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Supreme Court to hear arguments in Trump election interference case >

The Supreme Court will take up former President Donald Trump’s “absolute immunity” defense this week, and if he wins, the result could knock down many of the criminal charges he’s facing.

The case is groundbreaking. No former president has ever found himself in Mr. Trump’s situation or asserted the kind of protection from prosecution for acts taken while in office.

Mr. Trump has asked the justices to dismiss a federal indictment accusing him of a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election. He faces another federal criminal case over his handling of classified documents, a Georgia case over the 2020 election and a New York case over hush money payments made before the 2016 election.

Experts said the cases dealing with his actions while in the White House could topple, should the justices accept his broad immunity argument.

“There could be quite a ripple effect,” said Ted Cooperstein, an appellate attorney representing defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Even a narrow ruling, in which the justices kick the election interference case back to lower courts to decide what exactly constitutes an official act, could result in delays in reaching a trial, effectively pushing the issue beyond November’s election.

SEE ALSO: You’re on your own: Dems want to send Trump to prison without Secret Service protection

The case raises big questions about the presidency, its powers and its leeway for action.

Mr. Trump argues that a president must be free from fear of legal jeopardy for “official acts” in order to carry out the job. Worrying about a later prosecution could leave the world’s most powerful official constrained at times requiring the most flexibility.

His lawyers told the Supreme Court the only exception to absolute immunity is when the House impeaches and the Senate convicts and removes a president.

Short of that, allowing laws written by Congress and judged by the courts to constrain the president, as co-equal branches of government, would upend the Constitution’s balance of power, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said.

“The Founders viewed protecting the independence of the Presidency as well worth the risk that some Presidents might evade punishment in marginal cases,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued in their legal filings.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, calls those claims “novel and sweeping.” He said a president must prove he was acting under a specific presidential power to claim immunity and Mr. Trump can’t point to any power he was exercising when he tried to upend the results of the 2020 election.

He said all previous presidents understood they could face criminal liability once out of office. Indeed, former President Richard Nixon accepted a pardon from his successor, President Gerald Ford.

“Nothing in constitutional text, history, precedent, or policy considerations supports the absolute immunity that petitioner seeks,” Mr. Smith told the justices in his filings.

Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, said a ruling in favor of Mr. Trump could affect Mr. Smith’s document-handling case in a federal court in Florida and the election interference case in state court in Georgia.

But he said the New York hush money case is different. The action in question there took place when Mr. Trump was a candidate for the 2016 election.

“I think in the Florida and the Georgia cases you have a stronger argument they are official acts,” Mr. Levey said.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/22/supreme-court-to-decide-on-absolute-immunity-for-t/?bt_ee=4ibnd9XP2PJYtVkw4KIk6JWRnJ47KW4NpXq4gt2RF2gZsCsFbiXbQB%2Fh4219v1cD&bt_ts=1713789359222