WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court of the United States has begun to examine this Thursday whether Donald Trump enjoy immunity penal as former president for his actions while in office.
The judges examined for the first time whether a former president has absolute immunity from criminal charges for actions he took while in office. He is the first former president to be charged with crimes and faces a series of trials promoted by Democrats in an attempt to remove him from the electoral race.
The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision could be as important as the outcome. The Supreme Court typically issues its final rulings of the session in late June, about four months before elections.
Trump’s lawyers maintain that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former presidents would be routine and presidents would not be able to assume the role of commander in chief if they have to worry about criminal charges.
Lower courts staffed by Democratic-appointed judges have rejected those arguments, including a three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C.
The election interference conspiracy case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases Trump faces.
Smith’s team contends that the framers of the Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any case, the acts of which Trump is accused — including participating in a scheme to include electors fakes in battleground states won by Biden—are in no way part of a president’s official duties.
Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena over his financial records. That case unfolded during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges were filed.
Complaints of Trump
Trump He complained to reporters in New York before entering a court that is trying him for allegedly falsifying business records to “hide” a payment to a porn actress to buy her silence for an alleged extramarital affair before the 2016 election.
The former president said that the judge presiding over this case did not allow him to attend the hearing at the Supreme Court. “I would have loved to be there, I should be there, but this judge didn’t allow it,” lamented the Republican presidential candidate. Without immunity “You become a ceremonial president,” he added.
There is no jurisprudence on the matter, because until Trump no former tenant of the White House had been accused of a crime.
“As everyone knows, Richard Nixon broke the criminal law,” recalls James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University.
“But since he resigned and Gerald Ford pardoned him, we have never had to directly address the notion of a criminal case against a former president,” he adds.
Special prosecutor Jack Smith brought the election conspiracy case against Trump77, in August and has since pushed for the trial to begin in March in the midst of the election campaign.
Source: With information from AP and AFP
