United States Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on whether the former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case.
The high court agreed that it would consider whether Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had immunity from prosecution.
Proceedings before the Supreme Court are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, but the former president will not be present at the proceedings.
Instead, Trump will be in New York for the seventh day of his criminal trial stemming from charges filed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records.
Trump warns that if he loses presidential immunity, so will ‘crooked’ Joe Biden
Trump, a criminal defendant, must be present every day of his trial. However, he requested to attend the Supreme Court proceedings on presidential immunity, but Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, rejected this request.
“Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly understand why your client would want to be there, but a trial before the New York Supreme Court… is also a big deal,” Merchan said last week, demanding that the former president be in his Manhattan courtroom.
A Supreme Court decision on the issue of presidential immunity is expected by the end of June.
Trump’s criminal trial, stemming from Smith’s investigation, has been suspended pending a resolution on the matter.
The former president and his legal team, in asking the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue of presidential immunity, said that “if the prosecution of a president is upheld, such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common , paving the way for destructive cycles of recrimination.”
Trump pleads “not guilty” to charges stemming from special counsel in January. 6 PROBE
“Criminal prosecution, with its greater stigma and harsher penalties, imposes far greater ‘personal vulnerability’ on the President than any civil penalty,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “The threat of future criminal prosecution from a politically opposed administration will overshadow all official actions of the future president, especially the most politically controversial decisions.”
Trump’s request states that “the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his decisions through effective extortion or blackmail with the threat, expressed or implied, of indictment by a future hostile administration.” , for acts which do not justify such prosecution. » “.
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Smith first accused…
