With four more cases to be decided, the supreme court is planned to issue its decision on Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim on Monday.
In Donald Trump v the United States, the former president is seeking absolute immunity from criminal prosecution over his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role in the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection.
According to Trump, who has been indicted by the justice department’s special counsel Jack Smith on four counts related to his 2020 election overturn efforts, presidents should be immune from federal prosecution.
The case, which was presented before the conservative-majority supreme court on 25 April, was the last that was argued this term. According to critics, the supreme court’s decision to hold on to this case until early July while having issued decisions on other major cases in recent weeks is “intentional”.
“The delay that has occurred here is intentional, and it is destructive of our democratic process,” James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, told Salon.
Echoing similar sentiments, Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard University, told Salon:
“It’s obvious that the court has deliberately delayed everything … It could easily have issued a ruling much sooner … It could have taken the case in December when the special counsel asked it to be heard directly, or they could have declined to take the case after the court of appeals quite comprehensively rejected Trump’s appeal, so the trial could be over by now.”
Regardless of what the supreme court’s decision on the case is, its handling of the case’s timeline has significantly decreased the chances of Trump standing trial before the 2024 presidential elections in November.
Across all four of his criminal cases, Trump has been trying to delay the trials’ start dates. Thus far, he has only been convicted in one of his cases that involved hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.
It remains to be determined whether the supreme court will grant Trump his request for absolute immunity from prosecution. Both Trump’s lawyer and the justice department’s lawyer have agreed that there were certain private acts that presidents are not immune from.
During oral arguments in April, conservative justice and Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh appeared to suggest that refusing immunity would affect future presidents.
“It’s not going to stop, it’s going to cycle back and be used against the current president and the next president and the next president after that,” Kavanaugh said.
Meanwhile, liberal justice and Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson said that immunity would encourage future presidents to commit crimes while in office.
“Once we say ‘no criminal liability, Mr President. You can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.
