Legal Experts On Supreme Court Immunity Decision: There’s Still Time To Try Trump For His Alleged Crimes, But The Court Must Move Quickly

At a press briefing on Thursday, top legal experts discussed Wednesday’s Supreme Court announcement that they would grant former President Donald Trump a hearing about his “presidential immunity” claim.

The experts on the panel were Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, and Tom Joscelyn, who was the principal drafter of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s final report. The briefing was hosted by the Defend Democracy Project.

The experts noted that there is still an opportunity to have a timely trial, but the Supreme Court must decide quickly after oral argument, which they have scheduled for the week of April 22.

The case, United States v. Donald J. Trump, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, deals with the issue of whether Trump will be held criminally accountable for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and for inciting the violent January 6, 2021 mob attack on the Capitol.

The experts stressed that many of the January 6 rioters have been tried and convicted of their crimes. It’s time for Trump – the “ringleader” of the effort – to “at last be judged by a jury of Americans.”

Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the first impeachment and trial of President Trump. Special Counsel and “Ethics Czar” during the Obama Administration (2009 – 2011):

>> “If the Supreme Court does not allow this matter to be adjudicated this year, they will be complicit in this grave offense. They will be aiding and abetting in this failure of accountability and this grave danger to American democracy.”

>> “Americans like their democracy. They want to keep it. They want to know, by overwhelming majorities, including Trump’s own voters … they want an answer to the question of whether Trump previously criminally opposed his powers he is seeking to regain.”

>> “This 2020 election interference case must proceed. There is an utmost matter of democratic accountability that is at stake here. But it does not occur in isolation. The Alvin Bragg 2016 case is not just a hush money case, it is an election interference case. … That case is the one measure of democratic accountability that we know is coming in 2024. … Donald Trump saw that he got away with it in 2016: there was no accountability, and that was part of what emboldened him in the shocking criminal conduct [of 2020].”

Fred Wertheimer, President of Democracy 21:

>> “The American people are entitled to know whether Trump, the expected Republican nominee, is a convicted criminal for his actions before they vote for President in November. The justices know exactly what is going on here. They know Trump is doing everything that he can to get this trial delayed past the November election. They know Trump will kill the case if he wins and the case has not been tried.”

>> “If they wait and issue the opinion at the end of the term in June, they likely will have knowingly prevented voters from knowing if Trump is a convicted felon before they vote. [The Court] will have rewarded Trump’s delaying strategy at the enormous expense of the country.”

>> “This case is just as important, probably more important, than the Pentagon Papers case, or the [Watergate] tapes case. There has never been anything like what Trump did in our history. Never.”

Tom Joscelyn, principal drafter of the House Jan. 6th Committee’s 814-page final report:

>> “There are a lot of facts and a lot of testimony and evidence that the American people should hear and see for themselves that would come out of this trial. New stuff that I wish I had access to when I was helping to put together the Select Committee’s final report.”

>> “These people would not have gone down to the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power if it was not for Trump sending them there. … The most incendiary thing he said, perhaps the most incendiary line ever spoken by an American President, was when he told his assembled crowd of supporters that if they don’t fight like hell, they’re not going to have a country anymore. Of course, many of them did just that. They fought like hell on January 6.”

>> “There are so many of the small fish in the sea who have been already tried and convicted for doing what Trump wanted them to do, to stop the peaceful transfer of power. … It would be a shame if the ringleader of that wasn’t also tried and held accountable.”

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