A federal appeals court is considering whether Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election because it involved actions related to his office that he undertook while still president.
The decision that the appeals court in Washington reaches after the Tuesday morning hearing – which the former president said on his Truth Social platform he will attend – and how long it takes to issue a ruling, could carry profound consequences for the scheduled March trial.
Trump appealed his federal election interference case last month after the trial judge rejected his effort to have the charges thrown out on grounds that he was afforded absolute immunity from prosecution.
The argument from Trump’s lawyers advanced a sweeping interpretation of executive authority that contended all of his actions to reverse his election defeat in 2020 fell under the “outer perimeter” of his duties as president and were therefore protected.
Trump’s motion was swiftly rejected by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who wrote in an opinion accompanying the ruling that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.
“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”
Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington on 5 March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.
Trump has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.
The clear attempt to stave off the looming trial prompted the special counsel, Jack Smith, to attempt a rarely seen move to ask the US supreme court to resolve the presidential immunity question before the DC circuit had issued its own judgment.
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Prosecutors made it plain in their 81-page court filing that they wanted to leapfrog the lower appeals court because they were concerned that the process – scheduling hearings and waiting for rulings – would almost certainly delay the trial date.
But the supreme court declined to hear the matter last month, remanding the case back to the DC circuit and having the three-judge panel of Florence Pan, Michelle Childs and Karen Henderson issue its own decision first. In the interim, the case against Trump remains frozen.
The decision has almost certainly slowed down Trump’s federal election interference case. Even if the DC circuit were to rule against Trump quickly, he can ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and then has 90 days to lodge his own appeal to the supreme court.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
