Donald Trump’s legal team hasn’t been secretive about its strategy of trying to slow down his election subversion case for as long as possible. As soon as this week, the Supreme Court could signal its willingness or aversion to being drawn into this latest gambit.

The former president formally asked the justices Monday to hit pause on a recent appeals court ruling that rejected his argument that he has presidential immunity for his actions in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot.

Here’s what the court could do next.

Request a response from prosecutors

The court is very likely to ask special counsel Jack Smith’s team for a response to Trump’s request for a pause in the recent appeals court ruling against him on the immunity matter.

A requested response would most likely come with a very short deadline.

If for some reason the justices decided not to respond to Trump’s filing, it would still delay the proceedings in his case, because the trial can’t move forward until the immunity claim is resolved.

No trial date has been set, and everything is effectively on hold anyway.

Smith might be expected to urge the court to deny Trump’s request, but a complicating factor is that in an earlier filing in December, he told the justices they would need to decide the issue.

Decide to hear oral arguments and issue a ruling

The court could decide to treat Trump’s request as a regular appeal, meaning it would schedule oral argument and issue a detailed ruling.

That could delay things and create more uncertainty around an eventual trial date depending on how quickly the court agreed to hear oral arguments and then issue a decision.

Grant Trump’s request

The court could decide to resolve Trump’s request without oral arguments and just grant a delay.

If that happened, the court would put out a short written order saying it has granted Trump’s request. Usually, it would explain the circumstances under which the pause would expire.

Normally such an order would be issued to give Trump time to file an appeal of the lower court ruling, which could take months to resolve.

There could be dissents if the court goes that route.

Reject Trump’s request

If the court decided to reject Trump’s request for a pause, the case would go back down to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to proceed to trial.

But the trial wouldn’t begin right away.

The judge would still need to take into account all of the time the case has been effectively on hold, since early December, and give both sides time to prepare for trial.

Even if the Supreme Court refused to grant Trump’s request immediately and he goes to trial, he could still bring a challenge to his prosecution on presidential immunity grounds later.

Immediately rule against Trump

Some legal commentators have speculated that because it is such an unusual case, with time of the essence, the court could make the rare move of simply issuing a ruling upholding the appeals court decision without hearing oral arguments or asking for any further briefing.

Such an outcome would be based on the theory that, even if the justices think the appeals court ruling was correct, the Supreme Court should weigh in on the legal question because of the nationwide importance.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com