On July 1, in an unprecedented ruling, the American Supreme Court recognized the former President of the United States as having broad criminal immunity “for his official acts”, referring back to the first instance the sensitive case of prosecutions against Donald Trump for illegal attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
But the special prosecutor in charge of the case is not giving up: he has published, Tuesday, August 27, an indictmentcertainly revised, but which takes up the same four serious charges against the former American president. The document was amended to take into account the decision of the Supreme Court and “reflects the will of the prosecution to respect and apply the conclusions and instructions of the Supreme Court”, explains in an attached document the special prosecutor Jack Smith.
This new twist in the election campaign comes after the same prosecutor requested yesterday to overturn a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for withholding classified documents after he left the White House. However, it will probably not have an impact on the US presidential election on November 5.
Donald Trump charged with “conspiracy” and “violating the right to vote”
The Republican billionaire, once again a candidate for the White House, remains charged with “conspiracy against American institutions” and “violating the right to vote” of voters for his pressure on local authorities in several key states in order to invalidate the official results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
The person concerned took offense in a series of messages on his Truth Social network, once again crying foul on the instrumentalization of justice by the outgoing Democratic administration and accusing the special prosecutor of “trying to resurrect a ‘dead’ witch hunt in an act of desperation.” Jack “Smith rewrote the exact same file in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision,” he adds.
In an unprecedented ruling on July 1, the nation’s highest court granted the president broad criminal immunity. By a majority of six to three – conservative justices against progressives – the Court held that “the president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts” but that he “is entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for his official acts.”
Return to the first instance to determine the immunized acts
The court sent the case back to trial judge Tanya Chutkan to determine what acts are potentially immune from criminal prosecution. The burden is on the prosecution to show that they are not when they were committed in the exercise of presidential functions.
The Supreme Court also excluded from the scope of the indictment all discussions between Donald Trump and the Justice Department through the end of his term. As a result, prosecutors removed from the revised indictment a series of conversations or communications at the time of the events between Donald Trump and executive branch officials, particularly the Justice Department.
Thus, of the “six conspirators” listed in the original indictment, mainly lawyers involved in his alleged machinations, who were not identified by name, “Number 4”, a Justice Department official, has simply disappeared from the new version. As for the other five, “none of them was a government official at the time of the plot and all were acting in a private capacity”, the prosecutors emphasize.
Probably no further trial before November election
The proceedings, frozen for nearly six months while waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the criminal immunity claimed by Donald Trump, resumed in early August. No new date for the trial, initially scheduled to take place in Washington from March 4, has yet been set. Targeted by four criminal proceedings, the Republican presidential candidate is pulling out all the stops to go to trial as late as possible, in any case after the November 5 election.
Donald Trump was found guilty on May 30 in New York of “aggravated false accounting to conceal a conspiracy to pervert the 2016 election” in the case of the payment of $130,000, disguised as legal fees, to buy the silence of pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels.
But this first criminal conviction, unprecedented for a former American president, will in all likelihood be the only one before the vote and the pronouncement of the sentence, scheduled for September, could also be postponed because of the decision of the Supreme Court. If he were re-elected, Donald Trump could, once inaugurated in January 2025, order the end of the federal prosecutions against him.