Former President Donald Trump‘s camp accused special counsel Jack Smith of election interference after the prosecutor asked the Supreme Court on Monday to quickly resolve a debate over whether Trump has immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign released a scathing statement that took swipes at Smith and President Joe Biden, who is also seeking a second term, over a bid to preserve a March 4 trial date in the 2020 election case that falls one day before Super Tuesday. The Supreme Court agreed to swiftly consider Smith’s petition, giving Trump until December 20 to respond.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s henchman, Deranged Jack Smith is so obsessed with interfering in the 2024 Presidential Election with the goal of preventing President Trump from retaking the Oval Office, as the President is poised to do, that Smith is willing to try for a Hail Mary by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process,” a Trump spokesperson said.
The statement alluded to how Smith oversaw the Department of Justice’s public integrity unit that scored a bribery and extortion conviction against former Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell in a gifts case that was then thrown out by the Supreme Court with an 8-0 decision in 2016.
“Deranged may need to be reminded that the Supreme Court has not been kind to him, including by handing down a rare unanimous rebuke when the Court overturned him 8-0 in the McDonnell case,” the spokesperson said.
After a judge rejected Trump’s immunity claims, the former president filed an appeal and requested a pause in the proceedings late last week.
Smith’s team asked the high court on Monday to review the immunity question before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., had a chance to rule on the matter, claiming there is precedent from the Nixon Watergate tapes case.
Still, Smith’s team acknowledged this was an “extraordinary request” in an “extraordinary case,” and wrote, “It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.”
The special counsel also made a separate filing to the D.C. federal appeals court seeking expedited proceedings in anticipation of the Supreme Court not agreeing to snap up the case before a ruling at the appellate level.
“The only reason for this petition is to seek to guarantee a trial of Trump (and possible conviction) before the election,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley opined about Smith’s maneuver in a series of posts to X.
Turley also posited, “The Supreme Court may not view a trial of Trump during the campaign to be as motivating or urgent as does Smith. This is a novel legal argument that the Court would ordinarily prefer to hear the views from the appellate judges.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the federal case in which he is accused of unlawfully plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Over the course of the case, Trump has been restrained in what he can say about it due to a gag order.
In addition, Trump is fighting three other criminal cases, including another one led by Smith over the former president’s handling of classified documents, as well as civil litigation with court dates peppered throughout the 2024 election calendar.
“As President Trump has said over and over again, this prosecution is completely politically motivated,” Trump’s spokesperson said of the 2020 case. “There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics.”