A criminal justice federal appeals panel made up of three women ruled unanimously that Donald Trump isn't immune to prosecution.
The charges are that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, in a decision that Trump is expected to appeal either to the full appeals court or to the Supreme Court, which is his legal right.
Trump's lawyers had argued that any act by a president − even ordering the murder of political opponents by U.S. Navy SEALS − cannot be prosecuted unless the president is first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate.
But a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution.
"Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct,"
“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,” the panel of three judges wrote. “Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.”
“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws,” Karen L. Henderson, said during arguments over the case in early January.
Republican administrations wrote to the court that Trump’s position was “absurd”
During the hearing, Judge Florence Y. Pan said the impeachment exception undermined rather than strengthened Trump’s argument. By conceding that a former president could be charged after impeachment, she said, Trump was admitting that there is no absolute immunity and only quibbling about the process. “Your separation of powers arguments fall away, your policy arguments fall away,” Pan said.
The ruling is a major blow to Trump’s key defense thus far in the federal election subversion case brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith. The former president had argued that the conduct Smith charged him over was part of his official duties as president and therefore shield him from criminal liability.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,”
"Puts him in a box": Experts say immunity ruling may have doomed Trump's Supreme Court appeal
A thorough ruling may mean the Supreme Court may not take up Trump's case at all, legal scholars say
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/06/puts-him-in-a-box-experts-say-immunity…
Toddler Trump Trump’s all-caps message hurls accusations against the Justice Department, the Biden administration, and the federal court system, all of which he claims have united in a massive witch hunt to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/