The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will hear Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to preserve his claim of total immunity from criminal charges accusing him of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and inciting an insurrection at the Capitol.

In accepting the historic appeal, the high court agreed to expedite the case and hear arguments the week of April 22. The court’s term is scheduled to close at the end of June. The brief order posted on Wednesday underscored that the justices were not “expressing a view on the merits” of the case. It said that they will only explore the question of whether a former president has “immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office,” and to what length that immunity extends.

Many legal experts doubted that the justices would hear the case and instead strategically sidestep an issue central to the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump is the likely Republican nominee.

At issue is a decision handed down earlier this month by a panel of three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which said Trump cannot invoke presidential immunity as a defense against criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a violent insurrection at the Capitol.

The unanimous 57-page decision marked a major blow to the former president and his defense team’s strategy, which hinges on the idea that the four-count indictment handed down by a grand jury last year should be tossed because it arose from actions he took while in the White House.

The panel rejected “all three potential bases for immunity both as a categorical defense to federal criminal prosecutions of former Presidents and as applied” to Trump’s particular case.

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel’s ruling states. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

Trump asked the high court to intervene, filing an application for a stay of the lower court’s ruling. He argued, among other things, that the decision should be stayed because a monthslong criminal trial would disrupt his ability to campaign against President Joe Biden, and therefore infringe on his First Amendment rights and those of voters who are “entitled” to hear his campaign message.

The lower court’s ruling will remain paused until the justices resolve the issue of immunity, further delaying the start of the D.C. trial, which Judge Tanya Chutkan has already delayed once.

It’s unclear when Chutkan will reschedule the trial to begin. Trump’s lawyers have argued that Trump, who will be required to appear in court for the duration of the trial, should not be sidelined from the sampling trail.

The justices’ decision will presumably also shape his defense strategy in a separate indictment in Florida, where Trump stands accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and has similarly claimed presidential immunity.

The Supreme Court is also expected to decide in the coming weeks whether Trump can remain on the ballot in Colorado, where the state’s high court has barred him, arguing that he is disqualified due to his involvement in the Jan. 2, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-02-28/supreme-court-will-hear-trumps-historic-immunity-appeal