Former President Trump’s defense team filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday. The appeal comes days after the D.C. Appeals Court ruled that the former President doesn’t have immunity in his election subversion case.
Jack Smith filed a case against Trump last August on charges related to making attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election. The case is sometimes referred to as the January 6th case because its charges have to do with Trump’s attempts to “obstruct an official proceeding”, which in this case would be the certification of the 2020 election results in the joint session where the U.S. The House of Representatives and Senate count the votes.
Jack Smith’s indictment has four charges attached to it, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
Trump’s legal team warns that “If the prosecution of a President is upheld, such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common, ushering in destructive cycles of recrimination,” the request states. “Criminal prosecution, with its greater stigma and more severe penalties, imposes a far greater ‘personal vulnerability’ on the President than any civil penalty.” They go on to explain how “the threat of future criminal prosecution by a politically opposed Administration will overshadow every future President’s official acts — especially the most politically controversial decisions.”
Trump’s request states that the president’s “political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via effective extortion or blackmail with the threat, explicit or implicit, of indictment by a future, hostile Administration, for acts that do not warrant any such prosecution.”
“This threat will hang like a millstone around every future President’s neck, distorting Presidential decision-making, undermining the President’s independence, and clouding the President’s ability ‘to deal fearlessly and impartially with’ the duties of his office.'”
Trump’s lawyers added, “Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.”
Presidential immunity means that the President is “absolutely immune in actions for civil damages for all acts within the outer perimeter of his official duties”, as decided in Nixon V. Fitzgerald in 1982.
Prosecutors are making attempts to speed up the process in order to get the immunity case settled before Trump’s scheduled March 4 trial where a jury will decide the Former president’s fate.
Smith’s legal team wrote to Judges last week that the trial should be expedited because it “involves federal criminal charges against a former President for alleged criminal efforts to overturn the results of the Presidential election, including through the use of official power.”
Former President Trump’s appeal to the supreme court could become a landmark decision that has lasting impact on the issue of Presidential Immunity. If the court were to side with the Former President, then that means President Biden, Former President George W. Bush, Former President Barack H. Obama, and Former President Bill Clinton could all be targets of suits and indictments because of their accusations of war crimes in the past when they held public office.
