Nineteen attorneys general are backing former President Donald Trump and believe the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) should not deviate from normal practice and skip the D.C. Circuit appeals court before deciding to take up the case.
“The States of Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming respectfully submit this brief as amici curiae in support of Respondent Donald J. Trump,” the states’ brief reads, asserting that the “issue before the Court is a narrow one.”
“While the question of a president’s immunity from prosecution is self evidently important, the question here is whether the
‘public’ interest ‘require[s] immediate determination’ of that question. … As agents of the public, Amici States offer a different perspective than the federal government on whether the public interest is served by the prosecution’s extraordinary request,” it continues.
Standard practice involves waiting for the appeals court to issue a final decision before the Supreme Court decides to take up a case. Essentially, the Attorneys General are arguing that the high court should not deviate from normal practice and skip the D.C. Circuit appeals court in this instance.
In this image provided by the Supreme Court, members of the Supreme Court pose for a photo during Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s formal investiture ceremony at the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. From left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Elena Kagan and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh (Fred Schilling/U.S. Supreme Court via AP).
The development comes as Trump urges the Supreme Court to ignore the timetable set by Smith in considering Trump’s claims of presidential immunity.
“In an omission that speaks volumes, the Special Counsel never explains why March 4, 2024, is supposedly the only ‘appropriate timetable’ for this historic prosecution,” attorneys for Trump assert. “That date has no talismanic significance.”
Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment against former President Donald Trump at the Justice Department on June 9, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The 19 states supporting Trump also pointed to this, concluding that the artificial timetable set by Smith is “driven by partisan interests, not the public interest.”
The brief reads in part:
The United States’ petition repeatedly proclaims— but never explains why—“[i]t 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.” Pet.2. That silence is both telling and troubling, suggesting that the United States’ demand for extraordinary and immediate relief is driven by partisan interests, not the public interest.
Further, the states argue that the petition for a writ of certiorari failed to even spell out “timing concerns.”
“But the United States never explains why waiting a few additional months for the Court of Appeals to decide this issue would damage the public interest. Instead, the United States offers only a tautology: if the Court agrees to review the case sooner, it can review the case sooner. That is no reason to justify the prosecution’s ‘extraordinary request,’” the brief added, prompting critics to ask what the “real reason” is for asking the court to deviate from “normal appellate practice.”
It continues:
President Trump, of course, is currently “a political candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.” And the United States waited more than thirty months to charge him for the conduct alleged in the indictment. The petition’s repeated appeals to the March 4, 2024 trial date thus suggest a partisan purpose, not a public one. Any such reason would be an improper basis for invoking this Court’s rarely exercised power to review before judgment, deviating from the normal appellate process, or for rushing to prosecute a criminal defendant. This Court demands the petitioner to show an “imperative public importance,” not an importance to a particular political candidate or party. … Because the United States has failed to show a public interest justifying this Court’s immediate intervention in this case, the petition should be denied.
The public support of more than one dozen states follows lawyers representing former Attorney General Ed Meese and two top constitutional scholars in the country — Steven Calabresi, the cochairman of the Federalist Society, and Gary Lawson, a constitutional law professor — filing an amicus brief for this case, contending that Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel is unconstitutional.
As Breitbart News reported:
Their amicus (or “friend of the court”) brief argues that Smith lacks authority to represent the United States by asking the Supreme Court to weigh in (called a petition for certiorari) because the office he holds has not been created by Congress and his appointment violates the “Appointments Clause” of the Constitution.
The filing essentially claims U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland improperly appointed Smith to an office that does not exist with authority Garland does not possess.
It is only Congress who can create additional offices, they argue. Therefore, Garland has no authority to hire an individual to perform a job that was never authorized by Congress.
“Only an ‘officer’ can hold such a significant level of authority. In creating the Department of Justice, Congress gave it certain powers by law, yet it authorized no office with all the powers of a U.S. Attorney that Garland has given Smith. Congress can create federal offices such as Smith currently holds, which Congress has not done,” as Breitbart News explained.
The case is United States v. Trump, No. 23-624 in the Supreme Court of the United States.