Special counsel urges supreme court to reject Trump immunity bid in election trial

The special counsel pursuing federal criminal charges against Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss filed a US supreme court brief on Monday urging the justices to reject the former president’s bid for immunity from prosecution on the principle that “no person is above the law”.

The case is due to be argued before the justices on 25 April. Trump has appealed a lower court’s rejection of his request to be shielded from the criminal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith because he was serving as president when he took the actions at the center of the case.

In his last filing before the arguments, Smith told the justices that Trump’s actions that led to the charges, if he is convicted, would represent “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.

“The effective functioning of the presidency does not require that a former president be immune from accountability for these alleged violations of federal criminal law,” Smith wrote. “To the contrary, a bedrock principle of our constitutional order is that no person is above the law including the president.“

Trump, the first former president to be criminally prosecuted, has pleaded not guilty in this case and the three other criminal cases he faces, seeking to paint them as politically motivated.

He has argued that a former president has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts,” and warned that without such immunity, “the threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions”.

In August 2023, Smith brought four federal criminal counts against Trump in the election subversion case, including conspiring to defraud the