Trump calls for Supreme Court to ‘intercede’ after third indictment

Lower than sooner or later after being arraigned on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential race, former President Donald Trump on Friday called for the U.S. Supreme Court to step into the 2024 contest.

Trump, the highest contender within the Republican presidential primary, claimed that coping with quite a few ongoing legal battles amounts to “election interference” — the very thing he’s accused of conspiring to do in his latest indictment.

“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 morning on Truth Social.

“Resources that may have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now need to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in quite a few courts throughout the Country,” Trump wrote. “I’m leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is just not a level playing field.”

“It’s Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede,” he wrote.

While the Supreme Court has previously been tasked with making major decisions about presidential elections — perhaps most notably by ruling on a disputed recount in Florida in 2000 — it’s miles from clear what Trump expects the high court to do about his 78 criminal charges. Normally, the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, meaning it considers cases which were appealed from lower courts.

In a post later Friday morning, Trump claimed he was being targeted within the courts “so it becomes difficult for me to campaign,” adding, “Should be Unconstitutional?”

The Supreme Court didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment. A Trump campaign spokesman didn’t immediately reply to questions on the previous president’s post.

Trump was charged Tuesday with 4 criminal counts related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

The indictment, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, alleges a monthslong effort by Trump and a half-dozen co-conspirators to maintain his hold on the presidency through a shifting, multilayered conspiracy that violated multiple federal statutes, including Conspiracy to Defraud the USA.

The indictment centers on Trump’s actions leading as much as and on Jan. 6, 2021, when a congressional meeting to substantiate Biden’s electoral victory was derailed by a violent pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the Capitol. Trump has suggested that the case needs to be moved out of D.C., where a jury could be picked from a Democratic-leaning population, to a state like West Virginia, which voted heavily for Trump within the 2016 and 2020 elections.

It was the third time this yr that the previous president has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges. Trump was arraigned in June on federal charges stemming from his efforts to maintain classified documents after leaving the presidency. He was also charged by Manhattan prosecutors with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to women who say they’d extramarital affairs with him. Trump has denied cheating on his wife.

Thursday’s arraignment will not be Trump’s last. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is predicted to hunt indictments this month after investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his loss in Georgia’s 2020 election.

Despite the handfuls of criminal charges weighing on Trump, his presidential campaign appears to maintain rising above his GOP competitors.

A recent Latest York Times/Siena College poll of likely Republican primary voters found Trump outpacing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by wide double-digit margins. In Iowa, a key nominating state for Republicans, Trump holds a smaller but still commanding lead, in accordance with one other Times/Siena poll published Friday.