Trump to get a hearing
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear Donald Trump’s claim that as a former president he is immune from prosecution, further delaying his trial on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
The nation’s highest court scheduled arguments in the high-stakes case for the week of April 22 and said Mr Trump’s federal election interference trial would remain on hold for now.
Mr Trump had been scheduled to go on trial on March 4 for conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden but the proceedings have been frozen as his presidential immunity claim wound its way through the courts.
Mr Trump welcomed the Supreme Court decision to hear the case, saying “without Presidential Immunity, a President will not be able to properly function, or make decisions, in the best interest of the United States of America”.
“A President must be free to make proper decisions,” Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “He must not be guided by the fear of retribution!”
In agreeing to hear the case, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by the former Republican president, said it was not “expressing a view on the merits” of a lower court’s ruling that rejected Mr Trump’s immunity claim.
It said it would address the question of whether a former president has “immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office”.
The question of whether a former US president is immune from prosecution is an untested one in the US.