Glenn Kirschner, a veteran former prosecutor turned legal analyst, said on Saturday that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately strike down Donald Trump's claim of presidential immunity in his federal election case, if only to preserve its own authority.
The Court on Friday denied a petition from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to oversee cases involving the former president, which had called for a swift consideration of Trump's immunity case by the highest legal authority in the land. The case will now continue on the standard path, through the Washington, D.C., appeals court, and later the Supreme Court if Trump appeals the D.C. court's decision.
Trump, who is also the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, is currently facing four criminal indictments and 91 criminal charges at the state and federal levels, with the most prominent case being the federal one brought against him for his alleged efforts to contest and overturn the 2020 election that later led to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges brought against him in the case, and has recently attempted to argue in court that he has complete immunity from criminal prosecutions for things he did while serving as president. This claim was firmly struck down by Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing his federal election case, leading to the series of appeals that is currently ongoing.
On Saturday, Kirschner, a staunch Trump critic who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., posted a thread criticizing the current state of the Supreme Court to X, the platform previously known as Twitter. Amid other critiques of the Court for rolling back civil liberties and accepting payments from wealthy individuals, Kirschner slammed the Court for denying Smith's petition to expedite Trump's appeal process.
"And now, the Supreme Court has refused to grant Special Counsel's request to review (on an accelerated basis) Trump's BS claim that a president can commit any and all crimes while in office with absolute immunity from prosecution," he wrote. "IF the Supreme Court is an honest broker of the law (I know, I know), it will also refuse to review Trump's BS immunity claim once it's rejected by the DC appeals court."
In his post, Kirschner further wrote that the Court should ultimately deny Trump's immunity claim on the grounds that granting such a thing would imperil its own authorities.
"Please remember this: if the court bestows upon Trump absolute immunity, thereby putting him out of reach of our nation's criminal laws, the Supreme Court will have demoted itself to a second-class branch of government, as Trump could then commit any crime he wished in efforts to undermine the authority of the Supreme Court," Kirshner continued. "And I'll bet we can all agree that the Supreme Court LOVES its supreme status, and will NEVER relinquish it by ruling that a president is above the law. So, if nothing else, take heart in the Supreme Court's allegiance to... itself, and its own supreme status... if all else fails, the court WILL deny Trump's BS immunity claim motivated by its own sense of self-preservation"
In a statement provided to Newsweek via email on Sunday, Palm Beach County, Florida, State Attorney Dave Aronberg concurred with Kirschner's argument, saying that Trump's recent filings are effectively him telling courts that they are "powerless."
"Judges often recoil when litigants tell them they are powerless," Aronberg wrote. "That's what Trump is saying to the courts with his latest filing. The Supreme Court is going to reject Trump's claim of absolute immunity because, among other reasons, it would render them impotent against a President who believes he's above the law."
Updated 12/24/23, 3:37 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Aronberg.
Correction 12/27/23 10:46 a.m. ET: Glenn Kirschner served as an assistant U.S. attorney, not a U.S. attorney. The article has been changed to make that clear.
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
