A federal appeals court has rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution—and rightly so.
A federal appeals court ruled today that former President Donald Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution for his actions following the 2020 presidential election, upholding the basic principle that no American is above the law.
“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 D.C. Circuit Court’s unsigned, unanimous opinion states.
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It’s the sort of ruling that might have seemed superfluous not very long ago: Essential ideas about American government have long presupposed that the president, like every other citizen, can be punished if he commits crimes. Although the court makes that explicit, and clears the way (for now) for Trump’s prosecution for attempted election subversion to proceed, it is a sign of the country’s fragility that the question was even up for debate.
Since Special Counsel Jack Smith in June 2023 filed charges related to Trump’s paperwork coup, the former president has sought to turn aside or, at the very least, delay his trial in the matter. He hopes that if he is reelected, he could quash the case; if the trial happens sooner, polls suggest that a conviction would be a major obstacle to his reelection.
In one prong of that effort, Trump argued that he couldn’t be prosecuted. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the trial, rejected his claim; Trump then appealed. Among other arguments, his lawyers asserted that his actions after the election were part of his official duties as president. Established law states that presidents are immune to civil lawsuits related to their official duties, and Trump wanted the court to extend that to criminal cases. Trump also argued that a former president could not face criminal prosecution unless he had already been impeached and convicted by Congress. (Trump was impeached after the January 6 insurrection, but the Senate did not convict—in part because many senators concluded that they had no jurisdiction over a by-then-former president.)
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Oral arguments last month suggested that the court was skeptical of Trump’s claims. Under questioning from Judge Florence Pan, Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer acknowledged that under his arguments, a president could order the military to assassinate a political rival and get off scot-free if the Senate didn’t convict him.
Many of Trump’s legal pleadings in recent years have taken the form of dilation rather than persuasion, with judges easily poking holes in his attorney’s arguments like this one. In today’s decision, the court turned arguments made by Trump’s attorneys against him.
For example, in finding that a former president was not immune from prosecution unless first impeached and convicted, the court noted that “during President Trump’s 2021 impeachment proceedings for incitement of insurrection, his counsel argued that instead of post-Presidency impeachment, the appropriate vehicle for ‘investigation, prosecution, and punishment’ is ‘the article III courts,’ as ‘[w]e have a judicial process’ and ‘an investigative process … to which no former officeholder is immune.’”
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The court also knocked down the idea that Trump can’t be prosecuted for official actions by using his own brief. “He agrees that if he had been convicted by the Senate in that impeachment trial, he would not be immune from prosecution for the ‘official acts’ at issue here … Thus, he concedes that a President can be prosecuted for broadly defined ‘official acts,’ such as the ones alleged in the Indictment, under some circumstances, i.e., following an impeachment conviction.”
In sum, today’s ruling is a resounding legal defeat for Trump, and heartening for rule of law. Trump will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, though proceedings so far offer him little hope that the justices would find differently than the lower court.
But Trump may still win by losing. Chutkan last week said that the trial would not begin on March 4, as previously scheduled, citing the pending appeals-court decision. Each delay increases the chances that Trump won’t see a verdict before Election Day. Federal judges can rule that Trump is not immune from prosecution, and that is true as a matter of law. But as a matter of practice, a second-term President Trump could ensure otherwise.
Court: Yes, Rule of Law Exists
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06.02.2024
A federal appeals court has rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution—and rightly so.
A federal appeals court ruled today that former President Donald Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution for his actions following the 2020 presidential election, upholding the basic principle that no American is above the law.
“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 D.C. Circuit Court’s unsigned, unanimous opinion states.
David A. Graham: A thought experiment about SEAL Team 6 goes terribly, terribly wrong
It’s the sort of ruling that might have seemed superfluous not very long ago: Essential ideas about American government have long presupposed that the president, like every other citizen, can be punished if he commits crimes. Although the court makes that explicit, and clears the way (for now) for Trump’s prosecution for attempted election subversion to proceed, it is a sign of the country’s fragility that the question was even up for........
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