WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump told the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that there is no need to expedite proceedings in the criminal case based on his coup attempt ― but failed to mention that he would have the power to end that prosecution should he return to the White House before the case is concluded.
In a 44-page filing, Trump lawyers John Lauro, John Sauer and Todd Blanche said prosecutors want to speed up a trial to hurt Trump’s 2024 campaign to regain the White House. “The combination of an almost three-year wait to bring this case and the special counsel’s current demand for extraordinary expedition, supported by the vaguest of justifications, creates a compelling inference of partisan motivation,” the lawyers wrote.
Special counsel Jack Smith last week asked the high court to step in and quickly settle a question that could otherwise derail the planned March 5 start of that federal trial: whether Trump, as the president at the time, has immunity from prosecution for his actions to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election.
“This case — involving charges that respondent sought to thwart the peaceful transfer of power through violations of federal criminal law — is at the apex of public importance,” Smith wrote in his Dec. 11 filing.
The justices later that day gave Trump until 4 p.m. Wednesday to respond to Smith’s request. It is unclear whether the court will take up the case and what schedule it might set for arguments if it chooses to do so.
The same question is currently before the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s request to dismiss the four felony counts against him because of “presidential immunity.”
“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,” she wrote in her Dec. 2 opinion.
Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
As a practical matter, if Trump successfully drags out either or both of the federal prosecutions against him past Jan. 20, 2025, he would be able to, should he become the GOP presidential nominee and win next November, order the Department of Justice to dismiss all federal charges against him.
Trump’s lawyers, though, elide over that detail and instead repeat arguments that they’ve unsuccessfully made to Chutkan: that all of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and remain in power were “official” acts for which he has immunity.
“It radically and unlawfully stretches the language of broadly phrased criminal statutes to reach conduct — speech and political advocacy — never before covered by them,” they wrote of the indictment.
In addition to the Washington, D.C., indictment for conspiring to defraud the United States and attempting to block the Jan. 6 congressional certification ceremony of the election result, Trump faces federal charges in South Florida for refusing to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Palm Beach country club.
Trump also faces a felony indictment in Georgia for attempting to overturn his election loss in that state as well as charges in New York for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just ahead of his 2016 election.
If convicted on one or more of the serious charges, Trump could be sent to prison for decades.
Nevertheless, he remains the polling leader for the 2024 GOP nomination, and only two of his Republican rivals even tried to use the 91 felony charges against him in their campaigns.
