legal principle, but rather is being done to counter Trump's fairly obvious move to delay. However, there is no legitimate legal reason for a trial like this to start sooner rather than later. A trial of this complication could take a year or more before the actual trail starts. The only side that has a right to a speedy trial is the defendant. No such right exists for the state. The only actual reason for this is "political" and by that I mean trying to get a trial in before election day.

Just because this appears to be a delay tactic doesn't mean that the suit does not deserve a fair hearing under normal procedural grounds. If a trial was suspended and stayed until a particular legal issue is resolved, then there is no good reason to limit or put conditions on that legal issue moving through the process.

So regardless as to whether Trump is trying to game the system to create a delay, the onus to combat that is on the prosecutor (the actual adversary in this case). The courts are supposed be a neutral player and not become part of the process by helping along Smith and the prosecution in this sort of obvious fashion. But as we have seen across the board here, when it comes to Trump he is generally fighting both the prosecution and the judges who are supposed to be just working as arbitrators, not participants.