Former President Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court to hold off on weighing whether he is immune from prosecution after special counsel Jack Smith asked the high court to assess the issue.
Trump is appealing the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who declined his motion to toss his election interference case after he argued his status as a former president shields him from the charges.
Smith petitioned the justices to immediately weigh in on Trump’s immunity defense to keep the schedule on track ahead of his March 4 trial.
“The Special Counsel identifies no compelling reason for the extraordinary haste he proposes. Instead, he vaguely asserts that the ‘public interest’ favors resolution on a dramatically accelerated timetable, to ensure that President Trump may be brought to trial in the next few months,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
“In doing so, he confuses the ‘public interest’ with the manifest partisan interest in ensuring that President Trump will be subjected to a months-long criminal trial at the height of a presidential campaign where he is the leading candidate and the only serious opponent of the current administration.”
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear Trump's challenge to Chutkan's rejection of his arguments on Jan. 9.
Trump's team argues allowing the appeals court to first weigh the issue will give the Supreme Court “the benefit of an appellate court’s prior consideration of these historic topics and performing the traditional winnowing function that this Court has long preferred.”
“Importance does not automatically necessitate speed. If anything, the opposite is usually true,” Trump’s team wrote.
“Novel, complex, sensitive, and historic issues — such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — call for more careful deliberation, not less.”
Still, Trump argued against expediting the circuit court’s review of his appeal, a move that comes after prosecutors have contended Trump is seeking every delay possible to punt the case beyond the 2024 election.
“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass, Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote in her early December ruling.
“Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office,” she added.
Trump’s motion also argues the case should be tossed as he was already acquitted by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, saying prosecution by the Justice Department constitutes double jeopardy.
The Supreme Court already agreed to an expedited briefing schedule on the matter but has not yet determined whether to take the case at a closed-door conference.
“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” Smith wrote in his filing last week.
Updated at 5:06 p.m.
