On Friday, Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the federal judge presiding over the former president’s trial classified documents case to suspend court proceedings and allow the Supreme Court to decide how to proceed ruling on presidential immunity affect criminal charges.
“The Court should stay all other proceedings in the case,” Trump’s lawyers told U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon in their filing as Trump presented his arguments for why the bulk of the case should be dismissed in light of the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.
In February, Trump filed a preliminary motion to dismiss the indictment on presidential immunity grounds, arguing that “the charges stem directly from official acts of President Trump while in office.”
“Specifically, President Trump is immune from prosecution under Counts 1 through 32, as the charges relate to his alleged use of the Presidential Records Act to designate records as private and to cause records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago changes his mind. As alleged in the Superseding Indictment, President Trump made this decision while still in office, and the decision was an official act and therefore subject to presidential immunity.”
Trump has been indicted on 40 counts. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Supreme Court this week It gave Trump a big victory by ruling that presidents have immunity for official acts while in office. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines came in response to Trump’s allegations that special counsel Jack Smith interfered in the election in Washington.
“The president is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote Monday judgment. “But Congress cannot criminalize the conduct of the President in the exercise of the duties of the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”
Trump’s court filing on Friday cited a line from the ruling in which Roberts wrote, “[q]Issues related to whether or not the President should be held accountable for specific actions consistent with the separation of powers should be resolved at the beginning of the trial.”
As a result of that language, Trump’s attorneys have delayed the trial indefinitely while they consider other arguments, and Cannon, the Trump nominee, should stay in the case until the immunity issues are resolved.
Trump’s team’s filing used the same opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas to support another motion alleging that Smith was improperly appointed as a special counsel. Thomas wrote: “If this unprecedented prosecution is to continue, it must be carried out by someone duly authorized by the American people to do so.”
The agreement is not legally binding on Cannon.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing from Trump’s lawyers on Friday.
In a court filing earlier this year, Smith’s office rejected Trump’s immunity offer.frivolous.” The indictment says, “It does not charge Trump for any act he has done as president, not even an official act of the presidency. The Superseding Indictment alleges that while Trump lost his authority to possess documents containing national defense information after his term in office ended, he nevertheless intentionally withheld such documents after his presidency, including colluding with others to conceal his continued illegal possession. – by plotting. attorneys, federal investigators and grand juries. “Every criminal charge in the Superseding Indictment is based on Trump’s conduct after leaving office.”
Trump’s lawyers successfully used the Supreme Court ruling last week to delay the punishment He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York because some of the evidence in court related to his conduct while he was president. Judge Juan Merchan postponed the first sentence, which was handed down on July 11, until September, taking into account Trump’s arguments.