'No good reason' for SCOTUS 'to disgrace itself' by reviewing Trump immunity claim: legal scholar

13 February 2024

Former President Donald Trump and his lawyers have been claiming that because he enjoyed "presidential immunity" in late 2020 and early 2021, special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case against him should be thrown out. But Judge Tanya Chutkan, assigned to the case, flatly rejected Trump's claim and wrote that U.S. presidents do not enjoy a "divine right of kings." And subsequently, a panel of federal appeals court judges unanimously agreed with Chutkan and laid out, in forceful terms, a long list of reasons why they considered Trump's "presidential immunity" claim to be horribly flawed.

Now, Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the matter and "stay" the federal appears court ruling. But Harvard University legal scholar Lawerence Tribe, during a February 12 appearance on MSNBC, argued that the lower federal court's ruling is so solid that there is no point in the High Court taking up the matter.

Tribe told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, "I don't expect that the U.S. Supreme Court will grant his stay. There is really no basis for it. It's simply a delaying tactic. And I also don't think there's any good reason for the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review of the case."

Tribe went on to say that Chutkan "won't be able to begin the trial" in Smith's election interference case "on March 4 as originally scheduled," adding, "But it can certainly begin late spring or early summer, and the American people will have an answer — beyond a reasonable doubt — as to whether Donald Trump did, in fact, try to steal the 2020 election by committing the very serious crimes that are charged by Jack Smith in this indictment."

Mitchell noted that Chutkan has been unable to begin jury selection because of Trump's immunity appeal, which Tribe slammed as "frivolous."

Tribe told the MSNBC host, "I think even the current very conservative Supreme Court will have no reason to disgrace itself by playing into Trump's obvious gambit of simply delay, delay, delay."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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