Index – Abroad – Donald Trump’s immunity case before the Supreme Court

If the president is not entitled to immunity, the “presidential institution as we know it” will cease to exist, Donald Trump’s lawyer stated in his opening speech to the members of the US Supreme Court. Dean John Sauer reminded us that an American president had never been indicted before.

In the absence of immunity, the office of the next presidents may be “distorted” by threat and risk. They need to know whether they can take the most controversial decisions, argued the lawyer.

The two key questions of the decision were immediately raised by the co-chairman, the conservative judge Clarence Thomas, who asked for an answer: where “exactly” does the question of the president’s immunity come from, and what is the “official regulation” of this.

Elena Kagan raised it as a theoretical question: would a former president be entitled to immunity even if he wanted to take over power with a military coup?

The US Supreme Court is called upon to decide whether the so-called immunity can be applied in the case of Donald Trump. The question arose after the special prosecutor appointed by the Minister of Justice, Jack Smith, accused the former president of fraud committed in a criminal association and obstruction of official proceedings.

After the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump falsely claimed that he had won the election, and he was also aware of the untruth of his claim, the indictment states. The former president tried to use the siege of the Capitol to delay the official approval of the election results in Congress.

The president and his legal team argued that the current president is entitled to immunity in the case. SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States, is supposed to decide this question.

During the trial, only a few protesters were loitering in front of the court building. One proclaimed on his molino that “Absolute immunity = absolute tyranny”, while another simply wrote in large letters: “Loser”, i.e. loser.

The president cannot be exempt from impeachment

Since there are two simultaneous proceedings in Donald Trump’s case – the other is a hush moneythe criminal trial initiated in New York due to the payment of the so-called silence money, in which the former president must personally participate based on a judge’s decision – he could only send a message to the judges in Washington.

The president “must” be entitled to immunity, he told reporters. He previously warned that if he loses his immunity, “evil” Joe Biden will lose it too. In the case of the silence money, Trump pleaded not guilty in the first degree to all 34 counts of falsification of company records.

After the indictment of Jack Smith last August, the majority of Americans, 51 percent, found the suspicion of questioning the election results to be very serious – at least this is what a joint survey by ABC News and Ipsos found.

At that time, 49 percent of Americans said that Trump should have suspended his presidential campaign, but 36 percent of those surveyed did not find anything wrong with the former president’s activities.

A former president cannot be exempted from impeachment for his actions during his time in office – this is the opinion of the vast majority of Americans polled, 66 percent, in a recent survey, the results of which were published in February.

Timing is key

The outcome of the presidential election in November may be influenced by the verdict, and especially when the legal proceedings against him are completed. The Supreme Court did not speed up the decision-making even though special prosecutor Jack Smith asked the board to speed up the procedure. His motion was denied, as was his motion to accept the appeals court’s decision to overturn the president’s immunity.

The nine-member Supreme Court is accused by some of being biased, because three judges were appointed by Trump himself, and the wife of veteran Clarence Thomas has close ties to the former president’s circles. According to general opinion, six judges are more conservative and three liberal.

It is also not out of the question: although the Supreme Court finds that Trump cannot be exempted from indictment, the procedure drags on so much that it rules out indictment before election day, November 5.

According to legal experts, the Supreme Court should announce a decision by the beginning of June in order to hold Trump’s election trial before November.

(Cover image: The United States Supreme Court building. Photo: Robert Alexander / Getty Images)