Trump cites US Supreme Court obstruction case as reason to delay criminal trial

Attorneys for Donald Trump said the United States Supreme Court on Thursday that the former president’s criminal trial on allegations of planning to reverse his 2020 election defeat should be postponed because the justices will consider a different case in the coming months that might influence two of the counts against him. In a fresh brief, the attorneys requested the Supreme Court to hold down the trial procedures, citing the fact that the justices would soon decide whether Joseph Fischer, a defendant engaged in the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, may be prosecuted with impeding an official proceeding. Trump has been accused of impeding an official procedure and plotting to do so. Following this filing, the court could act at any time on Trump’s bid - filed on Monday - to freeze a judicial decision rejecting his claim in this case of immunity from prosecution. “It makes no sense to conduct a complex criminal trial while a case is pending in this court that might invalidate half the charges in the indictment,” the lawyers wrote in a brief, referring to the four criminal counts brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case. Thursday’s filing came in response to one by Smith on Wednesday that urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s bid to further delay trial proceedings as he presses his claim of presidential immunity. If the justices do not immediately reject Trump’s request, Smith asked that they take up the case and decide the immunity question on a fast-track basis. Trump, the first former president to be criminally prosecuted, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge President Joe Biden, a Democrat who defeated him in 2020, in the Nov. 5 US election. In a bid to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump, his supporters attacked police, broke through barricades and swarmed the Capitol. Trump gave an incendiary speech to supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud and telling them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” He then for hours rebuffed requests that he urge the mob to stop.