Donald Trump returns to the Supreme Court. The man who appointed a third of the nine judges at the top of the American judicial system is a recurring figure on the court's agenda this year. The former president's lawyers announced this Monday that they will appeal the ruling of the Washington Court of Appeals that denied him immunity for committing possible crimes while he was a tenant of the White House. Regardless of whether the judges accept or reject the appeal, Trump will at least gain time. He has already managed to delay the trial and has so far avoided being in the dock in the middle of the Republican Party primaries. Now he's asking to let the case rest while he makes some of the arguments in his appeal: “Without criminal immunity, the presidency as we know it will cease to exist.”
Trump has said he will formally appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and is asking that the case continue to be stayed in the meantime. This will allow him to further delay the investigation and the hearing. “Conducting a months-long criminal case against President Trump in the middle of election season will radically harm President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden,” said the brief filed by the former president’s lawyers in the introduction to their brief. “The Order of the District of Columbia Circuit [que deniega su inmunidad y dice que se le someta a juicio] “This threatens to cause immediate, irreparable harm to the interests of President Trump and tens of millions of American voters who have the right to hear President Trump’s campaign message as they decide how to vote in November,” they add.
The discussion of immunity relates to the Washington case, in which the former president is accused of trying to change the outcome of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, in order to remain in power. However, the judges' doctrine can be extended to all four counts of 91 alleged crimes against him. That same Monday, Trump appeared at a Florida court hearing on his allegation of withholding classified documents after he left the White House.
Trump's defense raises two questions in its appeal to the Supreme Court. On the one hand, if presidents enjoy criminal immunity for actions taken in the direct exercise of their office, even after they leave the White House. On the other hand, since Trump has already been impeached in Congress, his right not to be tried twice for the same act is violated. At the time, the majority of senators believed he was guilty, but the two-thirds majority required for conviction was not reached.
Trump's thesis is that if he is put on trial, a faucet will be opened and “the threat of future criminal prosecution by a politically opposed administration will overshadow all of the incoming president's official actions, especially the most politically controversial decisions.” “The political opponents of the Presidents will attempt to influence and control his decisions through effective blackmail or blackmail, with the explicit or implicit threat of future impeachment by a hostile government for actions that do not justify such impeachment.” This threat will be like a millstone to any future president hanging around the neck, distorting the President's decision-making, undermining the President's independence, and clouding the President's ability to “address fearlessly and impartially” the duties of his office. the long writing.
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Trump is making his extreme argument to the Supreme Court that a president or former president can only be tried if he has previously been convicted by Congress in a political trial (impeachment). Given this near-absolute immunity, Trump's defense argues that he cannot even be prosecuted for ordering a special forces team to assassinate his political rivals (including those who want to vote for impeachment?). It's hard to imagine that the Supreme Court could adopt such an argument despite its majority of six conservative justices to three progressive justices, but even if the Supreme Court rejects the appeal, Trump continues to buy time.
The justices gave Trump only until Monday to appeal to the Supreme Court before the case was reopened. Trump's defense therefore had two alternatives: it had to appeal to the full appeals court and let the case continue, or it had to go to the Supreme Court to remain incapacitated, which it did. Normally an appeal does not paralyze the processing of a case, but in this case it does, because the question at issue is whether or not the former president can be prosecuted.
Both the judge handling the case and the appeals court rejected the former president's immunity in very strong terms. “For purposes of this criminal case, former President Trump has become Citizen Trump, with all the defenses of any other criminal defense attorney. But any executive immunity that might have protected him during his term as president no longer protects him from this accusation,” the introduction to the 57-page ruling reads. “It would be a surprising paradox if the President, who has the ultimate constitutional duty to ensure the faithful observance of the laws, were the only position who could challenge them with impunity,” the justices said in their reasoning for the decision. “We cannot accept that the office of president forever places its former holders above the law,” they said in another of their sentences.
In the indictment for this case, which was Trump's third indictment, special prosecutor Jack Smith charged him with four crimes: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing or attempting to obstruct a proceeding, and violating civil rights.
The trial, originally scheduled to begin on March 4 by Judge Tanya Chutkan, has been postponed indefinitely. This clears the way for his first accusation, namely commercial falsehoods in payments to cover up scandals in the 2016 presidential campaign (one of which went to porn actress Stormy Daniels to silence an alleged extramarital affair).
This is initially scheduled for five weeks starting March 25, 2024 in a New York State court. Chutkan had spoken to the New York judge to warn him that it might have to be postponed if the trial were to begin in Washington, but that is no longer the case.
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