Court rejects Trump’s claim of immunity
A US federal appeals panel ruled on Tuesday that former president Donald Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting his claims that he is immune from prosecution.
Tuesday’s ruling had been expected because of the skepticism expressed by the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington when Trump’s lawyers first argued their case before the panel last month.
They claimed any act by a president cannot be prosecuted unless the president is first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate.
The appeals court gave Trump until Monday to file an emergency stay request with the Supreme Court to block its ruling. If the high court decides to hear the case, it could be several more weeks or months before a decision is made.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said the former president “respectfully disagrees” with the decision and would appeal it.
“If immunity is not granted to a president, every future president who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party,” Cheung said. “Without complete immunity, a president of the United States would not be able to properly function.”
However, the judges rejected that claim.
“The risks of chilling presidential action or permitting meritless, harassing prosecutions are unlikely, unsupported by history and ‘too remote and shadowy to shape the course of justice’,” the panel wrote. “We therefore conclude that functional policy considerations rooted in the structure of our government do not immunize former presidents from federal criminal prosecution.”
A spokesman for Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the case against Trump, declined to comment on the court’s decision.
Smith is seeking to prosecute Trump this year, and the latter is seeking to delay it until after the November election.
Potential pardon
If Trump defeats US President Joe Biden, he could presumably try to use his position as head of the executive branch to order a new attorney general to dismiss the federal cases he faces, or potentially seek a pardon for himself.
The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination did not compete in Nevada’s primary on Tuesday, which does not award any delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. He is instead focused on caucuses scheduled for Thursday, as he moves closer to clinching the nomination after back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.
However, the top vote-getter in Tuesday’s primary was not former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the only major candidate on the ballot still in the race. Instead, Nevada voters mounted a ballot box protest and gave the most votes to “None of these candidates”, a ballot option required by state law.
That leaves the results as technically meaningless in the Republican race. But they still amount to an embarrassment for Haley, who has sought to position herself as a candidate who can genuinely compete against Trump. Instead, she became the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to “none of these candidates” since that option was introduced in Nevada in 1975.
Biden easily won Nevada’s Democratic presidential primary after dominating his party’s first nominating contest in South Carolina on Saturday.