On Friday, a federal judge rejected claims by President Trump that he enjoyed absolute immunity from criminal charges accusing him of seeking to reverse the 2020 election.
The ruling by Judge Tanya Chutkan was her first denying one of Trump’s many motions to dismiss the election interference case, which is set to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in about three months.
New: To no one's surprise, Judge Chutkan, in typical hyperbolic fashion, denied Trump's motion to dismiss Jack Smith's J6 indictment on constitutional and immunity grounds.
Her "king" reference is the same language she used in her 2021 order forcing Trump to turn over records to… pic.twitter.com/rRxaRNcotW
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) December 2, 2023
From Newsmax:
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision amounts to a sharp rejection to challenges the Trump defense team had raised to the four-count indictment in advance of a trial expected to center on the Republican’s multipronged efforts to undo the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
It tees up a legal fight over the scope of presidential power that could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing in the case, is expected to quickly appeal to fight what his lawyers have characterized as an unsettled legal question.
An attorney for Trump declined to comment Friday evening.
In her ruling, Chutkan said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”
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“Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”
Chutkan also rejected Trump’s claims that the indictment violates the former president’s free speech rights. Lawyers for Trump had argued that he was within his First Amendment rights to challenge the outcome of the election and to allege that it had been tainted by fraud, and they accused prosecutors of attempting to criminalize political speech and political advocacy.
But Chutkan said “it is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime.”
“Defendant is not being prosecuted simply for making false statements … but rather for knowingly making false statements in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy and obstructing the electoral process,” she wrote.
Her ruling comes the same day the federal appeals court in Washington ruled that lawsuits accusing Trump of inciting the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, can move forward.
The appeals court in that case turned away Trump’s claims that presidential immunity shields him from liability in the lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and police officers. But the three-judge panel said the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner can continue to fight, as the cases proceed, to try to prove that his actions were taken in his official capacity as president.
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