Ten months from now, U.S. voters will elect a president again, but before they head to the polls, the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming weeks could play a pivotal role in the political fate of the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.
Three-plus years after losing his reelection bid, Trump faces a set of obstacles to reclaiming the White House, all of which the country’s nine-member highest court could weigh in on, to Trump’s detriment or benefit.
He is claiming immunity from prosecution on an unprecedented four criminal indictments encompassing 91 charges for which he could stand trial in the coming months.
He is also fighting decisions by two states to keep him off 2024 Republican presidential primary election ballots for his role in allegedly inciting an insurrection by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as they unsuccessfully tried to keep Congress from certifying that Joe Biden had defeated him in the presidential election.
Currently, the Supreme Court is not set to consider Trump’s challenges to rulings against him, but that could quickly change as lower courts hear the cases, with Trump, government prosecutors and others certain to appeal any adverse rulings against them to the Supreme Court.
The high court has already agreed to review the case of a police officer charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress — the certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College — that also could affect Trump. The policeman contends that prosecutors wrongly used a corporate fraud statute usually reserved for people who tamper with documents and evidence.
Prosecutors have deployed the law in charging more than 300 other Capitol rioters, and it forms the basis of two charges against Trump in a Washington case brought by special counsel Jack Smith accusing Trump of illegally scheming to upend his 2020 election loss to Biden, his Democratic opponent.
The court will hear the policeman’s case in its current term and could announce its ruling sometime in June, well after the scheduled March 4 start of the Washington election fraud case.
More broadly, Trump is making the bold claim that he has absolute immunity from prosecution because any election-related actions he took occurred while he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021. It is the time frame in which prosecutors allege he plotted with key associates to illegally undermine the will of the majority who favored Biden in several key political battleground states so he could overturn the vote in those states to stay in power for another four years.
In the U.S., presidents are not elected by the national popular vote, which Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020. Rather, U.S. presidents, and their vice-presidential running mates, are elected through balloting in 50 state-by-state elections, with the most populous states holding the most electoral votes in the Electoral College.
About 2,000 Trump supporters delayed the eventual congressional certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College vote count three years ago when they stormed into the Capitol, fighting with police and ransacking some congressional offices.
Read Full Story
VOANews Rating
Discover more from News Facts Network
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
