Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for the U.S. Supreme Court to intercede in his legal battles.
The 2024 Republican frontrunner made the comments after pleading not guilty on Thursday to federal charges related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 Presidential Election investigation. Trump has previously been indicted and arraigned in two other cases.
In a social media post, Trump accused President Joe Biden of pushing for the cases against him for political purposes.
“My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social. “Resources 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.”
“I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede,” he claimed.
The judge from Thursday, Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, set a date of August 28 for the first hearing in the case. That’s five days after the first Republican debate in the 2024 Presidential Election.
Trump has not said if he will participate in the debate.
Meanwhile, a debate continued Friday over whether Trump would face prison time if he were found guilty of any charges.
Since the former president would be entitled to protection for life from the Secret Service, the best place to keep him safe might not be a prison, The Washington Post reported Friday. It might be home confinement.
Presidents since 1965 have been afforded lifetime protection, with only Richard Nixon waiving it after he resigned in 1974.
The Post asked experts if there’s a real possibility of Trump going to jail.
“Theoretically, yes, and practically, no,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former top federal prosecutor and counsel to then-FBI Director James B. Comey.
“Any federal district judge ought to understand it raises enormous and unprecedented logistical issues,” Rosenberg added. “Probation, fines, community service, and home confinement are all alternatives.”
“It would be a pretty enormous burden on our prison system to incarcerate Donald Trump,” Mary McCord, acting assistant attorney general for national security during former President Barack Obama’s administration, told the Post.
If he’s incarcerated, he’ll still have to have 24/7 protection within his cell. It’s never been done.
“This question keeps getting raised, yet no official answers,” Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent and now chief operating officer for Teneo Risk, a corporate advisory and communications firm, told the Post. “However, we can infer how security measures could be implemented based on existing protective protocols.
“Unless there are changes in legislation or the former president waives protection, the U.S. Secret Service would likely maintain a protective environment around the president in accordance with their current practices.”
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons declined to say whether former presidents with Secret Service protection could be jailed.
“In some ways, protection may be easier — the absence of travel means logistics get easier and confinement means that the former president’s location is always known,” Wackrow said. “Theoretically, the perimeter is well fortified — no one is worried about someone breaking into jail.”
Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service, told the Post, “The Secret Service does not have a comment or response, only because there is no such policy or procedure that currently exists.”
“We won’t have any further comment,” added Marsha Espinosa, spokeswoman for the Secret Service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
