Immunity from Prosecution

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      Judge Declines to Hold Prosecutors in Contempt in Trump Election Case

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      Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued her order after prosecutors continued to file court papers in the former president’s election interference case even though she had put the proceeding on hold.It was one of the odder tit-for-tat battles to have emerged so far in the federal case accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.Even though the proceeding was put on hold by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan while Mr. Trump seeks to have the charges tossed out with broad claims of immunity, prosecutors, trying to nudge it forward, have continued filing motions and turning over evidence. The former president’s lawyers have angrily accused them of violating the judge’s order and were eventually annoyed enough to ask that the prosecutors be held in contempt.After simmering for a month, the dispute was resolved on Thursday when Judge Chutkan, who is handling the case in Federal District Court in Washington, issued an order saying she would not punish anyone with a finding of contempt.Still, in what felt like an attempt to soothe the tensions between the defense and prosecution, the judge told both sides that they should not file any more “substantive” motions without first asking for permission.From the outset, the quarrel over the filings and disclosures seemed to be the sort of petulant but ultimately harmless one-upmanship that often arises in prominent criminal cases. But it was also a reflection of a much more consequential fight over the timing of the case and whether it will go to trial as scheduled in March.It all began last month when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, sent Mr. Trump’s legal team a draft list of exhibits and a modest batch of discovery material even though Judge Chutkan had ordered all deadlines in the case put on hold only days before.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Severe Weather in U.S., and Crisis in Ecuador

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.Heavy rain in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Tuesday.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Tornadoes, Blizzards, Floods: Severe Storms Hit Vast Sections of U.S., by Victoria Kim, John Yoon and Mike Ives5 Takeaways From the Appeals Court Hearing on Trump’s Immunity Claim, by Charlie Savage and Alan FeuerEcuador Plunges Into Crisis Amid Prison Riots and Gang Leader’s Disappearance, by Annie Correal, Genevieve Glatsky and José María León CabreraSurprised by New Details About Austin’s Health, White House Orders Review, by Peter BakerFood Assistance for Mothers and Children Faces Funding Shortfall, by Madeleine NgoIn Newark, 16-Year-Olds ‘With Skin in the Game’ Are Set to Get the Vote, by Tracey TullyIan Stewart and More

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      As Political Theater, Trump’s Court Appearance Wasn’t a Showstopper

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      The former president plans to continue showing up at various legal proceedings against him, but in this case the spotlight stayed largely on the judges and their skepticism about his immunity claims.If Donald J. Trump’s goal on Tuesday was to turn a weighty legal proceeding in Washington into a de facto campaign appearance that galvanized media attention, he fell short.Six days before the Iowa caucuses, the former president used the arguments before a federal appeals court over whether he is immune from prosecution to hone a strategy he has deployed repeatedly over the past year and intends to use more as the political season heats up and his legal problems come to a head: standing in or near a courthouse, portraying himself as a victim.But in this case, the federal courthouse was a relatively inhospitable setting. The security protocols and the ban on cameras in federal courthouses did not lend themselves easily to the kind of displays Mr. Trump has made at the four arraignments for the indictments he is facing, where he has commanded intensive coverage and the chance to cast the prosecutions as political persecution.The headlines went instead to the sharp questioning by the three judges. They did not overtly acknowledge Mr. Trump’s presence in the courtroom but expressed great skepticism about his legal team’s argument that even a president who ordered the killing of a political rival could not be prosecuted unless he or she was first convicted in an impeachment proceeding.Instead, Mr. Trump was left to hold a short appearance at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue — what had been the Trump International Hotel before he sold it after leaving office.“I feel that as president you have to have immunity, very simple,” said Mr. Trump, standing with a handful of lawyers who had gone with him to the hearing. Saying he had done nothing wrong, Mr. Trump said there would be “bedlam” in the country if the courts did not uphold the concept of presidential immunity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Judges Lean Toward Rejecting Trump’s Immunity Claim in Court

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      The judges seem likely to reject a key element of Trump’s defense in the election case.It looks like Donald Trump ran into a wall today while pushing his position that he cannot be charged criminally for his efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. It came in the form of three federal appeals court judges.With Trump looking on from beside his lawyers in the courtroom in Washington, the judges poked holes in the legal reasoning behind his claims that presidents cannot be prosecuted for actions they take in office. By the time they were done, there was not much doubt they were leaning toward rejecting this central element of Trump’s defense in the election subversion case.“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,” said Judge Karen Henderson, the lone Republican appointee on the three-judge panel hearing the arguments.The court seemed especially dismissive of an assertion by Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, that the only way to hold a president accountable for crimes was to first secure a conviction in an impeachment proceeding.“I’m asking a yes or no question: Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution,” asked Judge Florence Pan.“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied — a response that amounted to an audacious “no.”How expansively the judges might rule on the issue of presidential immunity remains to be seen.The matter is almost certain to land in the lap of the Supreme Court, which is already scheduled to take up a separate case next month on whether Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.No cameras, no showTrump’s motorcade arriving at the courthouse today.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe day did not go terribly well either for Trump’s attempt to turn the appeals proceeding into a bit of political theater, counter-programming to the more traditional campaigning underway in Iowa, where the caucuses will get the 2024 voting underway in less than a week.He did not have to attend the hearing — indeed, it is unusual for any defendant, much less a former president, to be present for appeals court arguments. But Trump chose to do so as part of his accelerating effort to cast all of the legal cases against him as politically motivated, a recurring theme that he has used to rally support as the Republican primary season gets underway.In this case, though, the protocols of a federal courthouse worked against him — no cameras were allowed, for starters — and his brief post-hearing appearance took place with little notice to journalists at the downtown hotel that he owned during his presidency but then sold after leaving office.Instead, it was the appeals court judges who got the headlines, especially Judge Pan, whose probing of Trump’s immunity claim led to the hypothetical situation that even non-lawyers could grasp onto: What if a president ordered Navy commandos to carry out the killing of a rival politician?Sauer, the former president’s lawyer, responded that a president who did such a thing would surely be impeached and convicted. And yet, remarkably, he insisted that the courts would have no jurisdiction to take matters into their own hands and oversee a murder trial unless there was a guilty verdict during the impeachment case.To rule otherwise, he said, would open the door to the routine prosecutions of former presidents whenever the White House changes partisan hands. (He did not mention that Trump, calling on the campaign trail for “retribution” against his opponents, has already repeatedly hinted that he would do just that if he takes power again.)A ‘frightening future’Trump supporters outside the courthouse in Washington.Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesJames Pearce, a lawyer for the special counsel Jack Smith, seemed horrified by Sauer’s argument, pointing out that, under his theory, presidents could literally get away with murder if they simply resigned before impeachment charges were brought. Advocating for that sort of unbounded version of presidential immunity wasn’t just wrong, Pearce said, but also a vision for “an extraordinarily frightening future.”Pearce further rejected the idea that allowing the case to go forward would be a “sea change” that would open the door to “vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future.” Instead, he reminded everyone in court, Trump was the first former president in American history ever to be charged with crimes, underlining the “fundamentally unprecedented nature” of the Trump prosecutions.“Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system,” he said.“Frankly if that kind of fact pattern arises again,” Pearce went on, “I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that criminally.”While the appeals court rushed through the holiday season to be ready for today’s hearing, it’s not clear when the panel will hand down its ruling. Depending on its outcome, either Trump or prosecutors could appeal it. The case could be challenged in front of the full court of appeals — all 11 active judges — or directly to the Supreme Court.Either one of those courts could decide whether to take up the matter or decline to get involved and leave the ruling by the panel in place.How quickly all of this plays out could be nearly as important as the ultimate result. After all, the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, has frozen the underlying case until the immunity issue is resolved. For now, the case is set to go in front of a jury in early March, but protracted litigation could push it back — perhaps even beyond the November election.If that were to happen and Trump were to win the election, he could try to pardon himself or otherwise use his control of the Justice Department to end the case against him.Your questionsWe’re asking readers what they’d like to know about the Trump cases: the charges, the procedure, the important players or anything else. You can send us your question by filling out this form.What impact does the Supreme Court cases have on the Georgia trial? — Matt Brightwell, York, South Carolina.Alan: The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision on Trump’s claims of immunity in the federal case accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election could affect the similar state criminal charges in Georgia. This week, in fact, his Georgia lawyer raised an immunity defense against that indictment that was very close to the one his lawyers in Washington are trying. If the Supreme Court ends up considering the immunity defense, it could have a direct effect on the defense in Georgia. But there’s one caveat: the defense the Supreme Court is likely to review is specifically geared toward shielding Trump from federal charges.Where does each criminal case stand?Trump is at the center of at least four separate criminal investigations, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers. Here is where each case currently stands.The New York TimesWhat to watch next weekA trial to determine how much money Trump will have to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll after being found liable for defaming and sexually abusing her begins on Tuesday, one day after the Iowa caucuses.On the same day, Trump’s lawyers are scheduled to file court papers asking for additional discovery in the Florida classified documents case. The papers will give a sense of how he intends to defend himself against charges that he illegally held on to dozens of highly sensitive national security records and then obstructed the government’s efforts to get them back.More Trump coverageA woman praying during a Trump rally in Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesWhite evangelical Christian voters have lined up behind Republican candidates for decades, but no Republican has had a closer relationship with evangelicals than Trump.In a speech in Iowa on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, Trump said those who stormed the Capitol had acted “peacefully and patriotically.”Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley captured the turbulent dynamics ahead of the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.Trump pressured state and federal officials to overturn results of the 2020 election in more than 30 phone calls or meetings, according to a Times analysis. See a timeline of events.Thanks for reading the Trump on Trial newsletter. See you next time. — Alan and MaggieRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. More

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      5 Takeaways From the Appeals Court Hearing on Trump’s Immunity Claim

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      A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington heard arguments on Tuesday in a momentous case over former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal charges for the efforts he took to overturn the 2020 election.A ruling by the court — and when it issues that decision — could be a major factor in determining when, or even whether, Mr. Trump will go to trial in the federal election case.Here are some takeaways:All three judges signaled skepticism with Trump’s position.The judges on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appeared unlikely to dismiss the charges against Mr. Trump on grounds of presidential immunity, as he has asked them to do. The two Democratic appointees on the court, Judge J. Michelle Childs and Judge Florence Y. Pan, peppered John Sauer, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, with difficult questions.Judge Karen L. Henderson, the panel’s sole Republican appointee, seemed to reject a central part of Mr. Trump’s argument: that his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden cannot be subject to prosecution because presidents have a constitutional duty to ensure that election laws are upheld.“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law,” Judge Henderson said.U.S. District Court via Associated PressStill, Judge Henderson also expressed worry that allowing the case to proceed could “open the floodgates” of prosecutions of former presidents. She raised the possibility of sending the case back to the Federal District Court judge overseeing pretrial proceedings, Tanya S. Chutkan, for greater scrutiny of how to consider Mr. Trump’s actions.A lawyer for Trump took a sweeping position on a hypothetical assassination.Judge Pan asked Mr. Sauer to address a series of hypotheticals intended to test the limits of his position that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution over their official acts, unless they have first been impeached and convicted by the Senate over the same matter.Among them, she asked, what if a president ordered SEAL Team 6, the Navy commando unit, to assassinate a president’s political rival? Mr. Sauer said such a president would surely be impeached and convicted, but he insisted that courts would not have jurisdiction to oversee a murder trial unless that first happened.To rule otherwise, Mr. Sauer said, would open the door to the routine prosecutions of former presidents whenever the White House changes partisan hands.U.S. District Court via Associated PressA prosecutor argued that absolute immunity would be ‘frightening.’Picking up on the hypothetical of a president who uses SEAL Team 6 to kill a rival and then escapes criminal liability by simply resigning before he could be impeached or by avoiding a conviction in the Senate, James I. Pearce, a lawyer for the special counsel Jack Smith, denounced Mr. Sauer’s argument. Such a rationale, he added, put forth an understanding of presidential immunity that was not just wrong but also a vision for “an extraordinarily frightening future.”He also rejected the idea that allowing the case to go forward would be a “sea change” that opened the door to “vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future.” Instead, he said, the fact that Mr. Trump is the first former president ever to be charged with crimes underlined the “fundamentally unprecedented nature” of the criminal charges. He continued: “Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system.”Mr. Pearce added, “Frankly if that kind of fact pattern arises again, I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that criminally.”U.S. District Court via Associated PressTrump tried to engage in political theater.In an unusual move, Mr. Trump showed up in person at the appeals court hearing, even though he was not obliged to be there. But if he was hoping to turn the appearance to his political advantage, the effort fell a little flat.He was ushered into the federal courthouse through a heavily guarded back entrance and did not address the dozens of reporters covering the proceedings. And during the hearing itself, he was silent, doing little more than exchanging notes with his lawyers and staring at the judges who will decide his fate.Afterward, Mr. Trump was driven a few blocks away to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which once operated under his name, and denounced his prosecution on the election interference charges. He also repeated his false claims that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.“We had a very momentous day in terms of what was learned,” he told reporters. “I think it’s very unfair when a political opponent is prosecuted.”What’s next: The judges will rule, but the timing is not clear.It is not clear when the appellate panel will hand down its ruling. Depending on its outcome, either Mr. Trump or prosecutors could appeal it. The case could be appealed to the full court of appeals — all 11 active judges — or directly to the Supreme Court.Either one of those courts could decide whether to take up the matter or decline to get involved and leave the ruling by the panel in place.How quickly all of this plays out could be nearly as important as the ultimate result. After all, the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, has frozen the underlying case until the immunity issue is resolved. For now, the case is set to go in front of a jury in early March, but protracted litigation could push it back — perhaps even beyond the November election.If that were to happen and Mr. Trump were to win the election, he could try to pardon himself or otherwise use his control of the Justice Department to end the case against him.Christina Kelso More

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      Three Years After Jan. 6, Trump’s Immunity Claims to Take Center Stage

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      An appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday over the former president’s attempt to shut down the federal election case. Much is riding on how — and how quickly — the issue is decided.Three years after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump will make his latest and potentially most consequential argument in the coming week for why he should not be held responsible for seeking to overturn the 2020 election.Impeachment proceedings, the House Jan. 6 committee’s inquiry and two separate criminal investigations have established a comprehensive set of facts about Mr. Trump’s deep involvement in overlapping efforts to remain in office despite having been defeated at the polls.But when — or even whether — he will ultimately face a trial on charges related to those efforts remains unclear. One of the most decisive factors in getting an answer to those questions will be the success or failure of the arguments his legal team plans to make on Tuesday in a federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are banking on a long shot, hoping to convince a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Constitution affords him complete immunity from actions he undertook as president. The assertion, while untested in the courts, has the advantage to the former president of chewing up time in the service of his strategy of trying to delay any trial until after Election Day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Wants Jack Smith Held in Contempt of Court in Federal Election Case

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      The former president’s lawyers sought to have Jack Smith and two deputies explain why they should not be held in contempt of court for taking new steps in the case after it was put on hold.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that they want the special counsel, Jack Smith, and two of his top deputies to be held in contempt of court and sanctioned for violating a judge’s order that effectively froze the criminal case accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.The lawyers in their request seek to force Mr. Smith and his team to explain why they should not be held in contempt and possibly pay a portion of Mr. Trump’s legal fees. The request was the latest aggressive move in what has quickly turned into a legal slugfest between the defense and prosecution, underscoring how critical the issue of timing has become in the election subversion case.The spat began last month when Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in Federal District Court in Washington, put all of its proceedings on hold until Mr. Trump resolved his attempts to have the underlying charges dismissed with claims that he has immunity from prosecution in the case.Those arguments will be heard on Tuesday by a federal appeals court in Washington and are likely to make their way to the Supreme Court for another level of review.The trial in the election case is set to begin in early March. Hoping to keep it on schedule, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith have, on occasion, sought to nudge the matter forward despite Judge Chutkan’s order.A few days after the order was imposed, for instance, they told the judge that they had sent Mr. Trump’s legal team a draft list of exhibits that they intended to use at the trial and thousands of pages of additional discovery materials. They noted that the list and the documents had been turned over “to help ensure that trial proceeds promptly if and when” the case was back in action.Then, two days after Christmas, the prosecutors filed a memo to Judge Chutkan, asking her to stop Mr. Trump from making “baseless political claims” or introducing “irrelevant disinformation” at the trial.After Mr. Smith sent the draft list of exhibits, lawyers for Mr. Trump fired off an angry letter to Judge Chutkan, complaining about how prosecutors had “improperly and unlawfully attempted to advance this case” in violation of her order pausing it.But the lawyers were silent about Mr. Smith’s second such move until Thursday.In a 15-page motion, John F. Lauro, writing for Mr. Trump’s legal team, accused the prosecution of “partisan-driven misconduct” and said they had treated Judge Chutkan’s decision to pause the case as “merely a suggestion meaning less than the paper it is written on.”Mr. Lauro also asked for a series of potentially severe consequences, starting with an order that would force Mr. Smith and two of his deputies — Thomas P. Windom and Molly Gaston — to come up with answers for why they should not be held in contempt and be made to pay whatever legal fees Mr. Trump may have incurred by dealing with their recent filings and productions.Moreover, Mr. Lauro asked the judge to make the prosecutors tell her why they should not be forced to “immediately withdraw” the last motion they filed and be “forbidden from submitting any further filing” without express permission.“These were no accidents,” Mr. Lauro wrote about Mr. Smith’s attempts to keep pushing the case forward. “The submissions were fully planned, intentional violations of the stay order, which the prosecutors freely admit they perpetrated in hopes of unlawfully advancing this case.”The skirmish over the stay order reflects how central the question of timing is to the election interference case. In addition to the back and forth about legal issues large and small, the defense and prosecution have been waging a second war over when the case will go to trial — specifically, if it will be held before or after the 2024 election.For weeks, Mr. Smith and his team have been trying to keep the trial on schedule, arguing that the public has an enormous interest in a speedy prosecution of Mr. Trump, who is the Republican Party’s leading candidate for the presidency. In doing so, they have gone to unusual lengths, at one point making a failed request to the Supreme Court to leap ahead of the appeals court that is now hearing Mr. Trump’s immunity claims and to render a quick decision.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have used every means at their disposal to slow the case down, hoping to delay a trial until after the election is decided. If that happened and Mr. Trump won, he would have the power to order the federal charges against him dropped. More

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      Trump da un paso más en su solicitud de ‘inmunidad absoluta’

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      Exfuncionarios del gobierno destacan que la postura de Trump tiene “consecuencias absurdas y de gran alcance”.Casi no hay nada en el texto de la Constitución de Estados Unidos que siquiera respalde de manera remota el más osado argumento de la defensa del expresidente estadounidense Donald Trump contra el cargo de conspiración para anular las elecciones de 2020: que tiene inmunidad absoluta contra cualquier acusación por las acciones realizadas mientras ocupaba el cargo.La próxima semana, un tribunal federal de apelaciones evaluará los fundamentos expuestos en los alegatos, y el panel considerará factores como la historia, los precedentes y la división de poderes. Sin embargo, como ha reconocido la Corte Suprema, la Constitución en sí misma no aborda de manera explícita el tema de la existencia o el alcance de la inmunidad presidencial.En su recurso de apelación, Trump señala que el análisis incluyó una disposición constitucional, aunque su argumento no tiene muchos fundamentos legales. Tal disposición, la cláusula relativa al caso de una sentencia por juicio político, estipula que los funcionarios sometidos a juicio político por la Cámara de Representantes y declarados culpables por el Senado todavía pueden quedar sujetos a un procedimiento penal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More