Special Counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to respond by Dec. 30, after which a three-judge panel will hear oral arguments on Trump’s ‘immunity’ appeal of his D.C. indictment on Jan. 9
A federal appeals court should dismiss Donald Trump’s federal felony indictment on election-subversion charges on the grounds that he has “immunity” from prosecution for acts committed while president, attorneys for Trump argued in a court filing Saturday night.
The 71-page opening brief from Trump’s legal team took direct aim at Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal charges, calling them “unlawful and unconstitutional” because under the U.S. government system the judicial branch “cannot sit in judgment over a President’s official acts.”
Trump’s lawyers argue that the only way a current or former president can be charged for official acts is if he’s both impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. They also lean hard into an untested legal argument that Trump can’t be prosecuted for acts where he did get impeached but the Senate acquitted him.
If he somehow gets granted immunity (which, despite all of the special treatment he has received and is continuing to receive, I find extremely unlikely because that would mean every single president past, present, and future would be similarly immune from prosecution for any crimes whatsoever), we need to be rioting in the streets.
I’m not healthy enough to be rioting or spending even a couple days in jail, but I’ll fucking do it anyway. This is fascism with no exaggeration. If this goes through and my fellow Americans grumble and shrug their shoulders… I don’t even know. Maybe I would be rioting against everybody sitting in their houses letting it happen.
That’s how democracy dies. In apathetic silence.