(Headline USA) Special counsel Jack Smith urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to move quickly in allowing former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case to proceed to trial.
“The national interest in resolving those charges without further delay is compelling,” Smith and his legal team wrote.
Prosecutors were responding to a Trump team request from earlier in the week asking for a continued pause in the case as the court considers whether to take up the question of whether the former president is immune from prosecution for official acts in the White House. Two lower courts in Washington, D.C., have already rejected that position, prompting Trump to ask the high court to intervene.
The Supreme Court’s next step will likely determine whether Trump stands trial before the November election.
Smith himself has attempted at other times to claim that Trump should be treated no differently than any other civilian trial defendant, but is now eager to deny his due process because of the political pressures bearing down.
If the proceedings are going to be postponed by weeks or months of additional arguments, the trial would likely be set for after the election to avoid any appearance of political interference. That may well mean it is up to the American people to determine Trump’s innocence by re-electing him to the same position that he stands accused of trying to steal.
If Trump were to be elected with the case pending, he could presumably use his authority as head of the executive branch to order the Justice Department to dismiss it, or could potentially seek to pardon himself.
Reflecting their desire to proceed quickly, prosecutors responded to Trump’s appeal within two days, even though the court had given them until next Tuesday.
Though their filing does not explicitly mention the upcoming November election or Trump’s status as the Republican primary front-runner, prosecutors described the case as having “unique national importance” and said that “delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict.”
Smith’s team charged Trump in August with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including by participating in a scheme to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when his supporters stormed the building in a violent clash with police.
“The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy,” they wrote. “A President’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law.”
Trump’s lawyers have argued that he is shielded from prosecution for acts that fell within his official duties as president—a legally untested argument since no other former president has been indicted.
The trial judge and then a federal appeals court rejected those arguments, with a three-judge appeals panel last week saying, “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”
The proceedings have been effectively frozen by Trump’s immunity appeal, with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan canceling a March 4 trial date while the appeals court considered the matter. No new date has been set.
Trump’s appeal and request for the Supreme Court to get involved could cause further delays depending on what the justices decide. In December, Smith and his team had urged the justices to take up and decide the immunity issue, even before the appeals court weighed in. But the court declined.
The Supreme Court’s options include rejecting the emergency appeal, which would enable Chutkan to restart the trial proceedings in Washington’s federal court. The court also could extend the delay while it hears arguments on the immunity issue. In that event, the schedule the justices set could determine how soon a trial might begin, if indeed they agree with lower court rulings that Trump is not immune from prosecution.
On Wednesday, prosecutors urged the court to reject Trump’s petition to hear the case, saying that lower court opinions rejecting immunity for the former president “underscore how remote the possibility is that this Court will agree with his unprecedented legal position.”
But if the court does want to decide the matter, Smith said, the justices should hear arguments in March and issue a final ruling by late June.
Prosecutors also pushed back against Trump’s argument that allowing the case to proceed could chill future presidents’ actions for fear they could be criminally charged once they leave office and open the door to politically motivated cases against former commanders-in-chief.
“That dystopian vision runs contrary to the checks and balances built into our institutions and the framework of the Constitution,” they wrote. “Those guardrails ensure that the legal process for determining criminal liability will not be captive to ‘political forces,’ as applicant forecasts.”
Recent evidence has come to light that President Joe Biden and the CIA may have been coordinating on the egregious lawfare attacks against Trump, part of a two-tiered justice system that has resulted in 91 felony charges in four different states for the GOP frontrunner.
Despite the political brinksmanship, Trump has continuously polled ahead of Biden and is gaining ground in key demographics, including independent voters, younger voters and minorities.
Trump also has led Biden in most of the key battleground states that played crucial roles for both men in their respective 2016 and 2020 election victories.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
