Blaze News original: Supreme Court will likely grant Trump partial presidential immunity, legal experts say

The election interference case against Donald Trump has been on hold for months as the Supreme Court weighs the former president's immunity claim.

The indictment accused Trump of "spread[ing] lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won." Trump is facing four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. For all four charges, Trump could be sentenced to a total of 35 years in prison, Politico reported.

Like Trump, most individuals who were at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, are facing charges concerning obstruction of "official proceedings," a federal law enacted in 2002. The single charge can result in up to 20 years in prison.

The justices must determine "whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office."

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, told Blaze News, "In order to fulfill the duties of the Constitution required of the President, any President must have absolute immunity from prosecution for his official acts in office. Without this assurance, all presidents will be subject to political prosecutions from their partisan adversaries and will be greatly impeded in their ability to carry out their Constitutional duties under the Oath of Office."

Cheung added, "Rejecting immunity for the President opens the floodgates for new partisan witch hunts and impeachments orchestrated by partisans like Crooked Joe Biden and Deranged Jack Smith that will do great damage to the presidency. Complete and total presidential immunity is the only solution to this nightmare."

The Supreme Court could decide between three options: reject presidential immunity altogether, sending the election interference case back to United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan; declare Trump cannot be prosecuted, halting the case; or rule that Trump has partial presidential immunity protections.

'I think that they can certainly announce a rule of presidential immunity and it would not at all be limited to federal cases.'

If the justices determine that Trump has some immunity, they can decide whether the allegations against the former president in the case are protected under that immunity or send that decision back to Chutkan.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning Trump's motion. During the trial, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, "If a president can be charged, put on trial, and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president's decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed."

"Every current president will face de facto blackmail and extortion by his political rivals while he is still in office," Sauer added. "The implications of the Court's decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Michael Dreeben, a lawyer from special counsel Jack Smith's office, "It's a serious constitutional question whether a statute can be applied to the president's official acts."

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed concern during the hearing that granting absolute immunity could allow all future presidents to be above the law.

"I don't understand how the president stands in any different position with respect to the need to follow the law as he is doing his job than anyone else. ... If there's no threat of criminal prosecution, what prevents the president from just doing whatever he wants?" Jackson questioned.

"The most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes. I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country," she added.

Will Chamberlain, with the Article III Project, told Blaze News that such concerns are "invalid."

"The position of the Trump legal team is that a former president can be prosecuted for non-official acts, as well as those official acts for which he is impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. No one is claiming that the president should be above the law," Chamberlain explained.

He stated that Trump's immunity claim is a "totally valid argument."

"The Supreme Court already recognized that presidents should have absolute immunity from civil suit for their official acts. It would be quite bizarre if they had no criminal immunity for the same acts and would open up many former presidents to prosecution for things they did while in office," he said.

The Supreme Court was slated to issue new opinions this past Thursday regarding several pending cases, but the justices have yet to rule on Trump's immunity motion.

Former federal prosecutor and former Trump attorney Jim Trusty told Blaze News that "some form of immunity absolutely makes sense."

"I think saying that it's absolute immunity for any potential act of a president is overstated," he noted.

Trusty remarked that he believes the justices will not grant Trump "absolute immunity" but "something closer to qualified immunity," which protects government officials performing discretionary functions. He explained that the Supreme Court's ruling is unlikely to end any litigation but instead "establish a rule of immunity that tells the lower courts [what] to focus on."

"I think that would bode well for President Trump," Trusty told Blaze News. "It would be a little bit like what you see with police officers and you have hearings to determine whether they were acting within the scope of their employment. I think what you'd have from the Supreme Court is the announcement of the principle, but then the lower courts have to have some form of mini trial on whether or not they think immunity applies."

Trusty added, "And guess what: If they think it doesn't, we're going right back up to the Supreme Court in about a year."

Chamberlain explained that the justices could choose to "tailor the nature of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in a way that they think makes sense."

"However they do it, they will almost certainly require an evidentiary hearing on the immunity issue at the trial court level before any prosecution could go forward," he told Blaze News.

Announcing some form of immunity for Trump will slow down litigation for Smith's team by "as much as a year or so," Trusty estimated. If the justices establish presidential immunity, it is "very likely" to affect "all of the cases" against Trump, Trusty noted.

"I think that they can certainly announce a rule of presidential immunity and it would not at all be limited to federal cases," he remarked.

According to Chamberlain, the Supreme Court's ruling "would likely affect the Georgia indictment and the classified documents indictment" since the alleged acts in those cases occurred while Trump was in office.

"It would not affect the New York prosecution," he noted.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo argued that Trump's immunity case is "weak," but he could still "claim that the prosecution violates his constitutional rights or powers or that the charges legally do not fit his conduct on January 6."

In a recent op-ed in Newsweek, Yoo wrote, "Even if the Court were to find that Trump's behavior on January 6 did not involve the exercise of a valid presidential power, he would still be able to bring legal challenges against the prosecution. Indeed, it is unlikely that the courts will agree that Trump's actions fell within the ambit of official presidential acts."

"Nevertheless, the charges against Trump could fail on their merits," Yoo added.

Anything else?

On Thursday, a 12-person jury in the New York case against Trump found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Blaze News previously reported. Trump's attorney, Will Scharf, said the legal team plans to appeal the conviction.

Ahead of the verdict, Scharf told CNN's Jake Tapper, "If there were to be a conviction here, which we believe would be a gravely unjust verdict, we would speedily appeal to the New York Appellate division, potentially to the New York Court of Appeals as well. And we'll take that step if we get there."

Acting Justice Juan Merchan scheduled a sentencing hearing for July 11. While there is no required minimum sentencing, Merchan could order Trump to pay a fine, sentence him to probation, or sentence him to up to four years in jail on each count. Trump is facing a maximum of 20 years in state prison.

Trump has accused the case of being a "witch hunt" launched by the Biden administration to keep Trump from defeating the Democrats in the 2024 presidential election. Corporate media outlets have often attempted to "fact-check" the claim, arguing that it was a New York state case and, therefore, had nothing to do with the Department of Justice. However, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, Michael Colangelo, was recently a top-ranking DOJ official before effectively accepting a demotion to join Bragg's team, Blaze News previously reported. While working with the attorney general's office, Colangelo led a lawsuit that ultimately resulted in the closure of Trump's charitable foundation.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche described the defense's appeal arguments during a Thursday interview with CNN.

"Every single person on the jury knew Donald Trump as president, as candidate, from 'The Apprentice,' so I don't accept that this was a fair place to try President Trump," Blanche stated. "The law says a person is entitled to a fair trial in front of a jury of their peers, and we just think that because of everything around the lead-up this trial, it made it very difficult for the jury to evaluate the evidence kind of independent of what they knew coming in."

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