Supreme Court stalls on clarifying Trump claims of immunity from prosecution

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to sit back and let the court below it—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia—decide whether former GOP Oval Office occupant Donald Trump can claim absolute and eternal immunity from criminal prosecution, due to once having held the presidency.

Its decision to leave the explosive issue in the hands of the lower court, where arguments open Jan. 9, doesn’t mean the justices can evade deciding forever since the losing side on immunity can appeal the lower court’s ruling to them anyway.

And it leaves another Trump hot potato headed for the High Court: The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling throwing Trump off the ballot there because he violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on anyone holding federal, state, or local office who had participated in, aided, or incited a rebellion against the Constitution and the oath they had taken to uphold it. Maine has also barred Trump from the ballot.

But the High Court’s decision to stall prompted Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith to ask federal district Judge Tanya Chutkan—who ultimately will handle the jury trial involving Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election from the voters–to bar Trump’s lawyers, like Trump, from injecting political statements into court.

Trump’s lawyers should be prevented from “raising irrelevant political issues or arguments in front of the jury,” their filing said. That includes claims that prosecuting Trump is vindictive, selective, or is coordinated by Democratic President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020 in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

“In addition to being wrong, these allegations are irrelevant to the jury’s determination of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, would be prejudicial if presented to the jury, and must be excluded,” prosecutors wrote in their 20-page filing.

“Although the defendant [Trump] is entitled to cross-examine the government’s law enforcement witnesses about matters fairly within the scope of their direct testimony, he cannot raise wholly irrelevant topics in an effort to confuse and distract the jury,” Smith’s team wrote. They also want to ban Trump and his lawyers from telling jurors about the potential punishment he could face if convicted in Judge Chutkan’s court.

“Much as the defendant would like it otherwise, this trial should be about the facts and the law, not politics.”

Faces 91 felony counts

All this centers around one of the main trials affecting the former White House denizen, who faces 91 felony counts in four separate cases, one case each in New York and Georgia local courts, and two in federal courts, in D.C., and Florida.

Trump is demanding the appellate court throw out Smith’s case pending in Judge Chutkan’s court on the grounds—which many legal scholars find absurd—that a former president retains absolute immunity from criminal prosecution forever. A 24-year-old Justice Department memo limits that immunity to current presidents, while in office.

The back-and-forth over immunity, is delaying, at least for now, the case Judge Chutkan is waiting to start handling: The legality of Trump’s attempt to defraud voters from coast to coast of their right to have their votes legitimately counted and tallied in the 2020 election—by staging, aiding, directing and abetting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, invasion and attempted coup d’état at the U.S. Capitol.

The New York trial, too, is heading for a climax and may be more of a blow to Trump’s narcissistic ego: dismemberment of his real estate empire, plus a $250 million civil fine.

Closing arguments in State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s court will start Jan. 11. They pit New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James versus the Trump team, which has also tried to turn that trial about massive financial fraud into a political circus.

In many ways, Trump has already lost there. Justice Engoron ruled, early on, that James could seek that maximum fine, and appointed a special master to start correct valuations of Trump’s real estate empire and sell it off, piece by piece. He will also rule on whether Trump, his firm, and his family will be barred from business in New York for five years.

The New York and Georgia cases cannot be thrown out if the former White House denizen wins again this year and orders his acolytes in a revamped Justice Department to drop the suits, unlike the federal cases in D.C. and Florida. The Florida case involves Trump purloining secret papers from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate, then showing their contents to unauthorized people, including an Australian magnate. The Florida federal judge, a Trump appointee, is slow-walking it.

Meanwhile, Fulton County (Atlanta) District Attorney Fani Willis has constructed the most wide-ranging vote fraud case against Trump and at least 12 other defendants. They’re accused of racketeering and conspiracy to steal electoral votes from Biden and for Trump in both swing-state Georgia and—evidence shows—other swing states as well.

In a mid-December interview with Associated Press reporter Kate Brumback, Willis vowed to press on with the case, especially since she’s gotten several Trump co-conspirators to turn state’s evidence and sing.

The idea that she should postpone the trial of Trump on multiple counts just because the election is looming and he’s running for office is a “silly notion,” she said. But Willis added her trial will probably not begin till August and could stretch through and beyond the 2024 election.

Trump attorney Steve Sadow claims if the Georgia trial goes ahead as planned and Trump is this year’s Republican presidential nominee against Biden, as seems likely, the case “would be the most effective election interference in the history of the United States.”

Willis replied prosecutors nationwide always investigate people for various crimes and do not stop just because someone runs for office.