‘Not so fast’: Watergate prosecutor warns Supreme Court is going to hand Trump a shock

Adam Nichols January 3, 2024 6:48AM ET

Donald Trump might be praising the Supreme Court’s refusal of special counsel Jack Smith’s plea for an expedited hearing on the former president’s immunity claim, but he might be celebrating too soon.

Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman warned Wednesday that what Trump considers good news is going to blow up in his face.

“Not so fast!” he wrote in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “My New Year’s prediction: The Supreme Court will refuse to hear Mr. Trump’s inevitable appeal from the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals finding that presidential immunity does not apply to Mr. Trump’s alleged criminal acts arising out of the Jan. 6th insurrection. The criminal prosecution against Mr. Trump will proceed to trial in March.”

Trump is claiming that he’s immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took on January 6 because he was acting in his official capacity as president. In an effort to brush the claim aside and get quickly to trial, Smith asked that he be able to sidestep the lower Court of Appeals hearing of his case and go straight to the Supreme Court.

The court refused — meaning the immunity argument will now be heard by the appeals court and then likely end up at the Supreme Court, which experts have said will likely delay Smith’s trial that’s currently set for March — a slowdown that feeds into Trump’s tactic of delay.

But Ackerman, who was an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate case, suggests that will not be the case.

“Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s efforts to manipulate the legal system and postpone his criminal trial are doomed to fail,” he wrote.

Trump has already tested the immunity claim before an appeals court. On Dec. 1, the D.C. Circuit heard arguments that he should be immune from civil litigation brought against him by Capitol police officers and members of Congress.

It was roundly rejected, with the court finding the actions arose from campaigning, and were “not an official act of the office.”

In Atlanta, another court of appeals unanimously rejected a similar claim by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said he should be immune from charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 election brought by District Attorney Fani Willis.

“Whatever the precise contours of Meadows’s official authority, that authority did not extend to an alleged conspiracy to overturn valid election results,” the court found.

“The Supreme Court justices were undoubtedly aware of [the Atlanta] decision when they denied Mr. Smith’s motion to hear the appeal,” wrote Ackerman. “[It] clearly stands for the proposition that participating in a conspiracy to overturn the peaceful transfer of power is not within the scope of executive authority. As such, the crimes Mr. Trump is alleged to have committed in the criminal case are not excused by presidential immunity.”

https://www.rawstory.com/jack-smith-expedite-immunity/

Trump’s lawyer confirms his concern about Supreme Court ballot ruling

by Miranda Nazzaro - 01/03/24 5:13 PM ET

Former President Trump’s attorney Alina Habba on Wednesday said the former president is concerned the U.S. Supreme Court justices may “shy away from being pro-Trump,” and rule against him in regard to the recent decisions in Colorado and Maine that kicked him off the states’ 2024 primary ballots.

Responding to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s recent comments about Trump’s concerns, Habba during an interview on Fox News said, “That’s a concern he’s voiced to me, he’s voiced to everybody publicly, not privately. And I can tell you that his concern is a valid one.”

“You know, Republicans are conservative, they get nervous. They unfortunately … sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law is on our side, they are swayed much like the Democratic side, right?” Habba told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum. “So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes, they make the wrong call.”

Colorado and Maine both removed Trump from their 2024 state primary ballots last month, ruling he is ineligible to run for president under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

Trump on Wednesday appealed Colorado’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, one day after he appealed Maine’s decision — which came from Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows — in the state’s superior court, though the dispute could ultimately also reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Three of the justices on the nation’s highest bench were appointed by Trump, a point of concern Haberman addressed last week.

“They believe, generally speaking, he and his advisers, that they will have success at the Supreme Court, but he has also voiced some concern that a court that has — he appointed three of the justices at the Supreme Court and gave the conservatives a supermajority — he is concerned that they are going to look as if they’re trying not to rule in his favor and might rule against him,” Haberman said during a CNN appearance last week.

“It’s a very clean cut,” she said. “There’s no … politics that should be involved in this. It’s just simply American, and if the justices read the law, as I do, as most Americans and attorneys do, even [Alan Dershowitz] — who’s a known liberal — it’s just a simple decision, and it should have nothing to do with if you’re Republican or Democrat.”

Habba was making an apparent reference to attorney Alan Dershowitz’s comments against rulings from Colorado and Maine. Dershowitz last month called Colorado’s decision “an attempt to totally manipulate an amendment that was never designed to disqualify people in future election,” Forbes reported.

A number of legal experts have thrown out varying predictions for how the nation’s highest court could rule if it decides to hear the case. Former Attorney General Bill Barr called Colorado’s case “legally wrong and untenable,” while former federal Judge Michael Luttig said the Centennial State’s ruling is not “anti-democratic,” but rather the conduct that prompted the disqualification was anti-democratic.

Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb predicted the U.S. Supreme Court could rule “9-0” in favor of Trump if he appeals the Colorado Supreme Court decision, saying last month he believes the “law is clear.”

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4387650-trumps-lawyer-confirms-his-concern-about-supreme-court-ballot-ruling/