XPost: law.court.federal, alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
https://nypost.com/2024/03/19/us-news/trump-officially-asks-supreme-court- to-dismiss-federal-jan-6-indictment/
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team urged the Supreme Court Tuesday
to dismiss the federal indictment charging him with conspiring to overturn
the 2020 election results and remain in power despite his loss to Joe
Biden.
In a 67-page brief filed ahead of oral arguments scheduled for April 25, attorney John Sauer insisted that the 77-year-old Trump enjoyed sweeping immunity from prosecution for official acts during his presidency.
“A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President
with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to
years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,” Sauer
wrote.
Prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, have insisted that Trump’s actions related to the 2020 election — which culminated in the Jan. 6,
2021, Capitol riot by his supporters — do not constitute official acts by
a president, but rather were actions taken in his “capacity as a
candidate” to overturn the election for his own benefit.
Two lower courts have rejected Trump’s immunity argument, but the Supreme
Court has agreed to hear the case in the hope of settling the larger constitutional question — postponing a trial which was due to begin March
4 in Washington.
Trump’s lawyers also told the justices that in the event they don’t accept
his immunity arguments, they should send the case back to the district
court for additional “fact-finding.”
Such a move would result in even lengthier delays before a trial could be scheduled.
In their brief, Trump’s lawyers underscored that for the first 244 years
of the constitutional republic, “no former, or current president faced
criminal charges for his official acts.”
Sauer cited Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a Supreme Court case from 1982 in which
the high court determined that presidents enjoy absolute immunity from liability for civil damages based on official acts — but did not grant
absolute immunity for criminal charges stemming from actions taken while
in office.
Trump’s team also insisted that the president was acting in his official capacity to assess whether the “election was tainted by fraud and irregularities.”
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the criminal case
against Trump, rejected his arguments last December, concluding presidents aren’t entitled to a “lifelong get-out-of-jail-free pass.”
Last month, a three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
her decision.
During oral arguments before the appeals court, Judge Florence Pan, a
Biden appointee, asked Trump’s team if “a president who ordered SEAL Team
6 to assassinate a political rival” could be held criminally liable.
“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied at the time.
In the brief to the Supreme Court filed Tuesday, Trump’s team implored the
high court to “neutralize one of the greatest threats to the president’s separate power, a bedrock of our Republic, in our nation’s history.”
“A former president enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for
his official acts. Criminal immunity arises directly from the Executive
Vesting Clause and the separation of powers,” they wrote.
Trump appointed one-third of the justices on the Supreme Court, which
faces a docket loaded with politically charged cases this session.
The presumptive Republican nominee is the first current or former
president to get criminally indicted and is facing a total of 88 counts spanning four indictments. Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not
guilty across the board.
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We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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