The 77-year-old, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is currently scheduled to go on trial on March 4, 2024 on charges of conspiring to overturn the November 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

Washington: The US Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on Donald Trump’s “presidential immunity” defence until an appeals court reviews the case. The refusal on Friday from the nation’s highest court follows a request from special counsel Jack Smith to make a swift and “definitive” ruling on whether the former president can claim “immunity” from prosecution for crimes allegedly committed while in office. The court did not explain its reasoning and there were no noted dissents.

The 77-year-old, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is currently scheduled to go on trial on March 4, 2024 on charges of conspiring to overturn the November 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, including his failure to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the US Capitol to stop the certification of the results on January 6.

The court’s decision comes as a major blow to Smith, who made an extraordinary gamble when he asked the justices to take the rare step of skipping a federal appeals court and quickly deciding a fundamental issue in his election subversion criminal case against Trump.

As per CNN, both sides will still have the option of appealing an eventual ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals up to the high court, but the court’s move is a major victory for Trump, whose strategy of delay in the criminal case included mounting a protracted fight over the immunity question, which must be settled before his case goes to trial.

Trump’s attorneys have continuously tried to push back the trial until after the election of the next year, citing the ex-president’s “absolute immunity” from prosecution for acts committed while in the White House. Smith had urged the Supreme Court to take the unusual step of bypassing the DC circuit and grant “immediate review”. A decision by the high court was “the only way” to achieve a “timely and definitive resolution” to the challenge by Trump, he argued in his petition.

Lawyers for Trump had urged the justices to reject that request, arguing that a ruling was among the “most complex, intricate, and momentous issues that this court will be called on to decide” and should therefore not be rushed through the judicial hierarchy at “breakneck speed”.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is to preside over Trump’s March trial, rejected the immunity claim on December 1, saying a former president does not have a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.” “Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” she added.

The Colorado supreme court, which concluded in an unprecedented ruling that Trump was constitutionally banned from running for office for engaging in an insurrection, put its decision on hold until January 4, pending any appeal to the high court in Washington. Trump’s lawyers have vowed to seek review by the Supreme Court.