Former President Trump on his Truth Social platform called on the Supreme Court to intervene in his ongoing legal battles.
“CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits,” Trump posted in an unsubstantiated claim on his social media site Friday. He went on to post, “It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”
In the same posting, Trump, who’s running for reelection in 2024, said that “massive amounts” of his time and money “that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country.”
Trump posted his plea to the Supreme Court one day after he was arraigned and pleaded not guilty in federal court in Washington DC to four criminal counts related to his actions surrounding efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and the related January 6, 2021 deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
The charges stemmed from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into criminal wrongdoing surrounding those events. It follows Trump’s having pleaded not guilty on June 13 to 37 criminal counts handed up by a Florida grand jury in Smith’s investigation into his handling of classified documents post-Presidency. In July the special counsel added three new charges in a superseding indictment related to alleged efforts to conceal surveillance video footage from Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, that had been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice.
And in April Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and conspiracy related to his alleged role in hush money payments during the 2016 campaign season. That indictment came down in New York State court.
Last year, Trump unsuccessfully asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the House Select January 6 Committee’s investigation. The Court declined in an 8-1 vote Trump’s request to block the committee from gaining access to his White House records; only Justice Clarence Thomas sided with the former President.
The request was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court after Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for DC forcefully rejected Trump’s initial attempts to prevent the House committee from obtaining some 700 pages of documents.
Judge Chutkan this week was appointed to preside over Trump’s criminal case related to the 2020 Election. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for August 28, at which time Chutkan is expected to announce a trial date.
The special counsel’s 2020 election investigation may not be the last time that the former President faces indictment this year—or even this month.
Security barriers have been erected around the Fulton County courthouse in Georgia, amid an investigation into interference in that state’s 2020 Presidential election, where District Attorney Fani Willis has “respectfully request[ed] that judges not schedule trials and in person hearings during the weeks beginning Monday, August 7 and Monday, August 14.”
On Friday, street closures were announced around that same Atlanta courthouse, starting at 5am this coming Monday through August 18.
