OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump may be significantly impacted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear appeals filed by those accused of crimes connected to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The justices are taking into account three separate appeals that defendants Joseph Fischer, Edward Lang, and Garret Miller filed.
At their regularly scheduled Friday private session, the court was going to discuss the cases. However, due to the passing of retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the meeting was called off. The justices will now hear the cases at a later time, perhaps even this Friday, NBC News reported.
The three men are attempting to have a charge against them dropped because they interfered with an official proceeding, specifically the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory, which a group of Trump supporters interfered with.
In his federal election interference case, Trump is accused of this offense in addition to others. Therefore, the court’s decision on whether to accept or reject the appeals may have an impact on his case.
A lower court decision that permitted the government to press charges against the defendants would stand if the court rejected the appeals.
However, if the justices decide to take on the cases, there will be a lengthy wait while they consider oral arguments and render a decision at some point in the court’s current nine-month term, which ends in June. The nine-justice court must receive four votes or more to hear a case.
The conservative Justice Clarence Thomas did not take part in the Supreme Court’s previous consideration of an appeal pertaining to January 6. John Eastman, a former Thomas law clerk who gave Trump advice on January 6, was involved in that case. In addition, Thomas’ spouse, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative political activist, openly backed Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election.
The Supreme Court’s involvement may present one avenue for Trump’s attorneys to postpone his trial for alleged election meddling, which is set to begin in March.
Trump “could credibly ask to delay his trial until the case is resolved,” according to Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and George Washington University Law School professor, should the court decide to hear the cases. The trial could still take place before the election, he continued, with the court’s decision probably coming before the end of June in that case.
As the current front-runner in the Republican presidential contest polls, Trump stands to gain from any postponement of his criminal trial in Washington. Trump would be able to get the charges dropped if he were to win the election in November.
Should the trial proceed as planned in March and Trump be found guilty, his sentence might be announced before the election.
The election meddling case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump is battling. It may also have an impact on other Jan. 6 defendants facing comparable charges.
Jack Smith, the special counsel, brought two, while New York and Georgia brought the other two.
Trump stated on his Truth Social platform three days after he was charged in the case of January 6 that the accusations against him amounted to election meddling and that “the Supreme Court must intervene.”
Trump’s attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the federal election interference case against their client, arguing that Trump has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for actions taken while he was president.
In seeking to dismiss Trump’s indictment in his federal election case, his lawyers wrote that “the indictment takes a statute directed at the destruction of records in accounting fraud and applies it to disputing the outcome of a presidential election. This stretches the statutory language beyond any plausible mooring to its text.”
