The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to decide whether former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021) can be tried for electoral interference in the 2020 presidential elections or if he has immunity. Oral arguments in this case, according to CNN, will begin the week of April 22. In this way, the president’s legal team manages to prolong his judicial processes while he moves towards re-election.
The issue of presidential immunity has become a stumbling block in the different cases that the US Department of Justice has open against Trump, and especially in the one in Washington D.C. for trying to reverse the result of 2020, when he lost the elections against Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump had appealed to the Supreme Court on February 12 against a lower court decision that determined that the former president did not enjoy presidential immunity and that he should be prosecuted for trying to reverse the results of the 2020 elections, instigating the assault on the Capitol.
The judges of the highest American court, with a conservative majority, had several options: directly refuse to consider the case, provisionally paralyze the process against Trump while they debate presidential immunity and also hold a hearing to hear the parties. The Supreme Court judges will limit themselves to deciding whether, and to what extent, a former president has immunity for conduct allegedly related to official activities during his term.
This announcement means in practice a new postponement of the trial against Trump in Washington, which was initially scheduled for March 4 but had already been postponed. The previous procedures remain paralyzed until there is a decision on the matter.
The Republican’s legal team has tried to delay any judicial process against him, since an eventual victory by Trump at the polls next November over the current president, Joe Biden, would place him as head of the Executive and give him the authority to order his attorney general to dismiss the federal charges against him.
Washington’s is one of the four criminal charges he faces. The first trial to be held could be the one he faces in New York for alleged irregular payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, currently set for March 25.
In addition, the trial is scheduled for May 20 in Florida, in which he is accused of having illegally stored classified material in his Mar-a-Lago mansion after leaving power. Finally, the Fulton County (Georgia) Prosecutor’s Office accuses Trump of trying to subvert the 2020 election results in that state, but that process has not yet set a start date.
A Cook County court ordered the Illinois Board of Elections to remove Donald Trump from the Republican Party primary ballots for his role in the storming of the Capitol. The former president’s lawyers will “promptly” appeal the ruling.
The decision was made by Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter. The Republican Party primaries in Illinois will be held on March 19 and after this court decision the state becomes the third in which something similar happens, after Colorado and Maine.
