CNBC
Less than one day after being arraigned on charges of trying 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 top contender in the Republican presidential primary, claimed that dealing with numerous ongoing legal battles amounts to “election interference” — the very thing he is 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 would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country,” Trump wrote. “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 wrote.
While the Supreme Court has in the past been tasked with making major decisions about presidential elections — perhaps most notably by ruling on a disputed recount in Florida in 2000 — it’s far from clear what Trump expects the high court to do about his 78 criminal charges. In most cases, the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, meaning it considers cases that have been appealed from lower courts.
In a post later Friday morning, Trump claimed he was being targeted in the courts “so it becomes difficult for me to campaign,” adding, “Must be Unconstitutional?”
The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the former president’s post.
Trump was charged Tuesday with four criminal counts related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Bidenin 2020.
The indictment, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, alleges a monthslong effort by Trump and a half-dozen co-conspirators to keep his hold on the presidency through a shifting, multilayered conspiracy that violated multiple federal statutes, including Conspiracy to Defraud the United States…
