During an interview on MSNBC with host Lawrence O’Donnell, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would rule in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s favor on an initial request of his.
The context is the case that Smith brought accusing Trump of multiple criminal conspiracies inherent to his attempts after the last presidential election to stay in power despite losing. Smith asked the Supreme Court to take up arguments from Trump that he holds wide-ranging presidential immunity before a more extensive appeals process at the lower level. The idea from Smith’s team is to move to trial as quickly as possible, because these appeals dragging out could delay those proceedings. Weissmann said he believed the Supreme Court would, in fact, go ahead and intervene, though they’ve directed the Trump team to produce their arguments in opposition to speeding up the process before finalizing an actual decision.
“The double jeopardy claim — I mean that’s just beyond a loser,” Weissmann said. “It’s just not grounded in the law. He’s not been tried twice for the same crime. It just doesn’t work. With presidential immunity, that is one where it’s hard to imagine the Supreme Court isn’t going to want to weigh in on that, because this precise issue of presidential immunity in the criminal context as opposed to a civil context has not been decided by the Supreme Court.”
The double jeopardy claims made by Trump in this context are that he’s meaningfully shielded from prosecution in the election-related case from Smith because of the impeachment proceedings he faced after the Capitol riot, though prosecutors have pointed to several arguable problems with that line of argument. The core of the impeachment case against Trump was different from prosecutors’ current case, and double jeopardy protections apply in criminal cases… a category that excludes impeachment proceedings. Check out Weissmann’s comments below:
