Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media at one of his properties, 40 Wall Street, following closing arguments at his civil fraud trial on January 11, 2024 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
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 ruled Tuesday.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” a panel of three appellate judges wrote in the unanimous decision.
“But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” read their 57-page ruling.
Trump is expected to quickly ask the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court decision.
The legal battle over Trump’s immunity claim stems from the criminal election interference case being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Trump is charged in that case with four counts of crimes including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.
Defense lawyers, seeking to dismiss the case, had argued to Judge Tanya Chutkan that Trump has “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the charges relate to official acts performed while he was president.
After Chutkan declined to dismiss the charges, Trump’s attorneys brought the immunity argument to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That move put the case on hold in Chutkan’s court.
Smith, seeking to avoid a drawn-out legal dispute that could delay Trump’s trial, beseeched the Supreme Court to quickly take up the dispute. The high court declined to do so, putting the matter back into the appeals court’s hands.
The immunity battle has already taken a toll on the timeline of the case: While waiting for the appeals court’s ruling, Chutkan vacated the trial date previously scheduled for March 4.
Smith alleges Trump, using false election fraud claims as a pretext, tried to reverse President Joe Biden‘s victory through multiple criminal conspiracies. Those allegedly include organizing slates of illegitimate pro-Trump electors in states Biden won, trying to use the Justice Department to conduct “sham” election crime investigations, and challenging the count of legitimate electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has called the case a “witch hunt” and claimed that it is intended to harm his 2024 presidential campaign.
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