Ben Meiselas: 'Supreme Court QUICKLY RESPONDS to Donald Trump Application'

Source:Meidas Touch- left to right: U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts & Defendant Don.

"MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the Supreme Court response to Donald Trump’s application for a stay of the mandate after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his claim for absolute presidential immunity." 

From the Meidas Touch

"Trump's lawyers in a brief to the Supreme Court warned that "conducting a months-long criminal trial of President Trump at the height of election season will radically disrupt President Trump's ability to campaign" against President Joe Biden ahead of the election.

They asked the justices to halt the trial proceedings pending their bid for the full slate of judges on the D.C. Circuit to reconsider the case, and, if necessary, an appeal to the Supreme Court. A March 4 trial date for Trump in federal court in Washington on four criminal counts pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith already was postponed, with no new date set." 

From Reuters

As my colleague Fred Schneider wrote earlier today: 

"With all due respect to Donald Trump's Washington lawyers: they're referencing the wrong case here and it's not going to help them. The Supreme Court back in 1982 ruled that President's are immune from prosecution and civil liability, from their official acts as President. They can't be sued or prosecuted because of executive orders that they sign, treaties and trade deals that they sign, budgets that they propose, etc. 

But Donald Trump is not being prosecuted for official actions that he took as President of the United States. He's being prosecuted for alleged criminal actions that he took as candidate for reelection as President of the United States. Doing your job as President of the United States and campaigning for the presidency, are two different things." 

From The New Democrat

I'm just going to talk about Donald Trump's lawyers argument to the Supreme Court as far as why he should be granted immunity now, their current argument:

Now, they're not saying that Donald Trump should be immune from prosecution because he was once President of the United States. (Even they still probably believe that, at least publicly) They're now arguing that he should be immune from prosecution, because he's running for President of the United States. 

So left's think about the precedent that would set, if successful, of the current Trump argument on immunity: 

Future, Federal, criminal defendants (which is what Donald Trump is right now in two different cases) could just file to run for President the second after they're indicted and say: "I don't have time to deal with this criminal prosecution right now. I'm running for President of the United States. Plus, this criminal prosecution is hurting me in the polls. Voters are going to think I'm a criminal or something. You have to dismiss this case, Supreme Court." 

Trump's lawyers  current argument, is not that different from the argument that they made to Federal Appeal Court back in January, where John Sauer argued that for a former President to be criminally prosecuted for actions that he committed while as President, he would first have to be impeached and convicted by Congress, first. Impeached by the House and then convicted in the Senate. 

If that were true, future President's could order their political opponents to be jailed or assassinated, kidnapped, etc, and then resign the presidency 5 minutes later to avoid being impeached and convicted by Congress and being criminally prosecuted as a former President. 

The problem that Donald Trump's team has here, (and I'm not a lawyer) is that they're no longer even trying to make a constitutional argument for why their client should be completely immune from criminal prosecution. They're all political now. And I think they picked the wrong U.S. Justice to try to bail them out politically in Chief Justice John Roberts. But we will see.

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