U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Donald Trump‘s claims of presidential immunity in December, a decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld in February, not seeing fit to grant a president “unbounded authority to commit crimes.”
Now the Supreme Court will consider the scope of Trump’s presidential immunity — likely in April — and whether said immunity allows Trump’s post-presidency prosecution by Special Counsel Jack Smith and the DOJ.
Trump’s lawyers filed a brief with SCOTUS this week that critics note is full of misdirection attempts and disingenuous argument.
Concurring with the assessment that the brief was “misciting” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, University of Texas Law School Professor Lee Kovarsky, who has argued successfully before the Supreme Court, adds that “there’s so much deeply dishonest and misleading stuff in this brief.”
Kovarsky points out examples where the brief, referencing established case law, tries “to make it seem” as if the precedent says something other than it does — via misleading editing.
There’s so much deeply dishonest and misleading stuff in this brief. Another example is where the edit the quotations in Marbury to make it seem like the snippets saying that “[such and such] is not examinable in courts” is referring to the president. It’s not.
— Lee Kovarsky (@lee_kovarsky) March 20, 2024
In February, Special Counsel Smith told the Supreme Court that “the nation has a compelling interest in seeing the charges brought to trial” and that “the public interest in a prompt trial is at its zenith where, as here, a former president is charged with conspiring to subvert the electoral process so that he could remain in office.”
Smith told the Court that the criminal charges against Trump include something no President can have immunity to do — that is, “perpetuate himself in power and prevent the lawful winner of the 2020 presidential election from taking office.” Smith wrote: “The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy.”