As of: February 7, 2024, 10:41 a.m
Comments
Press
Split
Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters with attorneys John Lauro (left) and D. John Sauer (center right) after attending a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in January.
© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
The former US president suffered a legal defeat.
The 77-year-old does not enjoy blanket immunity.
But Trump wants to keep fighting.
Washington, DC - A federal appeals court has unanimously ruled that Donald Trump can be tried for his attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
The court rejected Trump's blanket claim to presidential immunity as dangerous and unsupported by the Constitution.
During public debate in January, the three justices expressed concern about the most extreme implications of Trump's view.
One of them said it would also allow a future president to order the assassination of a political rival.
But in their statement Tuesday, they said it is Trump's own alleged crimes that threaten democracy if they are removed from prosecution.
Trump's actions are "an unprecedented attack on the structure of our government."
“We cannot accept former President Trump’s assertion that a president has unfettered authority to commit crimes that would undermine the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results,” the justices wrote.
“We also cannot condone his apparent assertion that the executive branch has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and have their votes counted.”
No immunity for Trump – ex-president suffers legal defeat
The verdict is one of several expected this spring that could determine whether Trump will run for president behind bars in the fall - or whether he can even run for re-election.
The ruling comes days before the Supreme Court considers another untested question raised by Trump's candidacy: whether the former president is a seditionist barred by the Constitution from returning to the White House because of his actions around Jan. 6 .
Read The Washington Post for free for four weeks
Your quality ticket from washingtonpost.com: Get exclusive research and 200+ stories free for four weeks.
Trump has appealed a decision by Tanya S. Chutkan, the judge overseeing his trial in Washington DC, and made clear he wants to pursue his case in higher courts.
The D.C. Circuit panel set tight deadlines for that review, saying it would only give Trump until Feb. 12 to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
That would make it harder for Trump to ask the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the ruling first.
While his legal arguments in court continue to fail, even rulings against him increase his chances of delaying a federal trial in D.C. until after the presidential election, in which he is the Republican front-runner.
Trump's trial was scheduled for March 4 - one of four criminal trials Trump is facing while also vying for the White House.
However, it was postponed indefinitely last week to allow the appeal process on the immunity issue to continue.
My news
Heavy fighting against Wagner mercenaries in Africa: Video shows interrogation by Ukrainian special forcesread
Putin mocks Germany and its auto industry: “We should help them” read
Putin's prestige project in danger: Ukrainians succeed in spectacular storming of the Black Sea
Without Americans: Germany is working on Ukraine's liberation strike
Putin before major NATO maneuvers near the Russian border: “Our weapons are better” read
Devastating reports from the front: Ukrainians are now building retreat facilities
The panel wrote "per curiam," meaning the justices "speak with one voice," in a 57-page opinion that echoes all of the arguments made by Trump's lawyers during arguments before the appeals court in January.
“This opinion is the strongest argument against Supreme Court intervention that can be made,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“Whether it is strong enough depends on the judges.”
Five justices would have to agree to put the process on hold for Trump's appeal.
Vladeck predicted that the court would either hear the case quickly and decide before the end of the legislative session in late June or early July, or not hear it at all.
“They don’t want to give the impression that they’re running out of time,” he said.
“If they want to intervene, they should do it during this election period.”
Several trials against Trump – immunity also for former presidents?
The Justice Department has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
However, Trump has made the novel claim that former presidents also cannot be prosecuted, at least not for actions related to their official duties, unless they are first impeached and convicted by Congress.
After he was acquitted by the Senate on charges of inciting the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump said that a conviction in federal court would violate the principle of double jeopardy.
The only Republican-appointed judge on the panel, Karen L. Henderson, has in the past been sympathetic to broad presidential powers.
However, during the hearing, she called it a "paradox" that the president's duty to faithfully execute the laws would allow him to violate them.
This characterization is reflected in the final statement, which calls Trump's position "a remarkable paradox."
It also notes that some fear of future criminal prosecution serves an important purpose: “to deter possible abuse of power and criminal behavior.”
The court cited Chutkan’s earlier ruling: “Every president faces difficult choices;
the question of whether he intentionally committed a federal crime should not be part of it.”
“Chaos in the country”: Trump rumbles against judge after verdict
Having already promised to use the Justice Department to prosecute President Biden if re-elected, Trump said after the D.C. Circuit hearing that a ruling against him would mean "chaos in the country."
In a statement posted Tuesday on the conservative network Truth Social, Trump wrote that without "full immunity ... a president will be afraid to act for fear of vicious retaliation from the opposing party after he leaves office."
The D.C. Circuit dismissed that warning as “historically baseless” because “this is the first time since the founding of the state that a former president has been indicted at the federal level.” The justices also noted that other ex-presidents have been vulnerable for criminal prosecution.
Richard Nixon accepted a pardon “for all offenses” he “has committed or may have committed” while in office.
Bill Clinton agreed to have his law license revoked and fined to avoid possible prosecution in connection with the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Prosecutorial ethics and grand jury procedures would “prevent unfounded indictments,” the judges said.
The ruling also reflects an assessment Judge Florence Y. Pan made during the trial: Trump's assertion that he could be prosecuted as long as he had been previously indicted and convicted by Congress undermines rather than strengthens his argument .
He “implicitly acknowledges that there is no such thing as absolute” immunity, the court wrote, and complains only about the process.
“Irrational” and “Implausible” – Court rejects Trump argument
Trump's impeachment relies on a single line in the Constitution that says that while Congress can only remove a person from office, "the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and may be impeached."
Trump, who was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate, argued that this must also mean the opposite, as he laid out in his filing: "A president who is not convicted cannot be prosecuted."
At the hearing, defense attorney D. John Sauer did not object when asked whether Trump's view would allow a president to order the assassination of a political rival.
However, he suggested that such action would “quickly” lead to impeachment.
The court called this “irrational” and “implausible.”
The argument that criminal prosecution after an acquittal would violate the principle of double jeopardy should not be taken seriously, the court said.
“Impeachment is a political process,” and most of the senators who voted against Trump’s impeachment did so for reasons “that have nothing to do with factual innocence.”
Furthermore, the court said, the single count of incitement of insurrection does not fully overlap with the charges against Trump in Washington DC of conspiring to subvert the election results.
Even if presidents should be shielded from prosecution for certain actions, it is "doubtful" that Trump's efforts to remain in office would qualify, the court said: "He allegedly interfered in a process in which the President did not Role play".
No immunity for Trump – several lawsuits against the former president
The Supreme Court declared in 1982 that presidents cannot be sued in civil court over official decisions.
Another D.C. Circuit panel ruled late last year that lawsuits against Trump were permissible because campaigning for re-election was not an “official act.”
Trump has indicated that he also wants to appeal this ruling.
The D.C. Circuit's ruling is not binding in other jurisdictions where Trump is accused of a crime.
He makes similar arguments in Georgia, where he is accused of deliberately interfering in that state's 2020 election.
But in this case, Trump also argues that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause prohibits prosecutors from charging a former president.
The special counsel has declined to address the issue, saying in court filings that “a prosecution by a state or local entity would raise other questions.”
Trump is being tried in New York state and Florida courts for actions he committed before or after his presidency.
“We do not address the political considerations that play a role in the criminal prosecution of a sitting president or in the state prosecution of a sitting or former president,” the D.C. Circuit said in a footnote to its ruling.
About the author
Rachel Weiner
reports on federal courts in Washington, DC and Richmond, Va.
Spencer S. Hsu, Ann E. Marimow and Perry Stein contributed to this report.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 7, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.