By EFE
Former President Donald Trump has asked an appeals court in Washington to dismiss a federal lawsuit against him over the assault on the Capitol, citing presidential immunity.
In a brief submitted Saturday night to the federal circuit court in Columbia, Trump is asking it to overturn a lower court judge's decision that rejected his legal team's claims of immunity.
The request comes two days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to urgently consider whether the former president has immunity in this federal case, as requested by special counsel Jack Smith.
In the brief to the appeals court, Trump's legal team points out that the indictment is unconstitutional because presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted unless they are first convicted by the Senate.
"Under our system of separation of powers, the judiciary cannot judge the official acts of a president," say Trump's lawyers, who allege that on the day of the events the former president was fulfilling his "official duties" and monitoring the integrity of the 2020 election.
The argument of presidential immunity has become a recurring weapon for Trump's lawyers, who seek to drag out the process and postpone the start date of this federal case as much as possible.
Friday's rejection by the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the strategy of Smith, who twice asked the high court to rule urgently on the immunity of former presidents from federal charges, thus skipping lower courts.
Trump is accused of inciting the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and faces prosecution for several crimes, the most serious being conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, which could earn him a maximum of 55 years in prison.
The trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024, a day before Super Tuesday, the big day of the primary election, but could now be delayed because the appeals court will have to consider the issue of immunity.
Trump received a setback last Wednesday from the Colorado Supreme Court, which expelled the former president from the Republican primary in that state for his role in the assault on the Capitol.