The American Supreme Court with a conservative majority must rule on Monday on the absolute criminal immunity invoked by Donald Trump as ex-president, but its decision, the most anticipated of this session, could further delay his federal trial in Washington.
By deciding on February 28 to take up this question, and then setting the debates for nearly three months later, the highest court in the United States has already considerably postponed the federal trial of the former Republican president for attempting to illegally reverse the results of the 2020 election won by his Democratic successor Joe Biden.
The entire procedure for this trial, initially scheduled for March 4, and postponed sine die, has therefore been suspended for four months. The slim chances that it will still begin before the November 5 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden depend entirely on the scope and wording of the decision of the nine judges.
In particular, they could refer the case back to lower courts to determine which acts are likely to escape prosecution, which would inevitably lead to further delays, while the organisation of the trial, once the suspension is lifted, is expected to take more than two months.
During the debates, if the judges 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 question.
“This case has enormous implications for the future of the presidency and the country,” added his colleague Brett Kavanaugh.
Appeal
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 burdensome of the four procedures, also risks being the only one before the vote.
Because through numerous appeals, Donald Trump’s lawyers have managed to postpone until further notice the other trials, at the federal level for withholding classified documents after he left the White House and before the courts in the key state of Georgia (southeast) for electoral interference in 2020.
If re-elected, Donald Trump could, once inaugurated in January 2025, order a halt to federal prosecutions against him.
