US Supreme Court begins analyzing “total immunity” claimed by Trump | US Elections 2024

This Thursday, the United States Supreme Court begins analyzing an appeal by Donald Trump whose impact has been compared to judicial intervention in the 2000 presidential election, when the majority of judges suspended the recount of votes in Florida and opened the doors to the victory of George W. Bush.

In this case, the judges of the Supreme Court will hear the arguments of Trump’s defense – and the counter-arguments of the US Department of Justice – so that all US Presidents are recognized with total and absolute immunity from lawsuits – crime for actions carried out during their terms of office.

The only exception, according to this thesis, would be that of a former US president removed from office after an impeachment process in Congress, something that has never happened in the country’s history. (Trump was impeached on two occasions by the House of Representatives, in 2019 and 2021, but was acquitted by the Senate.)

If the majority of the judges agree with the thesis of Trump’s lawyers, the accusation brought against the former US president in Washington DC, for attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, should be dismissed; If, on the contrary, the Supreme Court rejects the arguments in favor of total and absolute immunity, the process taking place in the US capital will immediately resume, and the judge presiding over the case, Tanya Chutkan, could even try to schedule the start of the trial before the next presidential election, in November.

According to the defense, all of Trump’s actions during the 2020 election period, between November of that year and the invasion of the Capitol, on January 6, 2021 — including alleged pressure to change the results and involvement in an illegal certification scheme of Electoral College votes — must be understood as presidential acts; According to the accusation, Trump acted as a candidate for his re-election and with the intention of staying in the White House illegally, which would make any intervention by the Supreme Court in this matter unnecessary.

In statements submitted to the Supreme Court, the special prosecutor leading two criminal cases against Trump (concerning the 2020 election and another about the withholding of official White House documents), Jack Smith, asked the judges to leave in force the decisions of the lower courts, which rejected the argument of presidential immunity.

The request from Trump’s lawyers was rejected first in December, by Judge Chutkan, and then, this year, by a panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in Washington DC, who ruled unanimously. Even so, the Supreme Court — made up of three judges from a liberal and six from a conservative wing, including three appointed by Trump — agreed to hear the arguments from both sides, which is happening this Thursday.

The Supreme Court’s intervention in this case has been compared to the judges’ decision to agree to analyze a request to end the vote recount in 2000, in Florida, at a time when the then Democratic Party candidate, Al Gore, and his opponent of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, were involved in a legal battle for victory in that year’s election.

At the time, a 5-4 conservative majority decided to halt the recounts and Bush was declared the winner of the presidential election, triumphing in Florida with 537 more votes than Gore, out of almost six million voters.

The final decision, expected by the end of June, could be announced at the same time that Trump is on trial, in New York, for falsifying business records, in a case related to the payment for the silence of a former pornographic film actress.

Two other criminal cases in which the former US president is accused – over White House documents and another case of electoral subversion, led by Georgia prosecutors – still have no trial scheduled.