US appeals court judges skeptical of Trump’s immunity
A panel of US appeals court judges appeared skeptical on Tuesday of Donald Trump’s claim that as a former president he should be immune from prosecution on charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election. The 77-year-old Trump attended the appeals court hearing held under tight security in a federal courthouse just blocks away from the US Capitol stormed by his supporters on Jan 6, 2021.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is scheduled to go on trial in Washington on March 4 on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s attorney John Sauer told a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that a president can only be prosecuted for actions taken while in the White House if they have first been impeached and convicted by Congress.
“To authorize the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open a Pandora’s Box from which this nation may never recover,” Sauer said. “The notion that criminal immunity for a president doesn’t exist is a shocking holding ... It would authorize, for example, the indictment of President Biden in the Western District of Texas after he leaves office for mismanaging the border.”
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is to preside over Trump’s election interference trial, rejected his immunity claim last month and the judges who heard his appeal on Tuesday also appeared to be unconvinced by the argument. “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty ‘to take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ allows him to violate criminal laws,” said Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of former Republican president George H W Bush.
Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, asked whether a president who ordered the assassination of a political rival by the Navy SEAL special forces could be criminally prosecuted even if they had not been impeached and convicted first by Congress. “My answer is a qualified yes,” Sauer said. “There’s a political process that would have to occur.”
“So therefore he’s not completely and absolutely immune because under the procedure that you concede he can be prosecuted if there’s an impeachment and conviction by the Senate,” Pan said. James Pearce, an attorney for the Justice Department, pushed back against the immunity claim and said the circumstances surrounding Trump’s conduct were unique.—AFP