Special Counsel Jack Smith is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the issue of Donald Trump’s claim of “absolute” presidential immunity immediately, so his Washington, D.C. election subversion case can continue – or end.
“The public interest in a prompt resolution of this case favors an immediate, definitive decision by this Court. The charges here are of the utmost gravity,” Smith in his new filing, CNN reports.
The Special Counsel is counting on the nation’s highest court to rule quickly, pointing to its decision a half-century ago in another caae against another president, Richard Nixon.
“Here, the stakes are at least as high, if not higher: the resolution of the question presented is pivotal to whether the former President himself will stand trial – which is scheduled to begin less than three months in the future,” Smith wrote.
The question the Supreme Court is being asked to resolve is: “Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”
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Trump has been claiming he cannot be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost because he was president at the time and therefore has immunity, a claim legal experts have deemed false. He is also asking the U.S. Supreme Court to not address the issue, and allow an appeals court to rule on it first, a request experts say is an attempt to delay his trial.
Judge Tanya Chutkan has already ruled Trump does not have immunity, but agreed that once the ex-president appealed her decision, the trial was no longer under her control, and had to be paused.
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the U.S. v. Nixon case to “leapfrog” over the appellate court.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by Nixon, in his majority opinion wrote there was not “an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.”