Reuters, WASHINGTON –
This week, Donald Trump will attempt to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a court ruling that barred him from Colorado’s ballot due to his actions regarding the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. He will do this by arguing that, as a former president, the constitutional provision his opponents point to does not apply to him. Trump Assumes Liability for the Stock Market’s Record High Under Biden US NATO Ambassador: It’s “premature” for allies to be concerned about a possible Trump comeback. Experts in politics and religion claim that Evangelical Support for Trump Goes Beyond Abortion.
The Supreme Court is set to hear Trump’s appeal of a decision made by Colorado’s top court that disqualified him from the state’s Republican primary ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection on Thursday. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three Trump appointees. In the U.S. election scheduled for November 5, he is the front-runner to face Democratic President Joe Biden for his party’s nomination. Even though Trump hasn’t claimed broad presidential immunity as a defense in that instance, the Supreme Court may still need to address the matter in criminal and civil cases involving his attempts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and defamation lawsuits brought by a woman who has accused him of sexual assault.
Trump has previously demonstrated a disdain for limitations on his behavior. He made headlines in 2016 when he declared that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” In an attempt to evade federal criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn his defeat to Biden in 2020, a Trump attorney told appellate judges that a president could direct Navy commandos to kill a political rival and remain unpunished unless impeached by the House of Representatives and found guilty by the Senate first. A spokesman for the Trump campaign, when asked to comment on his claims of immunity, referred to a social media post he made on January 10th, in which he claimed that a president could not function without “COMPLETE IMMUNITY.” Nine days later, Trump said in a post that presidents are entitled to immunity, even for “events that ‘cross the line.'” When the Supreme Court considers the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is ineligible to be president due to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment—which prohibits any “officer of the United States” who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office—it will face new issues. In that instance, Trump argues that since the president is not a “officer of the United States,” he is not covered by Section 3.
Trump is pursuing claims of immunity in other cases that may make it all the way to the Supreme Court, which has traditionally maintained that presidential immunity is not unqualified. The court determined that presidents have complete immunity from civil lawsuits for actions taken in their official capacity, but not from suits pertaining to personal and informal conduct, in cases involving former Presidents Bill Clinton in 1997 and Richard Nixon in 1982. It has never explicitly decided whether or not presidents are exempt from prosecution. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is currently considering Trump’s defence against federal criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn his election defeat, following the denial of his claim of immunity by a federal judge.
John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and former president of George W. Bush’s administration, stated he anticipates the Supreme Court will dismiss Trump’s argument. “His lawyers are pressing unprecedented arguments that are likely to fail in court, but they are not frivolous,” Yoo stated. In a similar vein, Trump has invoked presidential immunity to defend himself in civil lawsuits related to the Capitol riot, a criminal case in Georgia regarding election interference, and writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, which accuses him of defaming her by denying in 2019 that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. In 2020, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request for protection against a subpoena issued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Released in connection with an inquiry into hush money that Trump’s former attorney had given to a porn star prior to the 2016 election. Legal experts warned of the repercussions if Trump wins the immunity case at the Supreme Court, but they also expressed doubt about his chances of winning. According to Brianne Gorod, chief counsel of the liberal legal organization Constitutional Accountability Center, it would “send the dangerous message that presidents can disregard the Constitution and federal law with impunity.” “A win for Trump in the immunity case,” Gorod stated, “would be profoundly troubling regardless of who wins the election this November.”