WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s effort to dismiss his election subversion case in Washington based on claims of presidential immunity on Friday, ruling that the office does not grant him the “divine right of kings to evade the criminal liability that governs his fellow citizens.”
The ruling comes just hours after a D.C. Circuit panel ruled that same claim did not grant him civil immunity from a slate of lawsuits brought by police officers and Democratic lawmakers, striking down a similar motion to dismiss the cases.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan strongly rejected Trump’s arguments in no uncertain terms.
“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote in her opinion. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”
The Barack Obama appointee asserts that when writing the Constitution, the Founding Fathers purposefully did not grant the President the same immunities that they explicitly carved out for Senators and Representatives to avoid creating an American king.
“America’s founding generation envisioned a Chief Executive wholly different from the unaccountable, omnipotent rulers of other nations at that time,” Chutkan wrote, citing Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 69.
She said that the “Constitution’s silence” on the issue is a clear parallel.
The judgment blocks another attempt from Trump to delay the trial — scheduled to begin March 4, 2024 — after he tried to force Chutkan to recuse herself over claims of political bias against him.
Trump is likely to appeal the ruling to the D.C. Circuit and, if unsuccessful there, again to the Supreme Court where conservative-appointed justices hold a 6-3 majority.
His lawyers recently faced a D.C. Circuit panel in their challenge of the now-paused gag order that had been imposed in the Washington case.
The three-judge panel, made up of U.S. Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard, Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, grilled Trump’s appellate attorney, John Sauer, and special counsel attorney Cecil VanDevender, for over 2 ½ hours.
Sauer argued that that Trump should be allowed to comment on the case as it is both relevant to his campaign and political speech protected by the First Amendment, which the panel, each appointed by Democratic presidents, partially agreed with.
The judges seemed in favor of a more tailored gag order that could better balance Trump’s First Amendment rights and protect the criminal proceedings from his unending online posts.
John Lauro, of firm Lauro & Singer, argued in the initial motion to dismiss that because Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were well within the “outer perimeter" of the president’s official responsibility, a legal standard that provides a wide range of protection for the executive from political prosecution after leaving office.
The argument was an expansion of a 1982 D.C. Circuit ruling, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which held that former President Richard Nixon couldn’t be held liable for damages in a civil suit related to his official responsibilities.
Chutkan rejected Lauro’s argument, ruling that while the standard set by the D.C. Circuit did grant presidents the same “absolute immunity” that prosecutors and judges hold from civil suits, it could not be expanded to criminal cases.
“While in Fitzgerald the ‘careful analogy to the common law absolute immunity of judges and prosecutors’ demonstrated history’s support for the former President’s civil immunity, here that same history compels the denial of a former President’s criminal immunity,” Chutkan wrote.
Trump faces four criminal charges in his Washington case: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against the right to vote and have one’s vote counted, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and obstruction of an official proceeding.
Chutkan’s Friday night ruling is a forceful reminder of Trump’s role in the case as a criminal defendant who must face the charges levied against him, in addition to reminding him that a president is not a king.
“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings,” Chutkan wrote. “’No man in this country,’ not even the former president, ’is so high that he is above the law,’” Chutkan wrote, citing United States v. Lee.
This story is developing and will be updated...
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