Legal experts Monday heaped praise on special counsel Jack Smith's Supreme Court rebuttal to former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim, but expressed dismay about the jurists who will consider it.
Smith filed a 66-page slam ahead of the April 25 hearing when the Supreme Court will consider the future of Trump's federal election interference case.
Former federal prosecutor Norm Eisen cheered Smith's effort to knock the former president's argument.
"The absolute immunity Trump seeks is something that belongs to dictators, not an American president," Eisen replied. "History likewise refutes petitioner’s claim."
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Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill discussed the filing on MSNBC Monday to praise Smith for the many backstops and secondary positions he included in the filing, but ultimately said she found his brief "depressing."
"It is a testament to how reckless this Supreme Court has become, how unpredictable, how far out of the mainstream," Ifill said. "He could not trust that a majority of this Supreme Court would do what every other clear, sane jurist...would know had to be true."
Smith in his brief argued, "The Framers never endorsed criminal immunity for a former President, and all Presidents from the Founding to the modern era have known that after leaving office they faced potential criminal liability for official acts."
According to Ifill, "This should have been a slam dunk."
Smith has brought criminal charges against Trump, whom he accuses of trying to thwart the peaceful transfer of power following President Elect Joe Biden's election victory in 2020, in Washington D.C.'s federal court.
"Petitioner’s use of official power was merely an additional means of achieving a private aim—to perpetuate his term in office," Smith writes. "That is prosecutable based on private conduct."
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.