In ten months, American voters will elect a president again, but before going to the polls, the Supreme Court of the United States could play a central role in the coming weeks in the political fate of the main Republican candidate, the former president Donald Trump.
More than three years after losing his re-election bid, Trump faces a series of obstacles to winning back the White House, which the nation’s nine highest courts could rule on, to Trump’s detriment or benefit.
He claims immunity from prosecution for an unprecedented four criminal indictments comprising 91 counts for which he could face trial in the coming months.
He is also fighting two states’ decisions to exclude him from the 2024 Republican primary elections for his role in allegedly inciting the insurrection of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when they attempted in vain to prevent Congress from certifying that Joe Biden had beaten him in the presidential election.
Currently, the Supreme Court is not prepared to consider Trump’s challenges to rulings against him, but that could quickly change as lower courts hear the cases, with Trump, government prosecutors and others being certain to appeal any unfavorable decision against them to the Supreme Court.
The high court has already agreed to review the case of a police officer accused of obstructing an official congressional proceeding — the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory — that could also affect Trump. The officer says prosecutors improperly used a corporate fraud law usually reserved for people who falsify documents and evidence.
Prosecutors have used the law to charge more than 300 other Capitol rioters, and it forms the basis of two charges against Trump in a case brought in Washington by special prosecutor Jack Smith, accusing Trump of illegally plotting to overturn his defeat 2020 election against Biden, its Democratic candidate. opponent.
The court will hear the officer’s case during his current term and could announce its decision sometime in June, well after the scheduled March 4 start of the election fraud case in Washington.
More broadly, Trump boldly claims that he has absolute immunity from prosecution because all of the election-related actions he took took place while he was still president, in late 2020 and early 2021. C This is the period during which prosecutors allege he conspired with key players. his associates to illegally undermine the will of the majority that favored Biden in several key political battleground states so that he could overturn the vote in those states and remain in power for another four years.
In the United States, presidents are not elected by national popular vote, which Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020. U.S. presidents and their vice-presidential running mates are instead elected by ballot in 50 state-by-state elections. State, the most populous states holding the most electoral votes in the Electoral College.
About 2,000 Trump supporters delayed Congress’ eventual certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College vote count three years ago when they broke into the Capitol, fought with police and rampaged some congressional offices.
Special Counsel Smith argues that no one is above the law and immune from prosecution — not even a former president like Trump, the first U.S. leader charged with criminal offenses. US judge Tanya Chutkan, who presides over the electoral fraud case, shared the prosecutor’s opinion, saying that Trump did not have the right to a “free ride”.
Also in question is Trump’s assertion that he cannot be prosecuted for any role in the January 6 Capitol riots, as the House of Representatives impeached him for his actions before the end of his presidential term, although the Senate later acquitted him in early 2021 after he was indicted. had left office. Trump largely asserts that he cannot be criminally prosecuted at this time in connection with the January 6 massacres because the Senate has already cleared him in a political process.
Smith asked the Supreme Court to expedite a decision on Trump’s request for immunity from prosecution, but the justices refused, sending the case back to a federal appeals court in Washington. The appeals court has scheduled a hearing on the dispute for Jan. 9 and could rule relatively soon afterward, increasing the likelihood of a quick appeal to the Supreme Court by the losing party.
The Supreme Court could then let the appeal decision stand or decide to hear legal arguments in the case and issue its own ruling, perhaps, but not with certainty, in time to allow the election fraud trial to begin in March.
The Supreme Court includes three justices appointed by Trump, but in cases related to the prior 2020 election, it has ruled against the former president.
The court will likely face a new case directly related to the 2024 elections after the Supreme Court in Colorado, in the western United States, excluded Trump from the ballot for the Republican primary elections in the state due to a U.S. constitutional provision prohibiting anyone from holding public office if they have engaged in public activities. an insurrection to overthrow the government.
Some activist groups and Trump critics have accused Trump of being an insurrectionist by urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to block Congress’ certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. With the same reasoning as in Colorado, an election official in the northeastern state of Maine also excluded Trump from the vote.
With appeals already underway, the Supreme Court may have to issue a quick, nationwide ruling on Trump’s election eligibility. The first presidential vote begins with caucuses in the Midwestern state of Iowa on Jan. 15, and primary elections are scheduled across the country in the weeks that follow.
“We have every confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.
Trump denounced the charges against him, calling Smith deranged and saying the allegations amounted to a “political witch hunt” by the Biden White House to prevent him from winning the presidency again. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Smith, the Justice Department prosecutor, also accused Trump of mishandling classified documents relating to U.S. national security by keeping them at his oceanfront estate of Mar-a-Lago, USA. State of Florida, to the south, after leaving the White House.
A prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia charged him with election fraud in that state’s 2020 election, and a New York prosecutor accused him of falsifying business records for his family’s real estate conglomerate to hide secret payments to a porn movie star before his election. successful campaign for the presidency in 2016.
