- A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. ruled that Donald Trump does not have immunity from prosecution in his election case as a result of having been president at the time of the alleged crimes.
- Trump is expected to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling.
- The case is related to Trump’s attempt to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
CNBC
Former President Donald Trump does not have presidential immunity from prosecution on criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled Tuesday.
“We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” a three-judge panel wrote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ruling is the latest major legal loss for Trump, who is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. He is expected to quickly ask the Supreme Court to overturn the decision.
In Tuesday’s ruling, the appeals panel rejected three separate immunity arguments Trump’s lawyers made “both as a categorical defense to federal criminal prosecutions of former Presidents and as applied to this case in particular.”
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote in the 57-page opinion.
“But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” they wrote.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung decried the ruling, claiming in a statement that without “complete” presidential immunity, “every future President who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party.”
Smith’s prosecution “violates the Constitution and threatens the bedrock of our Republic,” Cheung said. He added, “President Trump respectfully disagrees with the DC Circuit’s decision and will appeal it in order to safeguard the Presidency and the Constitution.”
