Today is Monday, December 11, 2023. Today special counsel Jack Smith, the man charged with taking down a potential dictator, Donald J. Trump, for criminal charges in a courtroom in Washington, D.C. under the aegis of District Judge Tanya Chutkan, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track Chump’s appeal to declare him immune from prosecution so he can escape going to jail if he’s convicted of the various charges against him. This new development in the case against Chump is reported in an online CNN article by Hannah Rabinowitz and Devan Cole entitled “Special counsel goes directly to Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump has immunity from prosecution.”
Thus today Smith took his case directly to the Supreme Court to decide whether Donald Trump has any immunity from criminal prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while in office – the first time that the high court will weigh in on the historic prosecution of the former president.
The extraordinary request taken today is an attempt by Smith to keep the election subversion trial – currently scheduled for early March – on track. Smith is asking the Supreme Court to take the rare step of skipping a federal appeals court and quickly decide a fundamental issue of the case against Chump.
Smith’s team has asked the court to review District Judge’s Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that as a former president, Chump is not immune from the election subversion prosecution case brought in Washington, D.C. The Orange Turd’s lawyers have artlessly argued that their client’s alleged actions over the 2020 election results were part of his official duties at the time and therefore he is protected by presidential immunity. The court should reject this specious argument quite handily.
Later today, the conservative court said it will expedite consideration of Smith’s petition to rule on the question of whether Chump deserves immunity. The former president has until December 20 to file a response.
In urging the trial against Trumpilini to begin on March 4, 2024, as scheduled, Smith’s team wrote this to the court, “respondent’s appeal of the ruling rejecting his immunity and related claims, however, suspends the trial of the charges against him, scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024. It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.”
The special counsel’s team is pointing to a similar maneuver employed in US v Nixon, the 1974 Supreme Court case in which the justices rejected then-President Richard Nixon’s claims of presidential privilege in a subpoena fight over Oval Office tapes. In that case, the high court moved quickly to resolve the matter so that one of the Watergate-era cases could proceed swiftly.
In their appeal to the high court, prosecutors with the special counsel wrote that “nothing could be more vital to our democracy” than holding a former president accountable if they break the law.
Smith’s team wrote, “A cornerstone of our constitutional order is that no person is above the law,” something that Chump has not gotten the message as of yet. They added, “The force of that principle is at its zenith where, as here, a grand jury has accused a former President of committing federal crimes to subvert the peaceful transfer of power to his lawfully elected successor.”
In urging the justices to take up the matter immediately, prosecutors argued that the nature of the high-profile case warranted a departure from normal appellate procedure. Smith’s team recognized that taking the matter through the court of appeals would not result in a “final decision for many months.”
So here we are: almost 50 years later and a special prosecutor is doing the same thing as Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski did all those years ago. Like Smith, Jaworksi asked the Supreme Court to let him skip the D.C. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and take up the issue promptly, otherwise a trial wouldn’t happen until the spring of 1975, he argued.
What ensued in that earlier case is the Supreme Court accepted Jaworksi’s petition and ruled that Nixon did not have executive privilege to avoid the subpoena for the tapes. Within weeks of the ruling, Nixon resigned.
In the later case, we’re not as fortunate as the American public was almost 50 years ago when a criminal president resigned. We still have to place 45 on trial first to prove once and for all that he committed crimes against the federal government.
Now it’s up to the Court to make a final decision here in order to expedite Smith’s March 4 trial date of Donald Chump. Let’s hope they do not provide Chump with more ammunition to delay facing true accountability for the actions he’s engaged in.
In her decision against Chump initially, Chutkan wrote the now-famous line, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” referring to the Orange Hemorrhoid. She thereby harkened back to our nation’s origins to reject Trump’s claim that sweeping executive privilege blocked the January 6 Committee from subpoenaing his presidential records.
I just heard on the Rachel Maddow show tonight that the Supreme Court assented to Jack Smith’s special request to reach a decision in the Chump immunity appeal. And they might do it within a week, I just heard. Very good. There should be no more delays with regard to the former president confronting eventual justice.
Stay safe and be well.
And So It Goes 