Former President Donald Trump spoke out after the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding his prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case against him on Thursday, calling it “monumental.”
Following the seventh day of his hush money trial in Manhattan from charges made by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump spoke to reporters saying that he thinks it was "made clear" that a president "has to have immunity."
“The U.S. Supreme Court had a monumental hearing on immunity and the immunity having to do with presidential immunity," Trump said. "And I think it was made clear, I hope it is very clear that a president has to have immunity."
New York Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s request after the former president asked if he could attend the arguments in Washington, D.C. The judge has required Trump to be present in court each day of the trial.
“I was forced to be here, and I’m glad I was because it was a very interesting day in a certain way,” Trump told reporters.
Although the court appears likely to reject Trump’s expansive claim of absolute immunity, it could remand the case for further proceedings, further delaying the chance of a trial taking place before the election. The court is weighing the novel legal question of whether a former president can be prosecuted for what Trump’s attorneys say were “official acts” taken in office, though much of the focus remains on whether the justices will rule quickly so a trial can take place before the November election. Via NBC News.
Arguments ran for about three hours where Trump’s lawyers argued that their client’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “official acts.”
Trump said that the Supreme Court justices “were on their game,” reiterating that presidential immunity is very powerful and imperative— or “you practically won’t have a country anymore."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Samuel Alito expressed concerns about prosecuting a future president and the implications that could follow.
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Alito asked.