The Supreme Court will rule on Trump’s immunity in electoral interference case

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday that it will decide whether former President Donald Trump had presidential immunity when he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a defeat against Joe Biden that he denied, and continues to refuse to admit. In practice, the court’s announcement is a victory for Trump’s legal strategy based on delay tactics, and entails a new postponement in the start of the trial against him in Washington for the events that led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump’s defense plan is to delay the four proceedings he has pending with the justice system, in which he faces 91 counts in total, for as long as possible. The ideal for his lawyers is to delay them sufficiently so that they will be prolonged until after the elections next November, when everything suggests that Trump will be facing Biden again in his attempt to return to the White House four years later.

In a short statement, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear arguments from both sides during the week of April 22 and then issue its decision. If the Supreme Court agrees with Trump, the charges will be dismissed. If not, the trial, which threatens to drag on for months, could go forward. Washington-based U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had originally scheduled the first hearing in the trial for this coming Monday, March 4.

In the Supreme Court’s brief order, the nine justices, six of them conservatives, three of whom were appointed during Trump’s time in the White House, read: “[We will decide] Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Feb. 6 against Trump’s immunity bid. They also gave the tycoon’s lawyers time to file an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to prevent the decision from taking effect.

Separation of powers

The defense argues that, as president, Trump had total immunity and that this gave cover to any of his acts. According to this argument, immunity emanates from the fundamental principle of the separation of powers, and is the perfect antidote, says this theory, that justice should not be used for partisan purposes. The Supreme Court justices will have to decide, among other things, whether these attempts to interfere in the elections can fall into the category of the normal performance of the president’s duties.

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” said the 57-page appeals court ruling in its introduction. “It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity. (...) We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

Trump’s lawyers also claimed immunity in the case of the classified documents that the FBI found in a search at Mar-a-Lago, his mansion in Palm Beach (Florida) after the former president improperly withheld them. They were full of national security secrets, but lawyers argue that their client was entitled to take them out of the White House because that decision was made in his last weeks in office. The trial, unless there is a foreseeable delay, is scheduled to begin at the end of May in Florida. The former president’s legal team also habitually airs the complaint that so many trials threaten to interfere with the presidential campaign, which enters its peak after the summer, and that Trump will surely spend between the dock and the rally podium.

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