The attorneys general of multiple Republican-led states are ripping into the request made by Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Supreme Court for expedition of the immunity case revolved around former President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, 19 attorneys general filed a new brief with the Supreme Court that said Smith’s case is “driven by partisan interests, not the public interest.”
Trump’s legal team has argued that he is immune from prosecution on his election subversion charges since he was president at the time of the alleged charges and since the Senate already acquitted him of those charges in his second impeachment trial.
Smith, though, has petitioned the Supreme Court to speed up their typical timeline in hearing the issue, as he wants the case to be tried and decided before the 2024 presidential election.
The unique aspect of that request is that if the high court agreed to take up the case on an expedited basis, it would be bypassing the traditional judicial “chain of command” and going around a lower appellate court.
The Supreme Court does have the ability to do that under what’s known as Rule 11, but it’s typically reserved only for emergency cases.
The attorneys general who filed the brief are imploring the high court justices to realize that Smith doesn’t make a great case for why the emergency rule should be applied here.
As they wrote:
“The United States’ petition repeatedly proclaims — but never explains why — ‘[i]t is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.’
“That silence is both telling and troubling, suggesting that the United States’ demand for extraordinary and immediate relief is driven by partisan interests, not the public interest.”
For the Supreme Court to take up a case that is pending at the appellate level, according to Rule 11, the petitioner has to show the case is of “such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this Court.”
Steve Marshall, who serves as the attorney general of Alabama, released a statement to Fox News Digital that said the petition by the general counsel shows that the entire case is predicated on influencing the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
As Marshall — who led the Supreme Court brief — said in the statement:
“In November of last year, Joe Biden vowed that Donald Trump would never become president again. Then, in August 2023, more than 30 months after the events alleged in the indictment, the federal government indicted Trump and now seeks to rush him to trial in March 2024. But, the former President is entitled to appeal the trial court’s order denying him presidential immunity.”
The Supreme Court justices haven’t weighed in yet on whether they might take up the case, or when they might make a decision on Smith’s petition.
