US President Donald Trump is providing an update on the so-called Operation Warp Speed program, the joint Department of Defense and HHS initiative that has reached agreements with several drug manufacturers to accelerate the search for effective treatments for the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID). -19) Pandemic, in an address in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, USA, November 13, 2020.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s blanket claim to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts – but the court also questioned parts of the federal election interference case against the former president.
The question at trial – whether an ex-president can be prosecuted for official acts he committed while in office – was in the case of special counsel Jack Smith, who accused Trump of attempting to illegally attempt his election defeat in the year Compensating against President Joe Biden in 2020 is of existential importance.
Smith sat in the courtroom Thursday as attorney Michael Dreeben presented the government’s case.
In the first questioning, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed skepticism of Trump’s lawyers’ argument that a president should be immune from prosecution for all official actions while in office.
“I have a hard time imagining that creating false documents, filing false documents, ordering the assassination of a rival, taking bribes, and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain is something anyone would claim “It is.” reasonable for a president or an official to do that,” Sotomayor told Trump lawyer John Sauer.
As questioning continued, several conservative justices appeared to seriously consider that the prospect of prosecution could have a chilling effect on a sitting president.
“I am not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about the future use of criminal law to target political opponents based on allegations about their motives,” Judge Neil Gorsuch said.
Judges appointed by Republican presidents also questioned certain parts of Smith’s case against Trump. Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh both expressed skepticism about a key part of Trump’s election interference case, known as the Fraud Conspiracy Statute.
The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling has profound consequences for some of the other pending criminal cases against Trump that hinge on his conduct in the White House.
In addition to Smith’s case in Washington, DC, Trump is accused in Georgia of trying to overturn his loss to Biden in the 2020 election campaign in that state.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that when a president faces criminal prosecution for official acts, the president is effectively paralyzed, or “chilled,” as Sauer put it, in his actions and decisions by the fear of future prosecution.
But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed the opposite concern.
“You seem concerned that the president might be hypothermic,” she told Sauer. “I think that we would have a really significant opposite problem: if the president wasn’t relaxed about someone with that kind of power, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest authority, being able to take office if he knew he was going to do it . “There is no possible punishment for committing crimes.”
“I’m trying to understand what prevents the Oval Office from becoming the seat of criminal activity in this country,” she added.
Trump was not at the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments because he had to attend his New York criminal trial.
The former president is in Manhattan Supreme Court on charges of allegedly falsifying business records when he reimbursed his then-lawyer for a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn star after taking office in 2017.
Trump and Smith’s lawyers began arguing at 10 a.m. before the nine justices, three of whom were nominated by Trump during his single term as president.
The Supreme Court agreed to take on the case after two lower courts rejected Trump’s claim that he was immune from the charges brought by Smith.
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump wave a flag in front of the Supreme Court as the court considers a lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory, December 11, 2020, in Washington, United States.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters
By addressing the immunity issue, the Supreme Court effectively delayed for months the election interference case that is on hold in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court could rule on the matter quickly, but tends to save the biggest case decisions for the end of the term, which typically ends in late June or early July.
Even if the justices reject Trump’s argument and allow Smith’s case to be reopened, it could not go to trial until after the Nov. 5 presidential election. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has sought to delay all four of his pending criminal trials beyond November.
The trial to interfere with the federal election was originally scheduled to begin on March 4th.
Some anti-Trump legal experts criticized the court for upholding Trump’s immunity claim after a federal appeals court in Washington vigorously rejected it in early February.
The Supreme Court “has already unreasonably delayed this matter,” Norm Eisen, a lawyer and former aide to House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, said in a press call Wednesday.
Smith’s indictment charges Trump with four crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. Smith alleges Trump tried to undermine the 2020 results by spreading false claims of voter fraud, organizing lists of fake pro-Trump voters in states Biden won and trying to take advantage of a violent mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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2024-04-25 17:54:18
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