Hillary Clinton: Supreme Court doing 'grave disservice' in not deciding Trump immunity
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knocked the Supreme Court on Thursday for delaying its ruling on former President Trump’s presidential immunity claim in his federal election interference case.
“The other point I would quickly make is that the Supreme Court is doing our country a grave disservice in not deciding the case about immunity,” Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Clinton said some Supreme Court justices were seemingly trying to find loopholes for the former president during arguments before the court late last month.
“I read the excellent decision by the court of appeals, and the judges there, I think, covered every possible argument,” Clinton said, “and what we heard when this case was tried before the Supreme Court — to my ear at least — were efforts to try to find loopholes, to try to create an opportunity for Trump to have attempted to overturn an election, to have carried out hundreds and hundreds of pages of very highly classified material for his own amusement, interest, trading — we don't know what.”
“These are very serious charges against any American, but someone who's both been a president and wants to be a president again — that should cause any voter to think not twice, but many, many times over, about whether we should entrust our country to him,” Clinton added.
Late last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump’s presidential immunity claim and seemed poised to grant him at least some protections from criminal prosecution after hearing two hours of arguments.
The court still has not made a decision on the question of immunity, but the justices’ lengthy discussion of how to create guardrails between official versus personal conduct suggested they may ask the lower court to revisit its decision. Doing so would almost certainly delay Trump’s numerous legal proceedings.
The court delayed Trump’s election interference case just by taking up the immunity claims rather than letting the appeal court decision stand. Any further decision at the lower court might be appealed, a process that could again send the case to the high court.
Clinton said Wednesday that the American people ought to have an answer about whether Trump is guilty in the federal election interference case and in the other cases before they head to the polls in November to decide whether to send him back to the White House.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Clinton said. “And the people in our country, it looks as though will most likely go to vote without knowing the outcome of these other very serious trials.”