Donald Trump asks US Supreme Court to put presidential immunity ruling on hold

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Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to put on a hold a ruling that barred him from using presidential immunity as a shield against criminal charges accusing him of meddling in the 2020 presidential elections.

The filing on Monday from Trump’s lawyers comes as he fights to convince US courts he is legally protected from a federal indictment filed by the Department of Justice accusing him of interfering with the 2020 election.

Trump’s “claim that Presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts presents a novel, complex, and momentous question that warrants careful consideration on appeal,” his lawyers said in the brief.

A trial in the federal election interference case, which was meant to begin on March 4, has been postponed to an undetermined date. Without the Supreme Court’s intervention, proceedings in that case could resume within days, Trump’s lawyers warned.

Trump’s lawyers said they would ask the Supreme Court to hear the case, as well as seek further review from the full appeals court.

The DoJ declined to comment.

The application comes as the Supreme Court is considering a separate appeal involving Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential elections. He is seeking to overturn a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that disqualified him from the state’s primary presidential ballot on the basis that he engaged in insurrection. The evidence in the case is linked to January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win. 

If the Supreme Court ultimately weighs in on Trump’s presidential immunity claim, it will dive into one of the most fraught legal debates in the US. While supported in various forms by many scholars, presidential immunity is a hazy stipulation that is not explicitly defined in the…