Booooo:
The Supreme Court on Friday said it will not fast-track consideration of Donald Trump’s claim that he has immunity from prosecution for actions he took as president, a question crucial to whether he can be put on trial for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
The court’s one-sentence order, from which there were no noted dissents, means a federal appeals court in Washington will be the first to review a district judge’s ruling earlier this month rejecting Trump’s claim of immunity. Arguments are scheduled for Jan. 9.
Special counsel Jack Smith had asked the justices to short-circuit the normal appellate process and quickly settle the question of presidential criminal immunity, which the Supreme Court previously has not been called upon to resolve. He said public interest required intervention now, so the federal election-obstruction trial of Trump — the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — could proceed as scheduled in March.
“This case involves — for the first time in our Nation’s history — criminal charges against a former President based on his actions while in office,” Smith said in a filing to the Supreme Court. “And not just any actions: alleged acts to perpetuate himself in power by frustrating the constitutionally prescribed process for certifying the lawful winner of an election.”
Trump’s lawyers told the justices that the issue was too important to be rushed, and that Smith, by seeking to hasten the timetable, is doing the bidding of President Biden’s reelection campaign.
Sign up for The Trump Trials, our weekly update on Trump's four criminal cases
Smith “confuses the ‘public interest’ with the manifest partisan interest in ensuring that President Trump will be subjected to a months-long criminal trial at the height of a presidential campaign where he is the leading candidate and the only serious opponent of the current Administration,” Trump lawyer D. John Sauer wrote.
“The combination of an almost three-year wait to bring this case and the Special Counsel’s current demand for extraordinary expedition, supported by the vaguest of justifications, creates a compelling inference of partisan motivation.”
Trump is charged in federal court in D.C. with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights — in this case “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” Each charge relates to Trump’s actions in the aftermath of his November 2020 loss to Joe Biden, including the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which disrupted the counting of the electoral votes.
Trump's D.C. federal trial
It is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing. He was indicted in federal court in Florida, accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the material; in state court in Georgia over efforts to block Biden’s victory there; and in state court in New York, related to falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment in the 2016 election.
Trump has denied guilt and tried to push his trials beyond Election Day in November. Smith’s latest legal gambit aims to keep the Washington trial on its current schedule. That would mean the trial would begin the day before the Super Tuesday primary on March 5. Polls show Trump far ahead in the contest for the Republican nomination.
Besides the question of Trump’s immunity, the Supreme Court separately has announced it will take up a challenge to a law used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot — a charge that is also among those Trump faces in his federal election obstruction case.
The justices will examine an appeals court ruling, which said the government could prosecute Jan. 6 riot defendants charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to obstruct or impede an official proceeding — in this case, disruption of Congress’s formal certification of Biden’s victory. Scores of defendants already have been sentenced under the law.
A ruling that the charge cannot be used in the context of Jan. 6 prosecutions could impact hundreds of riot defendants, along with Trump himself.
And Trump’s lawyers say they will soon ask the high court to overturn a decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which said the former president cannot be placed on the state’s ballot. It was the first time a court has ruled to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot under an 1868 provision of the Constitution that bars insurrectionists from holding office. The ruling comes as courts in other states consider similar cases.
The Supreme Court on Friday said it will not fast-track consideration of Donald Trump’s claim that he has immunity from prosecution for actions he took as president, a question crucial to whether he can be put on trial for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
The court’s one-sentence order, from which there were no noted dissents, means a federal appeals court in Washington will be the first to review a district judge’s ruling earlier this month rejecting Trump’s claim of immunity. Arguments are scheduled for Jan. 9.
Special counsel Jack Smith had asked the justices to short-circuit the normal appellate process and quickly settle the question of presidential criminal immunity, which the Supreme Court previously has not been called upon to resolve. He said public interest required intervention now, so the federal election-obstruction trial of Trump — the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — could proceed as scheduled in March.
“This case involves — for the first time in our Nation’s history — criminal charges against a former President based on his actions while in office,” Smith said in a filing to the Supreme Court. “And not just any actions: alleged acts to perpetuate himself in power by frustrating the constitutionally prescribed process for certifying the lawful winner of an election.”
Trump’s lawyers told the justices that the issue was too important to be rushed, and that Smith, by seeking to hasten the timetable, is doing the bidding of President Biden’s reelection campaign.
Sign up for The Trump Trials, our weekly update on Trump's four criminal cases
Smith “confuses the ‘public interest’ with the manifest partisan interest in ensuring that President Trump will be subjected to a months-long criminal trial at the height of a presidential campaign where he is the leading candidate and the only serious opponent of the current Administration,” Trump lawyer D. John Sauer wrote.
“The combination of an almost three-year wait to bring this case and the Special Counsel’s current demand for extraordinary expedition, supported by the vaguest of justifications, creates a compelling inference of partisan motivation.”
Trump is charged in federal court in D.C. with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights — in this case “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” Each charge relates to Trump’s actions in the aftermath of his November 2020 loss to Joe Biden, including the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which disrupted the counting of the electoral votes.
Trump's D.C. federal trial
It is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing. He was indicted in federal court in Florida, accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the material; in state court in Georgia over efforts to block Biden’s victory there; and in state court in New York, related to falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment in the 2016 election.
Trump has denied guilt and tried to push his trials beyond Election Day in November. Smith’s latest legal gambit aims to keep the Washington trial on its current schedule. That would mean the trial would begin the day before the Super Tuesday primary on March 5. Polls show Trump far ahead in the contest for the Republican nomination.
Besides the question of Trump’s immunity, the Supreme Court separately has announced it will take up a challenge to a law used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot — a charge that is also among those Trump faces in his federal election obstruction case.
The justices will examine an appeals court ruling, which said the government could prosecute Jan. 6 riot defendants charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to obstruct or impede an official proceeding — in this case, disruption of Congress’s formal certification of Biden’s victory. Scores of defendants already have been sentenced under the law.
A ruling that the charge cannot be used in the context of Jan. 6 prosecutions could impact hundreds of riot defendants, along with Trump himself.
And Trump’s lawyers say they will soon ask the high court to overturn a decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which said the former president cannot be placed on the state’s ballot. It was the first time a court has ruled to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot under an 1868 provision of the Constitution that bars insurrectionists from holding office. The ruling comes as courts in other states consider similar cases.
