Finance
The US Supreme Court has declined to rule on Donald Trump’s “presidential immunity” defense until the matter is heard by an appeals court. The Supreme Court’s refusal on Friday comes in response to special counsel Jack Smith’s plea for a quick and “definitive” finding on whether the former president can claim “immunity” from prosecution for crimes allegedly committed while in office. The court did not explain its reasons, and no dissents were noted.
The 77-year-old leader for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 is currently scheduled to stand trial on 4th March 2024 on allegations of conspiring to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory, including his failure to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the US Capitol to stop the certification of the results on 6th January.
The ruling is a big setback for Smith, who took an uncommon risk by asking the justices to bypass a federal appeals court and speedily resolve a key issue in his election-subversion criminal case against Trump.
According to CNN, both sides will have the option of appealing an eventual ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals up to the Supreme Court, but the court’s decision is a major victory for Trump, whose delay strategy in the criminal case included a protracted fight over the immunity question, which must be settled before his case goes to trial.
Trump’s attorneys have continuously tried to push back the trial until after the election of the next year, citing the ex-president’s “absolute immunity” from prosecution for acts committed while in the White House. Smith had urged the Supreme Court to take the unusual step of bypassing the DC circuit and grant “immediate review”. A decision by the high court was “the only way” to achieve a “timely and definitive resolution” to the challenge by Trump, he argued in his petition.
Lawyers for Trump had urged the justices to reject that request, arguing that a ruling was among the “most complex, intricate, and momentous issues that this court will be called on to decide” and should therefore not be rushed through the judicial hierarchy at “breakneck speed”.
On December 1, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over Trump’s March trial, rejected Trump’s immunity claim, stating that a former president does not have a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”
Source:In
