Former President Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled Friday.
Chutkan didn’t mince words in her ruling, writing that the presidency “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass” and that Trump’s “four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”
The historic ruling marks the first time a US court has determined that a president can be charged with crimes when out of office, Reuters noted. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” the judge concluded. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”
Trump’s lawyers aren’t expecting their Hail Mary motion to be successful in requesting sweeping immunity privileges for their client, who faces 91 charges across four criminal cases in the midst of a run for the 2024 White House. The New York Times reported Friday that the former president’s legal team has “been planning for weeks to use the defeat to begin a long-shot strategy to put off the impending trial,” which is set to begin in March, just one day before the Super Tuesday primaries.
Friday’s ruling will likely spark an appeal to a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, then to the full Court of Appeals, and ultimately to the Supreme Court, if possible. Trump’s lawyers hope these delays will push the trial past the US presidential election on November 5, 2024.
Chutkan also addressed Trump’s lawyers’ claims that shielding the president’s actions from legal scrutiny was based on longstanding American political traditions and constitutional principles. “As the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and hundreds of years of history and tradition all make clear, the President’s motivations are not for the prosecution or this Court to decide,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss the election subversion case, citing “234 years of precedent.”
“To the contrary,” Chutkan coolly replied in her ruling, “America’s founding generation envisioned a Chief Executive wholly different from the unaccountable, almost omnipotent rulers of other nations at that time.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to the ruling by saying it is an effort by Trump’s opponents “to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
“The corrupt leftists will fail, and President Trump will keep fighting for America and Americans, including by challenging these wrongful decisions in higher courts,” Cheung added.
Chutkan’s ruling wasn’t the only legal blow dealt to the Trump campaign Friday. A federal appeals court ruled earlier in the day that civil lawsuits against Trump for inciting the January 6 Capitol riot can move forward. Some Democratic lawmakers and Capitol police officers have brought the lawsuits. The former president is also likely to appeal that decision.
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