Like any other citizen, Donald Trump does not enjoy immunity, according to a court ruling issued this Friday. He does not have a licence, but he can get away with delaying the criminal trial for trying to annul the results of the 2020 elections until after the 2024 elections.
Federal Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing this case, rejected Trump’s request this Friday that he enjoys total immunity from those criminal charges, thus denying his argument that this accusation should be thrown in the trash because it is based on actions he took while he was president.
This is the first resolution in which the judge denies the former president one of the many requests to archive the summary in the electoral interference case, whose trial is scheduled in Washington in about three months.
In reality, Trump’s lawyers already more than expected that this request would be rejected. They know it has little or no basis. His plans, however, are to use this resolution in his strategy to postpone the trial. His path is to appeal this decision and go to the Supreme Court if necessary. His calculation is that if they lose their challenges, this will take time and will allow them to delay the matter and put it before a jury in a period beyond the polls to decide in November 2024.
The defenders filed the allegation in October and maintain that Trump cannot be held accountable for any official actions he took as president, even after a grand jury has voted on four criminal indictments against him. It is one thing to be a president and another to be a coup leader, many jurists remember.
Although the Department of Justice ruled that accusations cannot be made against a president while he is exercising his mandate, the commitment to request total immunity means extending this concept far beyond what is stipulated and understandable.
“The text and structure of the Constitution and history do not support that contention,” Chutkan noted in his resolution. “No court, nor any other branch of government, has ever accepted that. And this court remains there. Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time and that position does not give a lifetime pass to freedom from jail,” he clarified.
“The former president does not enjoy any special conditions regarding his criminal responsibility. “The defendant may be subject to investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal act committed while he was in office,” he noted in his 48-page reasoning.
Furthermore, the judge stressed that this accusation does not violate the first amendment of the Constitution (freedom of expression), another of the arguments alleged by Trump to derail the matter.
“It is more than well established that the first amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument to commit a crime and, consequently, indictment, in which charges are established, among others, for making statements in support of a crime, “It does not violate the rights of the accused,” he indicated.
It was not the only judicial resolution this Friday that aggravates Trump’s problems. A federal appeals court opened the door to many more lawsuits against the former president. In this other resolution it was decreed that Trump can be held responsible before a civil court for the consequences of the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Here, according to the court, he is not immune either. This decision, which will almost certainly be appealed to another court, may be a crucial legal precedent that Trump’s actions that day were outside the scope of his presidential duties and therefore not protected by immunity. .
This started with the claim in 2021 of two Capitol police officers and a dozen Democratic legislators. They considered that Trump instigated the violence by telling his followers to march towards the citadel of democracy because the elections had been stolen and that they should “fight like demons.”
