A “great victory” for democracy, according to Donald Trump. The US Supreme Court with a conservative majority on Monday July 1 referred to the lower courts the question of his criminal immunity as ex-president, further delaying the holding of his federal trial in Washington. The candidate for the American election “thinks he is above the law”, commented Joe Biden’s campaign team. This decision “changes nothing in the facts […] : Donald Trump broke down after losing the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overturn the results of a free and fair election,” commented a campaign advisor to the Democratic president, candidate for a second term.
By six votes to three, those of the six conservative judges against the three progressives, the Court considers that “the president does not enjoy any immunity for his unofficial acts” but that he “is entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for his official acts.
By deciding on February 28 to take up this question, then by scheduling the debates almost three months later, the highest court of the United States had already considerably postponed the federal trial of the former Republican president for attempted illegally reverse the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.
“A rule for posterity”
The entire procedure for this trial, initially scheduled to start on March 4 and postponed indefinitely, had already been suspended for four months. During the debates, while the justices were generally skeptical of the absolute immunity claimed by the Republican candidate, several, particularly among conservatives, insisted on the long-term repercussions of their decision. “We are writing a rule for posterity,” Neil Gorsuch observed, referring to the unprecedented nature of the issue.
Targeted by four separate criminal proceedings, Donald Trump is doing everything possible to go to trial as late as possible, at least after the presidential election. He was found guilty on May 30 by a New York court of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a conspiracy to pervert the 2016 election.” His sentence will be pronounced on July 11.
But this first criminal conviction, unprecedented for a former American president, in the least politically heavy of the four procedures, also risks being the only one before the vote. Because through appeals, Donald Trump’s lawyers managed to postpone other trials until further notice, at the federal level for withholding classified documents after his departure from the White House and before the courts of the key state of Georgia for electoral interference in 2020. If he were elected again, Donald Trump could, once inaugurated in January 2025, order a halt to federal proceedings against him.