TRUMP APPEALS RULING REJECTING IMMUNITY CLAIM
Separately, former president returns to N.Y. for fraud trial
Former President Donald Trump is appealing a ruling that found he is not immune from criminal prosecution as he runs out of opportunities to delay or even derail an upcoming trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Lawyers for the 2024 Republican presidential primary frontrunner filed a notice of appeal Thursday indicating that they will challenge U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision rejecting Trump’s bid to dismiss the case headed to trial in Washington, D.C., in March.
The one-page filing, the first step in a process that could potentially reach the Supreme Court in the months ahead, was accompanied by a request from the Trump team to freeze deadlines in the case while the appeals court considers the matter.
The appeal had been expected given that Trump’s lawyers had earlier signaled their plans to pursue all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, what they say is a legally untested question of a former president’s immunity from prosecution. It’s part of a broader strategy by him and his lawyers to try to postpone the criminal cases against him until after next year’s presidential election, averting trials that could unfold in the heat of the presidential campaign.
The appeals court is expected to schedule dates for written briefs and oral arguments, though it’s not clear when those would be.
The argument that Trump is immune from prosecution for actions taken within his role as president has for months been seen as perhaps the most weighty and legally consequential objection to the case made by the Trump lawyers ahead of trial. No former president has ever been prosecuted before, a lack of historical precedent Trump’s team has seized on in trying to get the indictment tossed out.
However, the rejection last week by a three-judge panel of the appeals court of Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity in civil cases accusing him of inciting the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, suggest he likely faces an uphill battle. While it’s possible the Supreme Court may feel compelled to step in to address an unprecedented legal question, there’s also no guarantee the justices will take the case up at this stage.
Meanwhile, Trump on Thursday returned to his civil fraud trial in New York to spotlight his defense, renewing his complaints that the case is baseless and heaping praise on an accounting professor’s testimony that backed him up.
With testimony winding down after more than two months, Trump showed up to watch New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov.
The academic disputed the crux of New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit: that Trump’s financial statements were filled with fraudulently inflated asset values for such signature assets as his Trump Tower penthouse and his Mar-aLago club in Florida.
“My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” said Bartov, whom Trump’s lawyers hired to give expert perspective. Trump’s financial statements, he said, “were not materially misstated.”
He suggested that anything problematic — like a huge year-to-year leap in the estimated value of the Trump Tower triplex — was simply an error.
James’ lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. of misleading banks and insurers by giving them financial statements that padded his net worth by billions of dollars.