NEW YORK — Donald Trump may ask the Supreme Court to rule on whether he can use presidential immunity to avoid a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, his lawyers said in a court filing Thursday while asking for the trial, set for mid-January, to be delayed.
An appeal by Trump to the Supreme Court would make it the second presidential immunity-related matter to head to the court. Last week, special counsel Jack Smith asked the court to urgently resolve Trump’s claim that he’s immune from prosecution for charges related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election.
“There is little doubt that the Supreme Court views presidential immunity as indispensable,” Trump lawyers Michael Madaio and Alina Habba wrote in their Thursday filing with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a twist, they favorably cited Smith, writing that, “[i]n contrast to the district court’s dismissive treatment of President Trump’s immunity argument, Special Counsel Jack Smith asserted to the Supreme Court last week that the immunity issue presents a ‘weighty and consequential … constitutional question,’ which is of ‘exceptional national importance.’”
They added: “Mr. Smith is correct about the significance of the moment.”
Earlier this month, the 2nd Circuit ruled that Trump waited too long — three years — to invoke the immunity defense in the Carroll lawsuit, which concerns comments he made while president.
In 2019, shortly after Carroll publicly accused Trump of raping her decades earlier, Trump claimed Carroll was falsely accusing him and said she was motivated by money. Carroll sued him for defamation over those remarks.
Trump initially didn’t assert presidential immunity, a broad doctrine that shields presidents from lawsuits arising from their official acts, but instead attempted to do so three years later.
“We hold that presidential immunity is waivable and that Defendant waived this defense,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
The Carroll trial set for January is the second Trump will face tied to her rape allegations. In May, a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and that he defamed her in 2022 when he called her account a “hoax.” The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million.
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By: Erica Orden
Title: Trump signals plan to take another immunity issue to Supreme Court
Sourced From: www.politico.com/news/2023/12/21/trump-carroll-immunity-supreme-court-00132984
Published Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:49:30 EST
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