by Federal prosecutors on Saturday asked an appeals court to reject former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal charges for plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said the indictment should stand even though it emerged of actions he took while in the White House.
The government’s filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was part of an ongoing fight between Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office over whether former presidents can be criminally responsible for things he did in office.
The immunity fight is arguably the most important aspect of the election interference case, involving both new questions of law and consequential questions of opportunity. The case is scheduled to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in early March, but has been put on hold until Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges on immunity grounds are resolved.
The appeal is legally important because it focuses on a question that has never been asked or fully answered before. This is because Trump is the first former president to be charged with crimes and he decided to defend himself in this case with a novel claim: that the position he held at the time should completely protect him from prosecution.
But the fight has revolved around more than the technical question of whether the impeachment should survive and whether Trump should eventually stand trial. The defense and prosecution have been fighting a separate, but no less critical, battle over when the trial will take place, specifically whether it will take place before or after the 2024 election. elections and Trump wins, he would have the power to order the charges he faces to be dropped.
in its In their appeals court filing, prosecutors focused on legal arguments and said nothing in the Constitution or other founding documents of the country supported the idea that a former president should not be subject to federal criminal law.
“The presidency plays a vital role in our constitutional system, but so does the principle of accountability for criminal acts, particularly those that strike at the heart of the democratic process,” wrote James I. Pearce, one of Mr. Smith’s deputies. . “Instead of vindicating our constitutional framework, the broad claim of defendant immunity threatens to authorize presidents to commit crimes to remain in office. The founders did not intend and would never have tolerated such an outcome.”
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who has heard the case since it was filed this summer, rejected Trump’s immunity claims in early December. In her decision, she acknowledged that the Justice Department has long followed a policy of not indicting presidents while they are in office, but she said that since Trump was no longer in the White House, she should face a process.
“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 lifetime get-out-of-jail-free pass,” he wrote. “Former presidents do not enjoy special conditions in their federal criminal responsibility.”
Trump appealed the decision to the first court higher than Judge Chutkan, the court now hearing the case.
But fearing that a prolonged challenge could delay the case’s trial as scheduled, Smith made an unusual request to the Supreme Court: He asked the justices to appear before the appeals court and consider the case first, to speed up the process. the process and preserve the current trial date.
The Supreme Court rejected Mr. Smith’s request last week and returned the case to the appeals court.
A three-judge panel of that court is now considering the immunity issue on a very expedited schedule. All written briefs in the case will be filed Tuesday. Oral arguments are scheduled for January 9.
