DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump not immune from prosecution in 2020 election case, appeals court says, siding with special counsel

Washington — A federal appeals court in Washington found former President Donald Trump is not entitled to broad immunity from federal prosecution, delivering a landmark decision that would allow the criminal case against the former president involving the 2020 presidential election to move forward if the ruling is upheld.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in its opinion Tuesday that it is upholding the decision from a lower court denying him absolute immunity from prosecution.

"For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant," the three-judge panel wrote in its opinion. "But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution."

Trump is expected to appeal the decision either to the full D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court. The D.C. Circuit gave Trump until Feb. 12 to ask the nation's highest court to pause its decision before it takes effect.
Trump's immunity appeal

The D.C. Circuit moved swiftly in considering Trump's appeal of a lower court decision that also rejected his claims of absolute immunity from prosecution for acts committed while he was in office. The opinion from the three-judge panel — consisting of Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan — came less than a month after they heard arguments in the case.

Smith had urged the D.C. Circuit to speed up its review of the district court's order, warning that the trial that was originally scheduled to begin March 4 could not go forward before Trump's appeal was resolved. Last week, the judge delayed the start of the trial to let the appeals process play out.

In August 2023, the former president was charged with four counts stemming from an alleged attempt to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and has accused the Justice Department of pursuing a politically motivated prosecution targeting President Biden's chief political rival. There is no evidence that Mr. Biden is involved in either of the special counsel's two prosecutions of Trump.

Trump first raised his claim of presidential immunity in October, when he asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his criminal case in D.C., to dismiss the charges brought against him. The former president's lawyers said he cannot be charged for actions he performed within the "outer perimeter" of his official duties, and argued that a president can only be prosecuted after he is impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Trump was impeached by the House on one article of incitement of insurrection following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but was then acquitted by the Senate.

The special counsel has said Trump's alleged criminal actions — which involve pressuring the vice president to unilaterally reject state electoral votes and organizing false slates of presidential electors in key states he lost, according to the indictment — fell outside the scope of his official duties, given that they were taken in his capacity as a candidate for the White House and involved private attorneys and campaign staff.

Chutkan rejected Trump's effort to toss out the indictment, finding he cannot be shielded from criminal prosecution after leaving office for alleged conduct that occurred while he was in the White House.

"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 lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass," she wrote in her Dec. 1 decision.

Trump, Chutkan concluded, "may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office."
The D.C. Circuit's hearing

The former president asked the D.C. Circuit to review Chutkan's ruling, and the three-judge panel expressed skepticism toward his claim of broad immunity.

During oral arguments Jan. 9, which Trump attended, Pan, appointed by Mr. Biden, proposed a series of extreme hypothetical scenarios involving a president's conduct to test the limits of Trump's immunity argument.

"You're saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival," she told D. John Sauer, Trump's lawyer, during one exchange, referring to the elite Navy unit.

Sauer had argued that impeachment and conviction are required before a president can be criminally prosecuted.

Henderson, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, said it was "paradoxical" to say Trump's constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed allows him to then violate the law.

Trump's assertion of sweeping immunity raises the untested question of whether a former president can face charges for actions taken while in office. The Supreme Court held in a 1982 decision that presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits arising out of conduct "within the 'outer perimeter' of his duties of office." But the nation's highest court has never decided whether that immunity extends to criminal prosecution after a president leaves office, and Trump is the first former president in the nation's history to be indicted.

Smith asked the Supreme Court last month to leap-frog the appeals court and decide the immunity issue, but the high court declined to fast-track the case.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-immunity-appeals-court-2020-election-case/

Dictator status denied.

I would think that if trump had capable lawyers-they told him this was going to be the outcome.
Their hope is that the SC takes their sweet time looking at this and making a ruling.

This is pretty easy however, they should let the case continue forward on review and this shouldn't take more than a few weeks to rule on.

Takeaways from the scathing appeals court ruling denying immunity to Donald Trump
Jeremy Herb Hannah Rabinowitz Holmes Lybrand Marshall Cohen Katelyn Polantz Devan Cole
By Jeremy Herb, Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, Marshall Cohen, Katelyn Polantz and Devan Cole, CNN
7 minute read
Published 12:49 PM EST, Tue February 6, 2024



Former President Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada, in December 2023.
Former President Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada, in December 2023. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
CNN
—
A federal appeals court said Tuesday that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed during his presidency, flatly rejecting Trump’s arguments that he shouldn’t have to go on trial on federal election subversion charges.

In a striking 57-page unanimous opinion, the panel of three DC Circuit judges wrote that the public interest in holding a potentially criminal president accountable outweighed any potential “chilling effect” on the presidency.

“We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” the opinion says.


Trump does not have presidential immunity in January 6 case, federal appeals court rules
“Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct,” the judges added.

Trump has pledged to appeal and has until Monday to ask the Supreme Court to temporarily block the ruling.

It’s not certain how long the Supreme Court could take to consider such a request or an appeal, which would come as special counsel Jack Smith seeks to bring Trump to trial. An early March trial date has already been postponed.

Here are the key takeaways from Tuesday’s decision:

Presidents do not have ‘unbounded authority to commit crimes’
Throughout their opinion, Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs repeatedly eviscerated Trump’s alleged behavior after the 2020 presidential election as unpresidential and constituting an assault on American institutions.


“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,” the judges wrote. “Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.”

Trump’s stances in court, the judges wrote, stand in contrast to the principle that all Americans – including former presidents – are subject to the same laws.

Childs and Pan were appointed by President Joe Biden. Henderson was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush.

Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election could be criminal
The judges were clear that the charges against Trump are serious and left no question they believe can be prosecuted.

The panel describes Trump as using his seat of power to “unlawfully overstay his term as President and to displace his duly elected successor,” all which would violate “generally applicable criminal laws.”

“Former President Trump’s alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government,” the panel wrote.

“He allegedly injected himself into a process in which the President has no role — the counting and certifying of the Electoral College votes — thereby undermining constitutionally established procedures and the will of the Congress,” the judges added.

At a basic level, the three judges wrote that the conduct alleged in Trump’s criminal indictment “conflicts” with his constitutional duties as president and “violated the constitutionally established design for determining the results of the Presidential election as well as the Electoral Count Act of 1887, neither of which establishes a role for the President in counting and certifying the Electoral College votes.”

‘Vital public interest’ of letting trial proceed weighed heavily on the court
Throughout the 57-page ruling, the judges repeatedly referred to the public interest of letting the Trump trial move forward.

They cited the public interest in accountability for potential crimes committed by a former president, and how that overcame Trump’s argument that immunity was necessary to protect the institution of the presidency.


“We conclude that the interest in criminal accountability, held by both the public and the Executive Branch, outweighs the potential risks of chilling Presidential action and permitting vexatious litigation,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “We have balanced former President Trump’s asserted interests in executive immunity against the vital public interests that favor allowing this prosecution to proceed.”

The judges flatly rejected Trump’s claim that his criminal indictment would have a “chilling effect” on future administrations. Trump argues that presidents might be more hesitant to act if they were concerned about the prospect of criminal charges.

“Moreover, past Presidents have understood themselves to be subject to impeachment and criminal liability, at least under certain circumstances, so the possibility of chilling executive action is already in effect,” the opinion says.

The panel went on to quote a Nixon-era Supreme Court ruling about the bounds of presidential immunity, saying, “The federal prosecution of a former President fits the case ‘[w]hen judicial action is needed to serve broad public interests’ in order to ‘vindicate the public interest in an ongoing criminal prosecution.’”

These findings were consistent with the rationale provided by District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who similarly dismantled Trump’s immunity claims in resounding fashion last year.

Impeachment acquittal does not absolve Trump
The judges also rejected Trump’s argument that because the Senate did not convict him on the charge of inciting an insurrection in the wake of the Capitol riot in 2021, he cannot be charged criminally for the same crime.

“Other courts have rejected this ‘tortured’ interpretation,” of the law, the judges wrote, adding that “former President Trump’s reliance on a negative implication is an immediate red flag.”

Trump’s reading of the Constitution, the judges added, “would leave a President free to commit all manner of crimes with impunity, so long as he is not impeached and convicted.”

During the impeachment trial in 2021, several Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump, including Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, said they were doing so because the courts and justice system could still hold Trump accountable.

In the decision, the judges also noted that impeachment proceedings are political in nature and acquittals in Congress “are often unrelated to factual innocence.”

“The forty-three Senators who voted to acquit him relied on a variety of concerns, many of which had nothing to do with whether he committed the charged offense,” they wrote.


A key part of Trump’s legal strategy has been to delay his criminal cases until after the 2024 election, and the four weeks between oral arguments at the appeals court and Tuesday’s ruling has already meant next month’s March 4 trial date has been scrapped.

Perhaps to speed things along, the appeals court established a quick schedule for Trump to respond to Tuesday’s ruling, giving Trump until February 12 to file an emergency stay request with the Supreme Court.

That would stop the clock while his attorneys craft a more substantive appeal on the merits. If Trump is successful with getting the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, the criminal trial would not resume until after the high court decides what to do with his request for a pause.

The Supreme Court, however, can take as long as it likes at each step. The justices determine how long the Justice Department will have to respond to any Trump petition, how long Trump has to respond and controls when it would make any ruling.

Trump’s team can also appeal to the full DC Circuit to take up the case en banc, meaning the case would be heard again, but this time by the full panel of circuit judges.

If Trump does not appeal the ruling, the case would be sent back to the trial-level court in Washington, DC, as soon as next week, for pre-trial proceedings to resume.

Describes the president as an ‘officer’
One paragraph in Tuesday’s ruling has caught the attention of legal experts who are also watching the 14th Amendment “insurrectionist ban” case that is being argued at the Supreme Court on Thursday.

The cases are entirely separate – this is a criminal prosecution against Trump, and the upcoming Supreme Court case is a civil attempt to remove Trump from state ballots. Further, the appeals court’s findings and explanations in Tuesday’s ruling are not binding on the Supreme Court.


Donald Trump urges Supreme Court to keep him on ballot in final pitch before arguments
Nonetheless, the appeals ruling refers described the president as an “officer.” There is an open legal question – being argued Thursday before the Supreme Court – over whether the presidency is an “office… under the United States” and whether the presidency is an “officer,” as described in the insurrectionist ban.

The appeals ruling said: “It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/06/politics/takeaways-donald-trump-immunity-appeals-court/index.html

So trump can appeal an appeal in an appeals court, then appeal it again. Then appeal a SC ruling. Alrighty then.

"Puts him in a box": Experts say immunity ruling may have doomed Trump's Supreme Court appeal
Tatyana Tandanpolie
Tue, February 6, 2024 at 12:11 PM EST·3 min read


A federal appeals court's unanimous rejection of former President Donald Trump's immunity bid has laid the groundwork for it to be upheld if appealed to the Supreme Court, legal experts say. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday issued a 57-page opinion finding that Trump does not have blanket protection from prosecution for all acts he committed while in office. The opinion came four weeks after the circuit court heard the case in early January, and Trump is expected to appeal it to the Supreme Court.

"There was a lot of speculation over whether the four-week delay meant there was some division among the judges," George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason wrote on X/Twitter. "But this per curiam (joined by all 3, with no judge identified as the author) opinion presents a unified holding that offers the best chance to be quickly upheld."

The D.C. Circuit's decision is "not surprising," according to former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, who noted the "rather silly arguments" made by Trump's team in the appeal. "I wouldn’t be surprised if the Supreme Court declines to take this case up, letting this ruling stand," Mariotti added.

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman noted that the appeals court gave Trump until Feb. 12 to seek to extend the pause in his D.C. proceedings. "That’s very quick and puts him in a box having to find a stay before then," Litman tweeted. "Given thoroughness and unanimity of opinion, we will have lost only about six weeks should the Supreme Court deny the stay application, which we should look to it to do by around February 19. If it takes the case, mandate doesn't return to Chutkan until early July," he added.

Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, argued that the appeals court's decision leaves the high court with two options to further address Trump's immunity question. The Supreme Court can either deny the former president's forthcoming request to pause the federal election interference case's proceedings and "clear the way for the prosecution to proceed quickly; or it can grant the stay—and expedite its review of the merits of today’s ruling, with a decision by June," Vladeck explained. He said he expects the court to decide on a stay application by late next week or early the week of February 19.

"[W]e should know a *lot* more about the timing of the next steps sometime in the next two weeks," he posted, adding: "And for those asking if Trump can seek en banc review, technically he can, but it won’t help to keep the lower-court proceedings on hold. The only way to do that is to go to #SCOTUS by next Monday."

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal predicted that the Supreme Court would not take up Trump's appeal.

"Of course, anything can happen and it takes 4 of the 9 Justices to vote to hear a case," he wrote. "But Trump’s argument is so weak and the Court of Appeals decision so thorough and well done, I can see SCOTUS voting not to hear it."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/puts-him-box-experts-immunity-171139104.html

Anyone with enough money, or that can use other people's money, which ever one applies, can afford to keep making appeals. But then they actually have to file for an appeal and have grounds for an appeal. Those who don't have the money to do so can not.

That's why I've always said there are two different standards for justice in this country. The "Justice system" and the "Just Us system."

My understanding is that the appeal was written in such a fashion that it will probably lead to SCOTUS to just pass.. That would start the clock on a trial.

That isn't true, but no doubt being able to hire a good, experienced attorney gives you a better chance.


It's like anything Roy, if you don't have the money, you can't buy a hamburger.

So what your saying is that if you got the money, you can string a case out for a long long time where as the poor person can't afford to do that... Doesn't that make Pit correct?

Only we're not talking about buying a hamburger. We're talking about buying an advantage in the justice system. Something that in theory is supposed to be fair to everyone. Not just the wealthy. But claiming the justice system works in a fair manner for everyone is a myth.

Yeah this POS can buy our courts. You know the courts our tax dollars pay for. And then go ohhhhhhh the poor can’t keep up on their fixed incomes. Booo hooo….wink wink.

I love watching GOPers try to figure out how Trump is in so much troubpe while Biden is not. Here’s a clue, Biden isn’t a career criminal like Trump.

What's truly stupid about Trumps argument for Immunity is that NO PRESIDENT has ever been immune.. EVER

They were all able to do their jobs as President ( to one degree or the other) and until Trump came along, there has never been a President ignored the law and the constitution so there was never a question. (an example the Trump uses was Truman dropping the A bombs)

But what would be funny is, what if Trump wins the argument and SCOTUS twists itself into knots saying he's immune then Trump wins the election and can't do a damn thing to Biden.,.,,.

Then we can watch as the Republicans go crazy trying to change it so they can go for Biden.

Republicans are so damn short sighted on just about everything.

On top of that, you now have Stafanic and JD Vance saying they'd NOT handle another Jan 6 like Pence did. Basically admitting they'd ignore the law. They clearly aren't immune and Trump will not help them, he'll let them Dangle in the wind.

Or if they grant immunity to trump. Biden could simply have trump killed immediately. . . Immunity.