Special Counsel before the Supreme Court; asks the justices

To settle the matter before the 2024 election, Justice Department prosecutors asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on whether former President Donald Trump can avoid being charged with a federal crime for attempting to rig the 2020 election. They requested that the court rule “promptly” on Trump’s immunity from the charges against him.

The Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether a president is “absolutely immune” from being prosecuted in federal court for crimes committed while in office, or if presidents are shielded from prosecution if “he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.” Special Counsel Jack Smith is in charge of the investigation into Trump.

Trump has attempted to have the accusations against him dropped, claiming that his presidential “immunity” stems from his time in office during the attempt to rig the 2020 election.

The plea was denied by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who decided that Trump did not have the “divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens” because of his tenure in the White House.

Subsequently, Trump filed an appeal against Chutkan’s order, requesting that Chutkan halt all legal proceedings until the appeals court makes a decision. Trump even went so far as to declare that, absent Chutkan’s affirmative action, he would proceed as though the matter had been put on hold, potentially delaying his scheduled trial for March 2024.

Smith filed an early appeal with the Supreme Court, arguing that it is “imperative public importance that [Trump’s] claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that [his] trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” to prevent the case from being further postponed.

Smith stated in his Supreme Court appeal that Trump’s assertions of presidential immunity “are profoundly mistaken, as the district court held.” “However, they can only be finally resolved by this Court.”