WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump can be tried on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting the former president’s claims that he was safe from prosecution and bringing a historic prosecution back to life. which had been effectively frozen while the court considered the arguments.
The ruling marks the second time in as many months that judges have rejected Trump’s immunity arguments and ruled that he can be prosecuted for actions taken while he was in the White House and in the period leading up to January 6 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol. But it also paves the way for other appeals from the Republican ex-president that could reach the US Supreme Court and cause further delays.
WATCH: Delays in Trump insurrection case push court dates further into election season
The month-long gap between when the appeals court heard arguments and when it issued its decision has already created uncertainty about the timing of any trial in a busy election year, with the judge overseeing the case having canceled the date of March 4 last week. was initially set and did not immediately schedule a replacement. The justices gave Trump until February 12 to ask the Supreme Court to stay its decision.
The trial timing carries obvious and enormous political ramifications, with special counsel Jack Smith’s team hoping to take Trump to court this year and the Republican frontrunner seeking to delay it until after the November election. If Trump were to defeat President Joe Biden, he could likely try to use his position as head of the executive branch to order a new attorney general to dismiss federal cases or he could potentially seek clemency.
The unanimous decision, expected given the skepticism with which the panel’s three judges greeted the Trump team’s arguments, bluntly rejected the assertion that a former president could be immune from prosecution for actions taken during his mandate.
“Presidential immunity from federal indictment would mean that, with respect to the president, Congress could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute, and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law forever,” the judges wrote.
They also flatly rejected Trump’s assertion that “a president has unlimited power to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power: the recognition and implementation of election results.”
“We also cannot endorse his apparent assertion that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of citizens to vote and have their votes count,” they wrote.
The appeals court took center stage in the immunity dispute after the Supreme Court said in December that it was staying at least temporarily out of the debate, rejecting Smith’s team’s request to take up the matter quickly and render a rapid decision. But the court could still decide to pursue the Trump team’s appeal, which would add uncertainty about the trial date.
The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents are exempt from civil liability for official acts, and Trump’s lawyers have argued for months that this protection should also be extended to criminal prosecutions.
They said actions Trump was accused of in his failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election to Biden, including harassing his vice president into refusing to certify the results of the election, all fell within the “outer perimeter” of an official act of the president.
But Smith’s team said no such immunity existed in the U.S. Constitution or in previous cases and that, in any case, Trump’s actions were not part of his official duties.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, rejected Trump’s arguments in a Dec. 1 opinion that the president’s office “does not confer a lifetime pass to get out of jail free.”
Trump’s lawyers then appealed to the Washington DC appeals court, but Smith asked the Supreme Court to intervene first, hoping to get a quick, final decision and preserve the date of the trial of March 4. The High Court rejected the application, leaving the matter to the Court of Appeal.
The case was argued before Judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs, appointed by Biden, a Democrat, and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed to the bench by President George HW Bush, a Republican. The justices made clear their skepticism about Trump’s claims during last month’s arguments, when they asked his lawyer tough questions and posed a series of extreme hypotheses in order to test his legal theory of immunity – including whether a president who ordered Marine commandos to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted.
Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, said yes — but only if the president had first been impeached and convicted by Congress. This view was consistent with the team’s position that the Constitution did not permit the prosecution of ex-presidents who had been impeached and then acquitted, such as Trump.
The case in Washington is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces as he seeks to win back the White House this year. He faces federal charges in Florida for illegally storing classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a case that was also brought by Smith and is scheduled for trial in May. He is also charged in Georgia state court with conspiring to overturn the 2020 elections in that state and New York over secret payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He has denied any wrongdoing.
