WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump appeared in federal court Tuesday, seeking immunity from charges that he plotted to manipulate the results of the 2020 presidential election and knowingly lied to his supporters who turned violent on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump, who is leading in the polls in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, watched as his lawyer, D. John Sauer, was grilled by a jury while arguing that the former president was immune from criminal prosecution because he acted in an official capacity. Trump later suggested in a brief press conference that a ruling against his immunity claim would spark “pandemonium” among his supporters.
The former president arrived in the courtroom with his legal team minutes before the hearing began and sat mostly expressionless and not taking notes as Sauer answered questions from a three-judge, all-female panel, reporters in the courtroom said. Dozens of other journalists watched a live feed from a media room at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse.
Presiding Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs peppered Sauer with question after question for about 40 minutes as he argued that Trump’s actions before and on January 6 were “official” and that his eventual acquittal by the U.S. Senate protected him from double jeopardy.
Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection on January 6.
The decision of the appellate judges – Henderson, who was appointed under President George HW Bush, and the other judges recently appointed by President Joe Biden – will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, where a ruling could have significant implications for the president’s liability.
When asked, Sauer told the appeals committee that “authorizing the prosecution of a president for his official actions would open a Pandora’s box. [from] from which this country may never recover.”
The judges questioned whether the actions of a president during his term in office, regardless of their legality, were immune from criminal prosecution.
“They say a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival,” Pan told Sauer.
Sauer acknowledged that the sale of military secrets “seems to me like something that cannot be considered an official act.”
Pan responded that Sauer’s admission undermined the Trump team’s argument that the separation of powers in government guarantees that the judiciary cannot hold the executive accountable.
“Given that you acknowledge that presidents can be prosecuted under certain circumstances, the question before us is not then limited to, ‘Can a president be prosecuted without first being charged and convicted?'” Pan said.
“Your separation of powers argument falls apart, your political arguments fall apart if you admit that a president can be prosecuted under certain circumstances,” Pan said.
Henderson questioned whether Trump’s actions could be justified as official acts, saying: “I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to ensure the faithful enforcement of the law allows him to [federal law].”
The fall of the government
Acting Special Counsel James Pearce, speaking on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the future would be “terrifyingly frightening” and “terrifying” if presidents were granted complete immunity from criminal prosecution.
Pearce rejected the idea that the floodgates would be opened for trials against presidents.
“This investigation does not reflect that we will see a reversal of vindictive retaliation in the future. I think it reflects the fundamentally unprecedented nature of the charges brought here,” Pearce said.
According to reporters in the room, Trump could be seen shaking his head in disapproval at the comment.
“If I understood my friend on the other side correctly, what he is saying here is: A president orders his SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and resigns, for example before impeachment, [it’s] “It’s not a criminal act. I think it’s an extraordinarily frightening future,” Pearce said during his 20-minute questioning.
In his five-minute rebuttal, Sauer said we have lived in the United States for 235 years where a president “is very, very, very rarely prosecuted because he has to be indicted and convicted first. That is not a scary future, that is our republic.”
Sauer said the indictment against Trump now creates “a situation where we are dealing with the prosecution of the political opponent who is leading in all the polls in next year’s presidential election and is being indicted by the administration he is seeking to replace.”
The three-judge panel concluded its oral arguments after an hour and 15 minutes and gave no indication when the judges would announce a decision.
Trump demands immunity and warns of “chaos”
In brief remarks after the hearing at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington – which was a Trump brand until his company sold the lease in 2022 – Trump said presidents should enjoy immunity, asserted his innocence and suggested his supporters would cause further unrest if he were prosecuted.
Biden is using federal law enforcement to politically harm his main rival, Trump said.
“That’s how they’re going to try to win,” he said. “But that’s not how it’s going to go. There’s going to be chaos in the country. This is a very bad thing, a very bad precedent. As we’ve said, it’s opening a Pandora’s box. It’s very sad what’s happened with this whole situation.”
“When you talk about a threat to democracy, that is a real threat to democracy and I believe that as president you should have immunity,” Trump added.
The comments were based on a strategy The Trump campaign has For months, he has tried to exploit the former president’s myriad legal difficulties to improve his electoral chances by portraying him as a victim of political persecution.
Trump hinted that he would face criminal prosecution for official actions related to curbing voter fraud and repeated the disproven claim that the 2020 election was decided by voter fraud.
“I have done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong,” he added. “I work for the country.”
Trump spoke for just over seven minutes and did not answer any questions.
Charges against Trump
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in December disputed Trump’s motion to dismiss his lawsuit based on presidential immunity.
US Special Counsel Jack Smith urged the Supreme Court to take up the case immediately and bypass the appeals court, but the judges rejected.
A federal grand jury accused Trump in August for influencing the election results following the November 2020 presidential election.
The accusation accuses Trump of conspiring with lawyers, a U.S. Department of Justice official, and a political adviser (all anonymous) to organize fraudulent electors for Trump from seven key states that Biden actually won. Those states included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The indictment also details Trump’s pressure campaign against former Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors from those states in his ceremonial role in certifying the election results on January 6, 2021.
In the run-up to that date, the indictment says, Trump deliberately fed his supporters a barrage of lies that he had won the election. This sparked a rally at which he gave a speech on January 6, 2021, which culminated in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. The official four charges against Trump include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction and attempted obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to violate human rights.
