Former president Donald Trump is petitioning the Supreme Court to block a trial relating to special counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election-subversion case.
Trump’s lawyers filed an appeal with the Court on Monday, asking the court to stay an order from a D.C. appeals court, which ruled last week that Trump is not immune from criminal charges. The former president claims that presidential immunity shields him from criminal prosecution.
“If the prosecution of a President is upheld, such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common, ushering in destructive cycles of recrimination,” Trump’s request read. “Criminal prosecution, with its greater stigma and more severe penalties, imposes a far greater ‘personal vulnerability’ on the President than any civil penalty.”
“The threat of future criminal prosecution by a politically opposed Administration will overshadow every future President’s official acts — especially the most politically controversial decisions,” it continued.
When judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Trump’s bid for immunity last week, they gave him until Monday to appeal to the Supreme Court. If the high court delays in responding to Trump’s Monday filing, he could face a trial during election season, or even after November. Judges argued in an opinion that “former President Trump has become citizen Trump,” and as such, has “the defenses of any other criminal defendant.”
“We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” the judges wrote last week. That “would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three branches.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to criminal conspiracy charges that accuse him of trying to overturn the 2020 election results. He and his lawyers have called his impending trial election interference and have said that a criminal indictment against Trump could have a “chilling effect” on future presidential administrations.
“Conducting a monthslong criminal trial of President Trump at the height of election season,” the Monday filing said, “will radically disrupt President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden — which appears to be the whole point of the special counsel’s persistent demands for expedition.”