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      Appeals court skeptical of Meadows’ bid to move Georgia election case

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      A federal appeals court on Friday appeared skeptical of former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ attempt to transfer his 2020 election interference case in Georgia to federal court, expressing doubt that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat.The court also questioned, in a particularly ominous development for Meadows, whether he was even entitled to remove his case from state to federal court given he was no longer a federal official.Meadows was charged with violating the state racketeering statute alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.The indictment also included a charge against Meadows for his role in setting up Trump’s infamous recorded phone call on 2 January 2021 asking the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the battleground state.Meadows filed to transfer his case to federal court – a move that would allow him to seek dismissal of the charges on federal immunity grounds – but had the motion rejected by the US district judge Steve Jones. Meadows then appealed to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.The issue for Meadows has long been whether his involvement in the call or his involvement in the so-called fake electors scheme were within the scope of his official duties as a White House chief of staff, as he argued, or whether he was engaged in campaign activity, as prosecutors have argued.At a roughly 50-minute hearing before circuit judges William Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees, respectively – the court expressed deep skepticism that Meadows could declare all of his actions as White House chief of staff were related to his official duties.“That just cannot be right,” Rosenbaum said at one stage, saying “electioneering on behalf of a specific political candidate” or becoming involved in “an alleged effort to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” might be examples of actions not covered by a federal official’s job.The skepticism of Meadows’ sweeping position that there were no limits to the scope of his duties was joined by Abudu, who noted that other federal laws like the Hatch Act prohibits government officials from engaging in political activity as part of their federal duties.Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger responded that Meadows only needed, under the federal officer removal statute, to “establish a nexus” to the duties of his federal job. It would make “no sense”, Terwilliger said, to have a state judge decide at trial matters relating to federal laws.The hearing took a negative turn for Meadows when Pryor, the chief judge known to be a staunch conservative, suggested he did not think Meadows was entitled to have his case moved to federal court at all because Meadows was no longer a federal official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPryor suggested it might be reasonable to infer that Congress intended the removal statute to apply only to current federal officials to make sure that state charges did not interfere with “ongoing operations of the federal government”.Still, the three-judge panel also expressed concern to Donald Wakeford, a prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office, about the “chilling effect” on federal officials to enact policy if they felt they could be indicted by state authorities once they left the government.That opening was seized upon by Terwilliger, who claimed he would have done his job differently when he was deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.Wakeford responded that it might be a good thing if some federal officials felt chilled from engaging in certain conduct – a reference to an opinion in a recent ruling by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan rejecting Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal election interference case in Washington. More

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      Trump’s election-interference case may get boost from US supreme court

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      A decision by the US supreme court to take a case linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol could have consequences altering the trajectory of the criminal case against Donald Trump over his effort to overturn the 2020 election as well as for hundreds of other people prosecuted for the riot.The nation’s highest court has agreed to consider whether federal prosecutors can charge January 6 riot defendants with a statute that makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress – a charge also filed against Trump in his 2020 election-interference case.The decision by the conservative-dominated court to take up the matter complicates and could delay Trump’s trial in federal district court in Washington, which is currently scheduled for next March.The supreme court’s eventual ruling in Fischer v United States will indicate whether the obstruction charge under section 1512 of title 18 of the US criminal code can be used against Trump, and could undercut the other general conspiracy charges brought against the former president by the special counsel, Jack Smith.The court could also end up by extension invalidating many convictions against rioters involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. The obstruction statute has been the justice department’s primary weapon to hold accountable those involved in the violence of that day.The case involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted in Washington on seven counts of obstructing the congressional certification of the 2020 election results when he assaulted police officers during the riot.Fischer sought to dismiss part of his indictment, arguing that the obstruction statute passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, had to do with document or evidence tampering for white-collar financial crime.The US district judge Carl Nichols, who presided in the case, interpreted the statute as requiring prosecutors to show that the defendant took some action with respect to a document or record and did not apply to Fischer as he assaulted police officers at the Capitol.But a split three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit reversed the decision, deciding that obstruction applied more broadly and encompassed impeding any official proceeding. Fischer, and two other January 6 defendants, appealed to the supreme court to resolve the issue.The supreme court may not decide whether the obstruction statute can be applied to the Capitol attack until June, when the next term ends. In the meantime, the viability of that charge – and potentially that of other general conspiracy charges – against Trump remains uncertain.It could also give Trump an opening to seek to pause ongoing pre-trial proceedings in his 2020 election interference case pending the supreme court’s consideration of the issue, although he is unlikely to succeed and it may not be appealable should such an effort be denied.Similar criminal cases involving members of Congress or congressional aides, for instance, typically go to trial and are then tried again if a higher court finds that some of the charges were inapplicable.At issue for Trump is the definition of “corruptly” in the obstruction statute. The DC circuit has been unable to agree, with judge Justin Walker interpreting it as “unlawful benefit”, while judge Greg Katsas interpreted it as “an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage”.The obstruction statute was never a natural fit for January 6 cases, and defense lawyers have repeatedly argued in trial and appeals courts in Washington that the justice department was using it in an overly broad fashion to target rioters because of the 20-year maximum sentence it carries.The problem for the justice department now is that the supreme court has previously chafed at the use of broad conspiracy arguments by federal prosecutors.In the case of Jeffrey Skilling in the Enron scandal, the court held in a unanimous decision that Skilling had been improperly charged with the “honest services” provision of the statute about a scheme to defraud, because it applied only to accepting bribes and kickbacks.“The court’s been very clear that over-aggressive theories under general criminal statutes don’t fly,” said the former House general counsel Stanley Brand, whose firm Brand Woodward has also represented January 6 defendants. “That’s the lesson of Skilling and all these other cases.”If the supreme court were to rule in favor of Fischer next year on the basis that the justice department was using charges that were too broad, Brand added, it could undercut the other general conspiracy statutes used in the indictment against Trump, as well. More

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      Judge puts Trump’s 2020 election interference case on hold

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      Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Washington will be put on hold while the former president further pursues his claims that he is immune from prosecution, the judge overseeing the case ruled Wednesday.US district judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to pause any “further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on defendant”. But the judge said that if the case returns to her court, she will “consider at that time whether to retain or continue the dates of any still-future deadlines and proceedings, including the trial scheduled for March 4, 2024”.At issue is an appeal last week by Trump’s lawyers of an order from Chutkan denying their claims that the case must be dismissed on immunity grounds. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has also asked the supreme court to take up the legally untested question.“The prosecution has one goal in this case: to unlawfully attempt to try, convict, and sentence President Trump before an election in which he is likely to defeat President Biden,” defense lawyers wrote Wednesday. “This represents a blatant attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election and to disenfranchise the tens of millions of voters who support President Trump’s candidacy.”The issue is of paramount significance to both sides given that a ruling in Trump’s favor would presumably derail the case and because a protracted appeal could delay a trial well beyond its currently scheduled start date of 4 March. Trump faces charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and he has denied doing anything wrong.Special counsel Jack Smith, whose team has brought two federal cases against Trump in Washington and in Florida, has sought to keep both on track while Trump has attempted to delay the proceedings – at one point even asking for the Washington prosecution to be pushed back until 2026.A separate potential hiccup for the prosecution developed Wednesday when the Supreme Court said that it would review a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding that the Justice Department has brought against more than 300 participants in the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. That’s among four counts brought against Trump by Smith, meaning that a high court ruling that benefits the defendants in the riotA postponement until after the election would clearly benefit Trump, especially since, if elected president, he would have the authority to try and order the justice department to dismiss the federal cases.In telling the Washington-based federal appeals court that there was no reason for it to fast-track the immunity question, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the “date of March 4, 2024, has no talismanic significance.“Aside from the prosecution’s unlawful partisan motives, there is no compelling reason that date must be maintained, especially at the expense of President Trump and the public’s overriding interest in ensuring these matters of extraordinary constitutional significance are decided appropriately, with full and thoughtful consideration to all relevant authorities and arguments,” they wrote.At issue is an appeal by the Trump team, filed last week, of a trial judge’s rejection of arguments that he was protected from prosecution for actions he took as president. Smith sought to short-circuit that process by asking the supreme court on Monday to take up the issue during its current term, a request he acknowledged was “extraordinary” but one he said he was essential to keep the case moving forward.Smith’s team simultaneously asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit to expedite its consideration of Trump’s appeal, writing: “The public has a strong interest in this case proceeding to trial in a timely manner. The trial cannot proceed, however, before resolution of the defendant’s interlocutory appeal.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump team made clear its opposition to that request, saying the case presents “novel, complex, and sensitive questions of profound importance.“Whether a president of the United States may be criminally prosecuted for his official acts as president goes to the core of our system of separated powers and will stand among the most consequential questions ever decided by this court,” they wrote. “The manifest public interest lies in the court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence.”The supreme court has indicated that it would decide quickly whether to hear the case, ordering Trump’s lawyers to respond by 20 December. The court’s brief order did not signal what it ultimately would do.A supreme court case usually lasts several months, from the time the justices agree to hear it until a final decision. Smith is asking the court to move with unusual, but not unprecedented, speed.If the justices decline to step in at this point, Trump’s appeal would continue at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. Smith said even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the supreme court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break. More

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      US supreme court agrees to consider abortion pill access

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday agreed to hear oral arguments in a case that could determine the future of a pill used in most abortions in the US, in the first major abortion rights case to land at the country’s highest court since the justices overturned Roe v Wade and abolished the national right to the procedure in 2022.A decision in the case will probably arrive in summer 2024, just months before the presidential election. The outcome of the case could affect not just access to the pill, which has been repeatedly deemed safe and effective, but the Federal Drug Administration’s authority to regulate all manner of medications.The drug at the heart of the case is mifepristone, one of the two drugs typically used in medication abortions, which make up the majority of US abortions. Last year, an association of anti-abortion organizations and doctors, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the FDA had overstepped its authority when it approved mifepristone in 2000.In April, a Texas federal judge appointed by former president Donald Trump issued a preliminary ruling to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and pull the medication off the market. The US court of appeals for the fifth circuit – one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the US – ruled in August that, while it was too late to suspend the FDA’s approval, the agency should significantly restrict access to mifepristone. The Biden administration and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone, then asked the supreme court to weigh in on the case.The supreme court paused lower-court rulings while the case plays out, so mifepristone remains widely available in states that permit abortion. If the court allows the fifth circuit ruling to stand, it would roll back recent FDA efforts that refined the drug’s dosage and expanded access by allowing it to be prescribed later on in pregnancy and through telehealth.On Wednesday, the supreme court agreed to hear the consolidated petitions from the Biden administration and Danco Laboratories, which asked the justices to focus on the legal attempts to roll back those later FDA efforts. Those petitions also asked the justices to consider whether the challengers have the legal right, or standing, to bring the case in the first place.“You can’t just bring random lawsuits in court. You actually have to have been harmed by something,” said Greer Donley, an associate law professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. “That’s really what standing analysis is all about, to try to figure out if if the people who bring the lawsuit actually have a stake in the case.” Numerous legal experts have questioned whether the challengers in this case have properly demonstrated that they have been harmed by mifepristone’s continued legality.The supreme court also denied a petition from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine that asked the justices to explicitly consider the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone. That move suggests that the supreme court is unlikely to pull mifepristone off the market entirely.In Donley’s view, the outcome of this case will probably signal whether the supreme court, which is controlled 6-3 by conservatives, wants to be involved in the post-Roe war over abortion rights. If the justices decide to focus on the standing issues in the case, they could sidestep having to rule on the substance of the case entirely.“I could see the more moderates on the supreme court thinking: ‘we don’t want to touch this,’” Donley said. “It might make the supreme court look like less of an activist court if it were to dismiss this case on the basis of really legitimate standing problems.”Any ruling by the court would affect all 50 states, including those that have protected abortion rights. (In recent months, officials in states such as Washington and California have announced that they have begun to stockpile mifepristone.)A ruling could also imperil the FDA’s regulatory power writ large and pose an existential threat to pharmaceutical companies. If courts can rewrite the FDA’s approval of abortion pills, any kind of drug – including, for example, drugs used to protect against HIV or to provide gender-affirming care – could end up in conservative jurists’ crosshairs.The ruling from the federal appeals court, Danco Laboratories warned in its briefs to the supreme court, “destabilizes the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries by questioning when scientific studies – accepted by FDA – are sufficient”. More than 100 studies, conducted across 26 countries, have concluded that mifepristone is safe, a New York Times review found.If deprived of access to mifepristone, several abortion clinics have said that they would keep providing medication abortions using only misoprostol, the other drug typically used in medication abortions. Although misoprostol-only abortions are still overwhelmingly safe, they can have more side-effects and are slightly less effective than the two-drug protocol.Ultimately, regardless of how the supreme court rules, its decision will not curtail the thriving underground networks that routinely supply mifepristone to women looking to end their pregnancies, including in the 16 states with near-total abortion bans. In fact, a move to ban mifepristone is likely to cause a sharp rise in demand for the drug through those networks.In the wake of Roe’s fall, a vast web of abortion rights supporters and opportunistic merchants have sprung up to ship abortion pills to Americans. Inducing your own abortion is not illegal in most US states, even in states that have banned in-clinic abortions, and medical experts widely agree that it can be safe to use pills to “self-manage” an abortion early in pregnancy. More

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      Jack Smith just made a gutsy, momentous decision in his prosecution of Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      Timing isn’t everything. But it certainly matters, and seldom more so than in special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump.The former US president intends to use timing – delay, delay, delay – to avoid punishment for trying to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, and for fomenting a violent coup.Nope, said Smith this week. A tough guy who has prosecuted war crimes in the Hague, Smith clearly recognizes that putting off the case until after next fall’s presidential election could let Trump off the hook.So the prosecutor made a bold legal maneuver. Smith moved to bypass the court of appeals, whose involvement could slow things down considerably, and to go directly to the US supreme court for a decision on a foundational issue.He wants the US’s highest court to rule – immediately – on whether Trump, as he claims, is immune from criminal prosecution.“Jack Smith wants to cut straight to the chase,” writes former US attorney Joyce Vance, noting that the supreme court has never decided this issue before.Should the court rule in Trump’s favor on immunity, the case goes away. That looks like a gamble, but the case is headed to the supreme court anyway.The key question is rather simple.Is Trump above the law? Or, like every other US citizen, must he abide by it?Smith’s maneuver was heralded by several prominent legal experts.“A huge and possibly brilliant move, a game changer one way or the other,” Harry Litman, a former justice department official who teaches constitutional law, wrote on Twitter/X.So far, the signs are encouraging. The court granted Smith’s request to speed up the question of whether to hear the case, asking for a quick response from Team Trump.In other words, the court quickly agreed to decide whether to decide the case, an important first step.Of course, this supreme court doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, given its terrible rulings on voting rights and abortion rights and the appalling ethical malfeasance of some of its members.But even this tainted court probably doesn’t want to be associated for all time with the notion that a US president is above the law.Watching Jack Smith’s aggressive efforts throughout this prosecution, I can’t help but think of two earlier high-level legal situations involving presidents.One was decades ago, during the Watergate scandal, when the supreme court ruled that President Nixon’s tape recordings were fair game; Nixon had appointed some of those justices but the ruling was unanimous nonetheless.That ruling was among the many contributing factors in holding Nixon accountable, to some extent, for the crimes he encouraged while in office. Ultimately, of course, he resigned and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.The other, much more recent, was the way special counsel Robert Mueller handled the investigation into whether Trump and his allies played ball with Russian operatives in order to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.Unlike Smith, Mueller was particularly rules-bound and reserved. He never wanted to rock the procedural boat. His extremely low-key approach hampered the outcome of his important investigation.With the help of attorney general Bill Barr’s dishonest work in interpreting it favorably on Trump’s behalf, Mueller’s report dwindled into something that ultimately didn’t matter much – though it should have. Trump ran around claiming he was entirely cleared and that it was all a hoax, though that was far from true.Smith is a different cat. Thinking strategically at all times, he knows he needs to stay on track for a March trial date in order to hold Trump accountable.If that doesn’t happen, the strategy of delaying the trial until after the November election could – if Trump is elected – allow him to install an unpatriotic loyalist as attorney general and wriggle out of the mess that he created.That makes what happens next so consequential. (Smith wisely is hedging his bet by asking the court of appeals to rule immediately, too, should the supreme court decide not to take on the matter after all.)“It may be the most important democracy decision of our lifetimes,” Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has argued.Could be – for two reasons.One is that some members of the voting public, the non-cult members at least, might be affected by a guilty verdict. Given Trump’s obvious authoritarian plans for a second term, his election could be a death knell for US democracy.The other is that no president, or former president, should be above the law.Let’s hope that the supreme court – whatever its shortcomings – does its duty, takes on this question, and rules in accordance with our nation’s founding principles.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Special counsel deals deft blow to Trump’s bid to delay federal trial

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      Donald Trump’s attempt to delay his impending federal trial on charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results may have been dealt a deft blow by special counsel prosecutors, after they directly asked the US supreme court to resolve whether the former president can be criminally prosecuted.Earlier this month, Trump asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit to reverse a decision by the trial judge rejecting his motion to dismiss the case on presidential immunity grounds. On Monday, the special counsel Jack Smith sought to bypass the DC circuit by asking the supreme court to resolve the issue.While the supreme court has increasingly agreed to hear cases before an appeals court judgment, especially for constitutional questions related to presidential power, the petition from the special counsel puts Trump in a fraught situation regardless of whether it takes up the matter.Later on Monday, the court indicated it would decide quickly on whether to hear the case, ordering Trump to file his reply to the filing from the special counsel Jack Smith within nine days – by 20 December – a deadline widely considered to be particularly expeditious.The problem for Trump is that his hands are tied. The former president would prefer the court to take up the case after the DC circuit rules because he’s eager to delay his impending trial as much as possible. But he can’t oppose the prosecutors’ request now and then make the same request in several months’ time.If Trump had his way, according to people close to his legal team, he would have wanted the DC circuit to go through the likely months-long appeals process before going to the supreme court. That process would have included setting a briefing schedule, oral arguments and then issuing a ruling.The federal 2020 election interference trial is currently set for trial on 4 March, the day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses. Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, has been adamant that he did not want to be stuck in a courtroom.Trump has also made no secret that his overarching legal strategy, for all of his criminal cases, is to pursue procedural delays. If the cases do not go to trial before next year’s election and he wins a second term, then he could direct his handpicked attorney general to drop all of the charges.And even if the case did go to trial before November, the people said, Trump’s preference would have been for the trial to take place as close as possible to the election because it would have given his 2024 campaign ammunition to miscast the criminal case against him as political in nature.Yet with the special counsel moving to circumvent the DC circuit, Trump and his legal team have effectively been forced to grapple with the supreme court plank of his delay strategy far earlier than they had expected.The eventual outcome could still be good for Trump: the justices could, for now, deny the request to review the lower court’s decision – a process known as certiorari – and instruct the special counsel to resubmit his request after the DC circuit issues a decision. Alternatively, the justices could grant certiorari and a majority rule in Trump’s favor.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut even with a conservative-leaning supreme court, those are the more unlikely options, according to the supreme court expert Steve Vladeck. The more likely outcome is that the court grants certiorari and rules against Trump – thereby eliminating the additional months of delay he had anticipated.The probability that the supreme court rules against Trump on his presidential immunity claim, if it hears the case, is seen as a more likely scenario in large part because Trump’s interpretation is so far-reaching and without precedent in criminal caselaw.The motions to dismiss submitted by Trump’s lawyers contended that all of his attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment – including trying to obstruct the January 6 congressional certification – were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.And at the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that Trump both was entitled to absolute presidential immunity and that the immunity applied whether or not Trump intended to engage in the conduct described in the indictment.The issue is considered ripe for the supreme court because while it has previously ruled that presidents have expansive immunity in civil lawsuits, it has never explicitly ruled on whether presidents can face criminal charges for crimes they are alleged to have committed while in office. More

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      Special counsel asks US supreme court to rule on Trump’s claim of immunity

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      Special counsel prosecutors on Monday asked the US supreme court to make an expedited decision on whether Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.The move amounts to an attempt by prosecutors to bypass Trump’s recent appeal to the DC circuit after the federal judge overseeing his case rejected the notion that he had immunity for acts he committed during his presidency.The petition to the supreme court shows prosecutors were concerned that going through the appeals process – submitting briefs, scheduling oral arguments and waiting for a decision while the case remained frozen – could delay the March 2024 trial date.Trump has made no secret of the fact that delaying the trial as long as he can remains his overarching legal strategy. If it was postponed until after next year’s presidential election and Trump won, he could direct his attorney general to drop the charges.“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted,” the petition said.The request that the supreme court grant what is known as certiorari before the appeals court issues judgment is unusual. It is typically used in cases of national crises, like when Richard Nixon refused to hand over White House tapes to a special prosecutor.By citing US v Nixon and asking for expedited treatment in their petition, prosecutors essentially contended to the supreme court that they consider the Trump case of equal magnitude and constitutional consequence.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” the filing said. “This is an extraordinary case.”The supreme court has previously ruled that presidents have expansive immunity in civil lawsuits but has never explicitly ruled whether presidents can face criminal charges for crimes they are alleged to have committed while in office.Whether the court will take up the case remains uncertain, but it has increasingly granted certiorari before an appeals court judgement in recent years, and especially for presidential power cases, according to research by supreme court experts Steve Vladeck and David Merlinsky.The prosecutors on the filing included the special counsel Jack Smith himself, two of his deputies JP Cooley and James Pearce, as well as veteran supreme court litigator Michael Dreeben, who was also formerly a top appellate litigator for special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation.Having the case go to trial in Washington after the election would also mean voters would not know the full extent of the evidence of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 defeat before deciding whether to give him a second term in the White House.“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” the petition said. “Only this court can definitively resolve them.”Last week, the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s claims that he enjoyed absolute immunity through a sweeping interpretation of executive power, arguing the former president could not be held accountable for actions undertaken in office.“Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan wrote in her 48-page opinion.Trump swiftly challenged the denial of his motion to dismiss to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. Notably, the ex-president also asked Chutkan to freeze all aspects of the 2020 election subversion case until the question was resolved.The motions to dismiss submitted by Trump’s lawyers contended that all of his attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment were in his capacity as president and therefore protected. Those actions ranged from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that Trump both was entitled to absolute presidential immunity and that the immunity applied whether or not Trump intended to engage in the conduct described in the indictment. More

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      Trump can be sued over January 6 Capitol attack, US appeals court rules

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      A US appeals court on Friday ruled that Donald Trump must face civil lawsuits over his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, rejecting the former president’s claim that he is immune.A panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit found that Trump was acting “in his personal capacity as a presidential candidate” when he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol. US presidents are immune from civil lawsuits only for official actions. Part of the lawsuit was filed under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law, which makes it illegal to prevent an officer of the United States from performing their duties through threats or intimidation.“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “While Presidents are often exercising official responsibilities when they speak on matters of public concern, that is not always the case.”Srinivasan, an appointee of Barack Obama, was joined by Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judith Rogers, an appointee of Bill Clinton.While the panel ruled Trump could be sued, it made it clear it was not precluding him from arguing that he was acting in his official capacity as a defense as the lawsuit proceeds.“When these cases move forward in the district court, he must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” the opinion said.The ruling clears the way for Trump to face lawsuits from police officers and US lawmakers seeking to hold him responsible for the violence by his supporters during the riot, which was an attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” said James Blassingame, a Capitol police officer who is a plaintiff in the case, James Blassingame v Donald Trump. “I couldn’t be more committed to pursuing accountability on this matter. I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the 2024 election.The civil suits will only add to the significant legal problems the former president faces. In total, Trump already faces 91 felony charges.Both the justice department and the Fulton county district attorney have criminally charged Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The justice department is also prosecuting him for his handling of classified documents after leaving office. The Manhattan district attorney also has a pending case against Trump over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump has also spent much of the last month defending his business in a civil case in New York on charges it committed fraud by inflating the value for obtain more favorable terms on loans and insurance. More