Donald Trump has urged the Supreme Court to postpone a federal trial over charges that he tried to thwart his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, as he looks to delay any reckoning beyond this year’s election.
The Republican front-runner insists that the landmark trial is moot because his actions then were covered by a president’s immunity from prosecution - arguments that federal lawyers say would make a mockery of the constitution.
“Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist,” Trump’s lawyers wrote as they urged the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order blocking a ruling by a lower court.
The case is separate to another heard last week by the Supreme Court, over whether Colorado was right to block Mr Trump from standing in November’s presidential election because his supporters staged an “insurrection” when they rioted on Capitol Hill in January 2021.
The mob stormed the Congress building after an incendiary speech by the then president insisting that Mr Biden had cheated him of victory the previous November. His denials of due electoral process led to the federal indictment by special counsel Jack Smith.
Mr Smith accuses the former president of using false claims of voter fraud to pressure state lawmakers, Justice Department officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence to thwart the certification by Congress of the election results.
The trial was due to start in early March but was put off to allow more time for Mr Trump’s arguments to be heard. But last week, the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously agreed that he did not enjoy lasting immunity.
“We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” the panel of three judges wrote.
They sided with Mr Smith’s team who had argued that the immunity argument could shield the president from being prosecuted for ordering the assassination of a political opponent.
Mr Trump’s lawyers want the Supreme Court to stay that ruling and refer the case back to a hearing of the full appeals court - so prolonging legal deliberations beyond November’s rematch with Mr Biden.
If he wins back the White House, Mr Trump could then get a compliant Attorney-General to squash the case, or even pardon himself, stretching the US constitution into even greater bounds of uncertainty.
