Hours after Donald Trump sat in a New York courtroom on Monday, becoming the first former president in U.S. history to be a defendant in a criminal trial, his lawyers renewed their argument for the president's absolute immunity in another criminal case. A brief was submitted to the Federal Supreme Court. I'm against him.
Last week, in a brief response to arguments by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith that former presidents should not be immune from criminal prosecution, Mr. Trump's lawyers, led by John Sauer D. of St. Louis, argued that the He reiterated that this was what the enacters intended. The president enjoys immunity from prosecution unless he is first impeached and removed from office.
Smith argued last week that because impeachment is inherently political, former presidents must be held legally accountable through a separate, non-political process in the courts. Smith called Trump's claims a “fundamental departure from democracy” and said a standard of absolute immunity would place the president above the law.
Smith said impeachment alone is not enough because the president could avoid conviction simply because of the partisan makeup of the Senate.
But Trump's lawyers said Monday that Smith's argument misses the point of impeachment as checks and balances on executive power. The process is intended to be political and difficult to achieve, they write.
“That’s the point,” they wrote. “The framers required a nationwide political consensus, reflected in a two-thirds vote of the Senate, before authorizing the potentially republic-destroying act of prosecuting the president for acts of official conduct.'' .”
The Supreme Court case alleges President Trump pressured state officials, the Justice Department and then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results, then allowed a mob of his supporters to riot. This is part of a pre-trial effort to dismiss a federal criminal case charging him with a crime. storming the U.S. Capitol;
Trump, who is once again considered a likely Republican presidential candidate, has claimed “absolute immunity” from prosecution for his role, saying it is part of his official duty to prevent election fraud.
Trump and his allies have filed dozens of lawsuits alleging election fraud, but have offered no evidence that fraud materially affected the 2020 outcome.
Trump was acquitted in a 2021 Senate trial of the same conduct he was accused of in the underlying federal criminal case, but all of the then-50 Republican senators, Democrats, were found guilty. Only seven people cast their votes. Impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.
“Cheating may go unpunished.”
Lawyers for President Trump said Monday that the framers of the Constitution wanted a strong executive and were willing to trade some of the president's criminal liability to get the Constitution. The impeachment system was also said to be part of that objective.
“When the framers created the formidable hurdles of impeachment and conviction, they assumed the risk that some of the president's misconduct might go unpunished,” they wrote.
Trump's lawyers wrote that while the president is generally subject to prosecution for private acts, public acts can only be prosecuted through impeachment.
Trump has long argued that his actions since January 6, 2021, to try to prevent the certification of his November 2020 election loss should be considered official acts.
Trump's lawyers also said Monday that a federal criminal court with judges appointed and confirmed by an elected branch of government is not an apolitical alternative to impeachment, as Smith suggested.
They cited three other criminal charges the former president faces, calling them “overly politicized.”
“This argument cannot be taken seriously given that there are not one but four highly politicized indictments pending against President Trump, in addition to the politically motivated civil lawsuits.” is writing.
The brief was filed on the first day of trial in the first criminal case against Trump. The case in New York alleges that President Trump falsified his business records to hide hush money payments he made to adult film stars during his first bid for the White House in 2016.
He is also charged in Georgia state court with conspiracy to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.
A federal grand jury in South Florida indicted him on charges of mishandling classified documents and storing them in an unsafe location while in office.
President Trump is trying to use the criminal charges to his political advantage, using them to reinforce the message that he is being targeted by a corrupt system.
Oral argument coming soon
The Trump campaign's written response was the last submitted by either party ahead of oral arguments scheduled for April 25th.
Mr. Trump will not attend the Supreme Court arguments, as planned at his trial in New York. According to reports, Judge Juan Melchán, who is overseeing the case, refused President Trump's request for an absence on the same day to attend a Supreme Court hearing.
The case came to the Supreme Court after Tanya Chutkan, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, denied President Trump's motion to dismiss the charges based on presidential immunity claims in December.
Trump appealed the ruling, but a federal appeals court unanimously upheld Chutkan's decision in February.
The case is pending and an appeal of the immunity claim is pending.
