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Trump asks Supreme Court to pause immunity ruling in 2020 election case
Washington — Former President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to pause a lower court’s decision that rejected his broad claims of immunity from criminal prosecution in the federal case related to the 2020 election.
In a 110-page filing on Monday, Trump’s attorneys asked the justices to implement a “stay” of the ruling issued by a three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The panel said it would delay enforcing its ruling until Feb. 12 to give Trump time to turn to the high court.
Five justices are needed to approve Trump’s request for emergency relief.
Trump’s attorneys also told the D.C. Circuit that he will be asking the Supreme Court to review the panel’s decision.
The appeals court decision
The three appeals court judges — Karen LeCraft Henderson, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan — ruled last week that Trump was not immune from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case against him. The judges rejected the former president’s argument that he should be shielded from the charges because the conduct alleged in the federal indictment occurred while he was in office.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote in its opinion. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
The judges wrote that they “cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results.”
Adopting Trump’s argument, they continued, would mean “the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.”
The appeals court panel said its ruling would go into effect on Feb. 12 unless Trump asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief, or if the full appeals court agreed to hear the case after the deadline.
A federal grand jury charged Trump last year with four counts stemming from an alleged attempt to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and has denied wrongdoing.
The former president first raised his claim of presidential immunity in October, when he asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the criminal case in D.C., to dismiss the charges. Chutkan denied the request and Trump later appealed the ruling to the D.C. Circuit.
The trial schedule in Chutkan’s court has since been on hold. Earlier this month, she indefinitely delayed the March 4 trial date until the immunity question is settled.
It remains unclear if the Supreme Court will grant Trump’s forthcoming request to review the appeals court decision. The justices could decide not to hear the case at all and allow the appeals court’s rejection of Trump’s immunity claim to stand as the final word. Or they could pause the appeals court’s ruling and agree to take up the case, setting up another election-year showdown at the high court.
Smith asked the Supreme Court last month to leap-frog the appeals court and decide the immunity issue once and for all, but the high court declined to fast-track the case and instead let the appeals process continue.
The Supreme Court has never decided whether former presidents are entitled to criminal immunity for conduct that occurred while they were in the White House. Trump is the first former president in the nation’s history to be indicted.
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Washington — Congress’ path forward on government funding is in limbo after House Republicans, with the support of Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump, torpedoed an initial deal to avert a shutdown before a Friday night deadline.
The House descended into chaos Wednesday when the GOP revolt sank a last-minute funding measure to keep the government operating through early next year.
The massive end-of-year spending legislation immediately sparked anger from conservatives when it was unveiled late Tuesday. Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy referred to it on X as a “1,547-page Christmas tree,” while Rep. Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican, called it “a band-aid that is laced with fentanyl.”
The more than 1,500-page bill released Tuesday was far from a modest stopgap measure. In addition to extending government funding through March 14, it included disaster aid, health care policy extenders and a pay raise for members of Congress, among other provisions. The disaster relief portion of the bill came with a $110 billion price tag.
Elon Musk, the co-head of Trump’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency chimed in with a barrage of posts Wednesday calling the bill “criminal” and suggestions that Republicans who supported it did not belong in Congress. And the opposition culminated in statements from Trump lambasting the new spending and threatening a primary challenge against any Republican supporting the measure.
The president-elect called on Republicans to strip out the additional spending and added a new element instead — raising the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills, is suspended until the first quarter of next year, but Trump said he’d prefer to force President Biden to approve raising the debt ceiling so he wouldn’t have to sign it.
“I will fight ’till the end,” Trump wrote.
Top House Republicans met Wednesday night after the initial deal fell apart, but a new path forward remained unclear Thursday morning as Congress lurched toward Friday night’s deadline to fund the government.
Though stripping out most of the additional funding would satisfy many Republicans, Johnson is likely to need dozens of votes from Democrats, and some are already slamming Johnson for walking away from the agreement. They argue Republicans will shoulder any blame for a potential shutdown.
“Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said Wednesday. “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse.”
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Spending fight throws Johnson’s speakership into question
The initial plan to keep the government funded and the chaos that surrounded it also prompted intense criticism of Johnson, including from members of his own party.
In addition to the slew of add-ons to the spending bill, conservatives are angry with Johnson for carrying out the negotiating process largely occurred outside of the view of rank-and-file members. Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, called the process “a total dumpster fire.”
A handful of Republicans indicated their support for Johnson’s speakership in the new Congress is now in question, and with such a narrow majority, it would take only a few to take him down. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said flatly Wednesday that he won’t support Johnson in the speaker’s election.
“I’m not voting for him,” Massie said. “This solidifies it.”
In November, House Republicans backed Johnson to lead for another two years during their leadership elections. But the full chamber will vote to elect a speaker on Jan. 3. During the last speaker fight at the beginning of a new Congress in 2023, the slim Republican majority took 15 rounds to elect former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted from the role nine months later, partly due to his handling of government funding.
Still, Johnson generally enjoys more favor than McCarthy with the president-elect, who wields widespread influence over House Republicans. Trump told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Johnson would “easily remain speaker” if he “acts decisively and tough” and eliminates “all of the traps being set by Democrats” in the spending package.
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