The lawyers for President Donald Trump’s legal team said that the request to have the Supreme Court hear his claims of absolute immunity as president presents “momentous, historic questions” about the Constitution.
The Trump lawyers wrote in their filing to the Supreme Court that “the issues presented are momentous, historic questions that this Court has not had occasion to address and must consider.” They argued that the Court must look at the two centuries of interpretation of the Constitution and the few cases that have addressed it to “aid consider[ation] of the issues here.”
They asked the Supreme Court to consider the broad application of the doctrine of absolute immunity, arguing that the doctrine, if applied, would “serve as a bulwark” that would stop “all efforts by the State to control the President’s actions.”
The Trump legal team also asked the court to look at the Supreme Court’s own decision in U.S. v. Nixon, which held that the President of the United States would have to comply with certain subpoenas. The Trump legal team argued that this case was applicable to the claims of absolute immunity, writing in their filing “Just as no person is above the law, no office is above the law.”
The Supreme Court will likely decide in the coming weeks whether or not to hear the case.
