Though former President Trump has made sweeping immunity arguments that he claims protect him — and all other former presidents — from criminal prosecution, special counsel Jack Smith told the Supreme Court on Monday that rejecting Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim was essential to upholding the nation’s bedrock principle that no one is above the law, Courthouse News reports. Not only was Trump’s presidential immunity claim antithetical to the constitutional text, history and precedent of the nation, but it must be rejected to allow effective functioning of the presidency, Smith argued, noting that the charges against the former president reflected “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government.”
Smith charged Trump with four criminal counts for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, by attempting to use fake electoral votes and obstructing the peaceful transfer of power. “The president’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them,” Michael Dreeben, counselor to the special counsel, wrote in Smith’s brief.