Trump’s Lawyers Push Immunity Claims in Lower Court while Supreme Court Is on Sideline
Donald Trump’s lawyers argued that he was acting within his role as president when he pressed claims about “alleged fraud and irregularity” in the 2020 election, and that he is immune from prosecution.
They also asserted in a filing late Saturday night that the “historical fallout is tremendous” from the four-count indictment charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s attorneys wrote in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that “The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic — the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system.”
The appeals court’s role in the dispute is center stage after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from special counsel Jack Smith to fast-track a decision on the immunity question.
In their latest filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that all of the acts Trump is accused of are “quintessential” presidential acts that protect him from prosecution.
They also contend that, under the Constitution, he cannot be criminally prosecuted for conduct for which he was already impeached, but then acquitted, by Congress.
Federal prosecutors, by contrast, say Trump broke the law after the election by scheming to disrupt the Jan. 6, 2021, counting of electoral votes, including by pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the results and by participating in a plot to organize slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had actually won those states.
Though Trump’s lawyers have suggested that he had a good faith basis to be concerned that fraud had affected the election, courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general and other government officials have found no evidence that that was the case.
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