12/24/23

By Aditi Jha

Former president Donald Trump wants a federal appeals court, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, to overturn the ruling made by a lower court that presidential immunity does not protect him from prosecution. Trump's lawyers claim that it was his presidential duty to "ensure election integrity", making it unconstitutional to criminally prosecute him for an "official act" made in the position of a president. They wrote on Saturday in a 71-page opening brief, "The Constitution establishes a powerful structural check to prevent political factions from abusing the formidable threat of criminal prosecution to disable the President and attack their political enemies. Before any single prosecutor can ask a court to sit in judgment of the President’s conduct, Congress must have approved of it by impeaching and convicting the President. That did not happen here, and so President Trump has absolute immunity." Special counsel Jack Smith tried to keep the criminal case against Trump for trial starting March 4, while Trump is trying to delay it. For now, the immunity appeal has been successful in pushing the case back further. If the trial is delayed until November and Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, he could have the 91 criminal charges against him dropped. NPR says that Trump's legal team "has sought to delay all [91 charges] until after the election." Smith claimed that Trump went beyond his presidential obligations by trying to overturn the 2020 election, falsely alleging that the vote had been stolen, and suing dozens of states in which he lost, even though the lawsuits were continuously rejected by the courts. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who oversees his criminal case, wrote that his "four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens." The argument of immunity hasn't worked in other courts, but Trump's lawyers still argue that his efforts to be reelected were for the entire country. "I was doing my duty as President to expose and further investigate a Rigged and Stolen Election. It was my obligation to do so, and the proof found is voluminous and irrefutable," Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

That's the news for today! Stay safe!