Federal prosecutors asked an appeals court on Saturday to reject former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said the indictment should remain in place even though it arose from actions he took while in the White House.
The government’s filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was part of an ongoing struggle between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, over whether former presidents can be criminally liable for things they did in office.
The fight over immunity is arguably the most important aspect of the election interference case, involving both new questions of law and consequential issues of timing. The case is set to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in early March but has been put on hold until Mr. Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges on grounds of immunity are resolved.
This is the single most terrifying question of law right now. Are presidents above the law or not? What’s most terrifying is that I believe more than a couple supreme court justices believe they are.
No, this will certainly be rejected, even by this SCOTUS (they’ve already ruled against Trump a few times, and this one is even more ridiculous).
Something I haven’t seen trump’s lackeys acknowledge is that if they ruled in his favour, it would apply to Biden, Obama, and Clinton, too. Not sure they’d like that as much.
Nixon sure thought so, had no case law to challenge that belief, his ‘Imperial Presidency’ was a disaster for the US, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the wider world. The sheer depth of his corruption and criminality lead to executive privilege being gutted into the ‘Imperiled Presidency’ of Ford and Carter. It took 9/11 to give Bush/Cheney the confidence to push that limit again, and again with awful and lasting consequences for the US and the wider world.
SCoTUS’s most recently ruled limits on executive privilege during Obama, so there’s case law to get at Meadows/Sessions/Guiliani/etc Trump’s scenario is untested because LBJ and Ford lacked the spine to rightfully trial and hang Nixon for outright treason.
Pretty sad this even has to be asked.
Seems like a no brainer. But why did SCOTUS kick the ball down the field?
I follow a few lawyers on Mastodon - the general consensus is that the prosecutor jumped a few steps by going directly to SCOTUS and they told him, “Nope, do this the right way via appeals first”.
It was unanimous from the court, and I get that this needs to be by the book, but it sure feels like it fits with the Trump effort to delay, delay, delay.
Fair enough. Only shouldn’t his participation in the election process be halted until the decision is made, given the unprecedented nature of the decision and the gravitas of the outcome?
There are enough reasonable people left on the court that when a decision is unanimous, I’m willing to accept that it was proper.
