US Supreme Court must decide my fate, says Donald Trump
The demand for help over ‘Election Interference’ comes a day after the former US president pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election results.
Donald Trump has demanded the US Supreme Court intercede in his criminal cases, claiming that the charges he faces amount to election interference.
The call came the day after the former president appeared in a federal court in Washington DC, where he pleaded not guilty to four charges linked to what prosecutors say was his attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
That case relates to pressure allegedly exerted on state officials and Mike Pence, vice-president at the time, by Trump and aides. It follows indictments in two other cases, one relating to the hoarding of classified documents and another over payments to an adult film star.
“CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits … which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump, 77, said Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede. MAGA!”
Legal experts said there was little chance the Supreme Court, America’s highest, would dismiss charges at this stage, especially those approved by federal grand juries. “What does he mean by intercede? God only knows,” said Paul Schiff Berman, professor of law at George Washington University. “In theory his lawyers could file what is called an interlocutory appeal, but it would have to go to the court of appeals first. If he failed there, he could go to the Supreme Court, but the chances that either court would kick out the indictment at this stage are almost zero.”
As well as the federal case over the 2020 election result, Trump has been charged with 40 federal felonies over keeping classified government papers at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. That case is being heard in Miami.
In a separate case in New York, he is accused of falsifying business records over hush money payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about their sexual relationship.
In all, he faces 78 felony charges so far, with an indictment in another case in Georgia, also related to interference with the 2020 election result, expected imminently.
According to a new poll, almost half of Republican voters say that they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony. The Reuters-Ipsos survey suggests that while the former president is still the firm favourite among party activists to win the Republican presidential nomination next year, he faces the prospect of his support softening in the event of his legal situation getting worse.
According to the new poll, part of which was conducted after the latest charges were brought against him, 45 per cent of grassroots supporters would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony.
Thirty-five per cent of respondents said that they would vote for him even if he were convicted, with the remainder saying that they were unsure. The poll closed before Trump appeared in the Washington courtroom.
Asked if they would vote for Trump if he were “currently serving time in prison”, 52 per cent of Republicans said they would not, compared with 28 per cent who said they definitely would. There is nothing to stop Trump standing for the presidency from prison.
Despite this, the majority of Republicans sympathise with Trump’s accusations of political persecution. Seventy-five per cent of respondents agreed that the charges against Trump were “politically motivated”, while about two thirds of party loyalists described as “not believable” the accusation that he solicited election fraud.
Jack Smith, the special counsel in the federal cases, is pushing for a “speedy trial” in the election interference case, but Trump’s lawyers say that a trial before the presidential election in November 2024 is unrealistic.
“The Justice Department is supposed to operate independently of the president’s wishes, particularly with regard to criminal justice matters,” said Berman. “So that’s the norm, but it’s clear from Trump’s first presidency and from his public statements that he would not obey that norm of behaviour. [If re-elected] he would almost certainly try to place an extreme loyalist as attorney-general and instruct that attorney-general to drop the case.”
Trump remains far in front of his rivals for the Republican nomination. In the latest poll he was 34 points clear of the second-placed candidate, the Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
The Times
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