Donald Trump’s defense that he is immune from prosecution was rejected by the US Supreme Court on Friday, possibly postponing his trial for alleged election meddling until 2020.
In order to avoid going through the federal court of appeals, Special Counsel Jack Smith had requested that the nation’s highest court take up the immunity matter as soon as possible.
The motion was turned down by the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority made up of three judges Trump appointed, in a one-line order that offered no justification for the ruling.
The trial for the 77-year-old Trump, who is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, is set for March 4, 2024. He is accused of plotting to rig the election that Democrat Joe Biden won in November 2020.
Trump’s attorneys have continuously tried to push back the trial until after the election of the next year, using the defense that a former president has “absolute immunity” and is not subject to prosecution for his activities while in the White House.
The immunity claim was denied on December 1 by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over Trump’s trial in March. Chutkan stated that a former president does not have a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”
“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” she added.
Trump’s lawyers appealed Chutkan’s decision to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and Smith, the special counsel, asked the Supreme Court to step in and hear the case itself.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office,” Smith said in a filing to the Supreme Court.
“It is of paramount public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved as expeditiously as possible — and, if respondent is not immune, that he receive a fair and speedy trial on these charges,” he said.
Appeals court hearing on January 9
Smith’s motion was denied by the Supreme Court, therefore the appeals court will now hear the immunity case first.
According to University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, this might make it challenging to keep the March trial date.
In 19 cases over the previous four years, the Supreme Court had agreed to “fast-track” appeals; Tobias pointed out that it was unclear why the justices had declined to do so in this particular case.
Trump expressed his satisfaction with the Supreme Court’s decision and expressed eagerness to make his case before the appeals court.
“Of course I am entitled to Presidential Immunity,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“I was President, it was my right and duty to investigate, and speak on, the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election,” he said, repeating his baseless claims to have won the election.
Arguments before the DC appeals court are set for January 9. The Supreme Court, whose current term ends in June, is anticipated to review the court’s decision.
Additionally, it is anticipated that Trump’s attorneys will petition the Supreme Court of the United States to rule on a ruling made by the Colorado Supreme Court that would prevent the former president from running in the Republican primary in the western state.
On Tuesday, a Colorado court declared that Trump was not allowed to run for office again because he had encouraged an uprising, which resulted in his followers attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A challenge to the application of a law supporting one of the accusations made against Trump and hundreds of his followers who participated in the Capitol attack has already been accepted by the US Supreme Court.
August saw the indictment of Trump in Washington on charges of conspiring to defraud the US and obstructing the process in an attempt to rig the 2020 election results.
He has been charged in Florida for allegedly mishandling top secret papers after leaving the White House, and he is also facing similar election-related accusations in Georgia.
Following the attack on the Capitol, the Democratic-majority House of Representatives impeached Trump on charges of “incitement of insurrection,” but the Senate cleared him.