Donald Trump Is Insisting The Supreme Court Reads This Immediately

In the year since ex-President Donald Trump took leave of the Oval Office, the former commander-in-chief has been embroiled in an increasing number of legal battles, with the (probably distant) possibility of Trump seeing the inside of a courtroom, if not a jail cell. Among these include a battle in which Trump could face charges for election tampering in Georgia's Fulton County and an ongoing legal dive into the goings-on of the Trump Organization. But now, according to a December 29 report from CNN, it seems that Trump is attempting to use the highest court in the land — that's right, the Supreme Court — to perhaps have things go in his favor.

According to the network, attorneys representing Trump filed a motion in order to place a piece of reporting — namely, a particular interview with a high-profile member of Congress — on their radar. So what is the purpose of the motion? What's it connected to? And what could possibly be Trump's hope in alerting the justices to its existence? 

According to CNN, the motion filed by Donald Trump's legal team was done to flag a Washington Post interview with Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. The interview, which went live on December 23, features Thompson — who currently serves as a chair in the House committee investigating the events leading up to the Capitol Hill January 6 insurrection — speaking to Trump's alleged delay of quelling the hundreds of rioters who stormed Congress. Speaking to the Post, Thompson asserted that Trump's "dereliction of duty causes us real concern," and that those concerns could warrant a "criminal referral" against Trump to the Justice Department. Thompson also added that "there would be no reluctance on the part of this committee to do that."

Trump's reason for filing the motion is that the whole thing is, to use a Trump-favorite term, a "witch hunt" meant to go after the ex-president with no substantive backing to do so. In the filing, per CNN, Trump's lawyers said "the Committee cannot make a mockery of Congress's constitutional mandate that its requests and investigation be supported by a 'valid legislative purpose,'" calling the House committee's investigation "a law enforcement investigation with the excuse that it might legislate based on information it turns up in the course of the exploration." It is unknown how the Supreme Court will respond to the filing.