Special counsel Jack Smith asks SCOTUS to reject Trump request to delay 2020 election case

Special counsel Jack Smith has requested that the U.S. Supreme Court reject former President Donald Trump’s bid to delay his 2020 election interference from going to trial. 

Trump’s legal team requested the delay be extended earlier this week as the court considers whether to take up the question whether the former president is immune from prosecution for official acts in the White House. Two lower courts have overwhelmingly rejected that argument, prompting Trump to ask the high court to intervene.

Prosecutors responded to Trump’s appeal within two days even though the court had given them until next Tuesday.

Though their filing does not explicitly mention the upcoming November election or Trump’s status as the Republican primary front-runner, prosecutors described the case as having “unique national importance” and said that “delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict.”

Smith’s team charged Trump in August with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

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Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, have argued that he is shielded from prosecution for acts that fell within his official duties as president — a legally untested argument since no other former president has been indicted.

The trial judge and then a federal appeals court rejected those arguments, with a three-judge appeals panel last week saying, “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

The proceedings have been effectively frozen by Trump’s immunity appeal, with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan canceling a March 4 trial date while the appeals court considered the matter. No new date has been set.

Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors urged the court to reject Trump’s petition to hear the case, saying that lower court opinions rejecting immunity for the former president “underscore how remote the possibility is that this Court will agree with his unprecedented legal position.”

But if the court does want to decide the matter, Smith said, the justices should hear arguments in March and issue a final ruling by late June. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.