Trump's lawyers will get another chance to argue their immunity claims before the Supreme Court on April 25. Lower courts have rejected them twice. The high court's decision to review the matter has placed the criminal case on hold awaiting the appeal, making it uncertain if special counsel Jack Smith can try the ex-president before November's election.
Trump's lawyers argued in a brief filed Tuesday that a president “cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.” Judges have already rejected these arguments.
“A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma from political opponents,” the lawyers argued. "The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial Presidential decisions, weakening the Presidency."
Smith's team claims that ex-presidents don't have immunity and that Trump's failed but desperate attempt to stay in office after losing to Democrat Joe Biden were not presidential conduct.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and a three-judge federal appeals panel in Washington have agreed with Smith, but the case, which was scheduled for trial on March 4, has been frozen for months as the appeal is heard.
If the court reject the immunity claims, Trump's lawyers advised them to send the matter back to Chutkan for more “fact-finding.” Such a step would postpone trial scheduling even more. Several Supreme Court filings submitted Tuesday supported Trump, including one from 18 Republican-led states.
The case is one of four state and federal criminal prosecutions Trump faces to recover the White House. His lawyers have delayed the cases from going to trial, which has worked for the ex-president.
Only one of those four—a New York case charging Trump with hush money payments to conceal an extramarital affair—is scheduled to begin in the coming months. Last week, the court delayed the trial until at least mid-April to investigate a last-minute evidence dump that the former president's lawyers argued hindered their defense.
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