How—and when—the court rules will determine if Trump’s federal election case will be tried before the election.
Topline
Supreme Court justices suggested they could further delay former President Donald Trump’s federal trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election Thursday, as the court considered whether Trump is “immune” from criminal charges—and while they suggested they were unwilling to side with his sweeping view of immunity, key justices also signaled they won’t totally side with the Justice Department.Key Facts
Questioning from the Supreme Court justices during oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States suggested the court could send the case back to a lower court, which could delay his criminal trial until after the 2024 presidential election.
The former president has argued the criminal charges against him in the federal election case should be dropped because he has “presidential immunity” from actions taken as part of his presidential duties, which he claims his post-election efforts were.
Trump has claimed former presidents should be immune from prosecution even for events that “cross the line,” with his lawyers arguing to the Supreme Court that denying him immunity would “incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents.”
The Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith told the high court that Trump’s arguments are “unfounded” and a president doesn’t have a “general right to violate” laws, arguing that the fact other ex-presidents haven’t been prosecuted before Trump “underscores the unprecedented nature of [Trump’s] alleged conduct.”
Justices suggested they weren’t convinced by Trump’s expansive view of what should be immune from prosecution—with his lawyer D. John Sauer suggesting even staging a coup could be allowed—with conservative Justice Samuel Alito questioning whether Trump’s “robust” view of immunity was “necessary” and Justice Elena Kagan comparing Trump’s view to the British monarchs the Founding Fathers specifically wanted to break away from.
Conservative justices also signaled they were highly skeptical of simply saying that no president’s official acts are above the law, however, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying he was “concerned” by an appeals court’s broad ruling that shut down Trump’s immunity claims, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that a “creative” prosecutor could come up with ways to charge future presidents and Alito speculated that not giving presidents immunity would make them more likely to try and impede the peaceful transition of power.
