Federal prosecutors asked an appeals court on Saturday to reject former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said the indictment should remain in place even though it arose from actions he took while in the White House.

The government’s filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was part of an ongoing struggle between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, over whether former presidents can be criminally liable for things they did in office.

The fight over immunity is arguably the most important aspect of the election interference case, involving both new questions of law and consequential issues of timing. The case is set to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in early March but has been put on hold until Mr. Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges on grounds of immunity are resolved.

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  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    511 months ago

    No, this will certainly be rejected, even by this SCOTUS (they’ve already ruled against Trump a few times, and this one is even more ridiculous).

    Something I haven’t seen trump’s lackeys acknowledge is that if they ruled in his favour, it would apply to Biden, Obama, and Clinton, too. Not sure they’d like that as much.