For months, former President Donald Trump has disparaged Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against him as no big deal, even though it concerns what Bragg calls interference with the 2016 election via an alleged cover-up of hush money payments. Now, though, it seems Trump has changed his mind: Just weeks before the trial is set to begin, he is suddenly attempting to delay the proceedings. In a new filing, Trump has asked the court for an adjournment pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity in the federal election interference case.
Judge Juan Merchan should reject this attempt. Already, he has issued a stern order scolding Trump for his inexplicably late filing. The many flaws in Trump’s frantic last-minute tactic give the judge a host of reasons to reject it: Trump long ago waived this argument in the New York case; even if he hadn’t, no theory of absolute presidential immunity would apply to the purely personal and political conduct at issue.
Trump should not be allowed to revive the immunity issue for no apparent reason other than to delay his imminent criminal trial.
Trump long ago had his chance to make the immunity argument at the proper time and he blew it. That was when he attempted to remove the case to federal court and had to articulate his federal defenses as the basis for doing so. As U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein explained in rejecting Trump’s removal bid, Trump “expressly waived any argument premised on a theory of absolute presidential immunity.” He should not be permitted to reopen the issue.
Trump instead advanced a more limited immunity argument under the supremacy clause, which prohibits state law from overriding federal law. Trump argued that the state prosecution would interfere with his federal office, because engaging Michael Cohen to assist him in dealing with the Stormy Daniels matter was “taken solely because he was President of the United States.” Hellerstein rejected…
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