The tempestuous billionaire, indicted in four criminal cases and candidate in the November 2024 election, must be tried from March 4 for his pressure during the last presidential election. But his lawyers are trying by all means to shift the judicial calendar so that it does not coincide with that of the presidential election, explains theFrance Media Agency. The Republican primaries begin in January and could last until June.
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“Of course I have the right to presidential immunity”Donald Trump repeated again this Friday on his Truth Social platform, assuring that he was of his ” right and duty “ to act in the face of what he considers, without proof, to be an election “stolen”.
Win time
His advisers have thus, among other things, invoked the argument according to which Donald Trump enjoys a “absolute immunity” for all the actions he committed while in the White House. And that he should not, for this reason, be prosecuted.
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Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over the proceedings of this federal trial, rejected a first request for immunity in early December, considering that no text protected a former president against criminal prosecution.
Donald Trump’s lawyers appealed this decision, asking an appeals court to rule on the subject. This additional stage, which will begin on January 9, could however take many weeks and risks, ultimatelyto postpone the start of the trial of the former president.
A Supreme Court overloaded on the Trump case
In mid-December, federal prosecutor Jack Smith appealed to the United States Supreme Court, asking the country’s highest court to rule directly on this issue, without waiting for the appeals court’s decision. What the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority after having been largely overhauled by Donald Trump, therefore refused this Friday, to the satisfaction of the principal concerned, who said he was impatient to present his arguments to the court of appeal.
Locally, similar attempts to invoke presidential immunity for Donald Trump have been rejected by lower court judges. The case law is all the more vague as Donald Trump is the first former president of the United States to be criminally charged.
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In total, the Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, whose judgments are regularly criticized by Democrats, could be called upon to decide three times this year on the fate of Donald Trump: in addition to the question of his immunity, it will have to rule on a law used to prosecute the former president in connection with the invasion of Congress on January 6, 2021, and his ineligibility in the Republican primaries in Colorado.