US Supreme Court to Consider Trump's Request for Immunity

The US Supreme Court will hear arguments about the question of whether former President Donald Trump should be exempt from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office on Thursday (today). 

The decision may have a significant impact on Trump's numerous legal challenges as he runs for president once more as well as the scope of US executive authority. 

The nine justices of the court took the case, delaying the beginning of Trump's trial on allegations of plotting to rig the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden, maybe forever. 

“Famously, Richard Nixon engaged in criminal law-breaking,” said James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University.

“But because he resigned, and (successor) Gerald Ford then pardoned him, we have never had to squarely address the notion of a criminal prosecution against a former president.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed the election conspiracy case against 77-year-old Trump in August and had pushed for a March trial start date.

But the Republican presidential candidate’s lawyers filed a blizzard of motions seeking to postpone the case against him, including the claim that an ex-president enjoys “absolute immunity.”

Two lower courts flatly rejected that argument but the Supreme Court agreed in February to hear the case.

One lower court ruled Trump’s immunity claim is “unsupported by precedent” or the US Constitution.

“We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” the judges said.

Nevertheless, Trump is eyeing a friendly hearing from a court he had a critical role in shaping, having appointed three justices to give it a 6-3 conservative majority.

AFP