Washington, Dec 22
Former US President Donald Trump has moved the Supreme Court against the Colorado court's verdict banning him from the Presidential Ballot of 2024.
Trump's request to the Supreme Court on Wednesday was perhaps his most brazen delay tactic yet, media reports said.
According to reports, he urged the top court not to get involved right now in the question of whether he is immune from federal prosecution for alleged crimes committed while in office – his latest attempt to ask the legal system to effectively bend to his political will, political commentators told CNN.
The move echoed what Trump's legal strategy has been in all of his criminal cases to date -- to delay the proceedings, ideally beyond the 2024 election, CNN said, adding It came less than a day after the Colorado Supreme Court’s stunning decision to bar Trump from appearing on the state’s primary ballot.
Trump's appeal in the US Supreme Court means that the nation’s highest court is poised to consider next year whether Trump can be prosecuted for crimes committed after the 2020 election and whether the actions he took in office can bar him from being on the ballot again in 2024, reports said .
"It's just the kind of chaos where Trump thrives – and finds a way to turn the tables to his advantage," a political strategist wrote on CNN.
"He feeds on grievance just like a fire feeds on oxygen. And this is going to end up as a grievance that helps him," former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who is opposing Trump's 2024 candidacy, told CNN's Jake Tapper when asked about the Colorado ruling.
On Wednesday, Trump's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to reject special counsel Jack Smith's request to bypass a federal appeals court and take up the case deciding if Trump, as a president, is immune from charges related to election subversion efforts after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a decision that could ultimately shape the former president's legal fate, reports said.
The speed with which the Supreme Court takes up the case, which has been paused while the immunity question is being decided, will determine whether the case begins in March 2024, just before Super Tuesday, as Judge Tanya Chutkan has planned – or if the case gets kicked closer to or after November's election.
Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, is looking to the Supreme Court in his 2024 campaign – just weeks before the first votes are cast in the primary (Iowa and New Hampshire- the early voting states).
The Trump litigation running on double tracks puts the court -- and the country -- in an unprecedented and chaotic position that is sure to inflame the partisans no matter how the court rules, media reports said.
Trump's GOP rivals once again defend him against the legal system.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruling, where a 4-3 majority found that Trump engaged in an insurrection and was not eligible to appear on the state's primary ballot because of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, once again drowned out any other news involving the GOP primary, where candidates are making efforts to close the margins with Trump before the primaries.
Meanwhile, Biden did not weigh in on the Colorado ruling specifically on Wednesday -- but he did take the opportunity to accuse Trump of participating in an insurrection.
The President's comments were a reminder that 2020 will be a key part of any Trump-Biden rematch – even if the campaigns themselves wish to focus on other issues, media reports said.
"I think it's self-evident" that Trump is an insurrectionist, Biden told reporters upon arriving in Milwaukee on Wednesday.
"Whether the 14th Amendment applies, I'll let the court make that decision," Biden said.
"But he certainly supported an insurrection. There's no question about it. None. Zero," he added.
