According to Special Counsel Smith, the justification for political resistance is based on neither the Constitution nor the country’s history.
Former US president Donald Trump’s claim of political immunity has been denied by special counsel Jack Smith, who has once more urged the Supreme Court to accept motions to postpone the trial of charges relating to the conspiracy to hold the 2020 national election.
President Trump is accused of four works of conspiracy and obstruction after making an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, according to Judge prosecutor. Former President Trump has called for transparency and reviews of the ballot counts in bounce says, denied any wrongdoing, and maintains political immunity for his deeds on that day, which prevents trial for any deeds he committed while still holding the bottom office.
According to Mr. Smith in the short,” The President’s legal duty to take care that the rules be faithfully executed does not necessitate a basic right to offend them.”
The Framers always advocated for former presidents to be held accountable for their actions, and all prior presidents from the foundation to the present have been aware of this fact.
The most recent historic precedent for this position, in the opinion of Mr. Smith, was former US President Richard Nixon’s standard conduct exposed during the Watergate scandal.
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According to Mr. Smith, President Nixon finally consented to receiving a reprimand from his son, past president Gerald Ford, and that accepting a pardon implying that both he and President Ford recognized that a former president was a target of criminal activity.
” Since Watergate, the Department of Justice has held the view that a past President may face legal trial, and Independent and Special Counsels have operated from that same understanding”, he said.
All past president allegedly knew and fully understood their potential criminal prosecutions while serving in the White House, according to Mr. Smith, despite President Trump’s claim to be president-elect.
According to him,” the efficient functioning of the president does not demand that a former president been held accountable for these alleged breaches of federal criminal law.”
Trump argues that leaders require resistance to be effective.
Former US president Trump has argued for years that official works by leaders should be protected from criminal prosecution. He and other former presidents were ordered to be held accountable for their official functions while serving in office last month by the Supreme Court.
According to him, from 1789 to 2023, no past or sitting president has faced legal fees for their official works, and for good reason.
In his short to the Court, President Trump states that” the President cannot work, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its important democracy if the President is facing criminal prosecution for standard functions once he leaves office.”
The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would “take away the strength, authority, and decisiveness of the Presidency,” according to the statement.
” Prosecutors claim to represent the people, but their behavior toward President Trump points to extortion. The Court should take into account the possibility of partisan abuse by holding former presidents to criminal liability, they wrote.
On March 19, attorneys for President Trump asserted that presidential immunity is required in the context of criminal prosecution to stop repeating patterns of recrimination and even political “blackmail” of presidents in office.
Presidents have n’t been formally convicted of any criminal acts committed during their official roles, but recent cases have n’t definitively established whether they are immune from prosecution for alleged crimes committed during official business.
Instead, the Court has historically upheld a degree of presidential autonomy and established in Nixon v. Fitzgerald that a president is completely immune from civil liability for deeds that fall within the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities.
The distinction between personal and official acts during President Trump’s presidency, as well as a potential separation of actions he can be prosecuted for and those that are protected by presidential immunity, are a secondary issue that could be addressed.
The outcome of the case may have an impact on President Trump’s other legal battles, in which he also contends that he deserves presidential immunity as a defense.
A federal appeals court recently ruled that several civil lawsuits against President Trump related to January 6 could proceed because they alleged that the charges alleged personal acts of a candidate as opposed to official acts of a president.
The question of whether this immunity applies to former presidents is also relatively new.
This report was written by Catherine Yang.
