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- Donald Trump can be prosecuted for a crime, an appeals court ruled.
- The judges shot down Trump's claim that he has immunity from criminal prosecution.
- Trump's team will likely appeal the ruling to the conservative-majority Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution in the special counsel Jack Smith's election-interference case, a Washington, DC, appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
Trump was charged with four federal counts over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The case is one of four criminal cases the former president currently faces.
Smith's office also charged Trump in connection to his handling of classified information, and Trump is facing indictments from the Manhattan district attorney and the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia.
Trump's team will likely appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court.
The nation's high court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — rejected a request from Smith to fast-track Trump's absolute immunity case, refusing to bypass the appeals court. The former president's criminal trial in the election-interference case had been scheduled to kick off in March, but is no longer.
Tuesday's appeals court ruling and a possible Supreme Court showdown on the matter could have massive constitutional and political implications.
"For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution," the three-judge panel wrote in its 57-page opinion.
The panel added in its decision, "We cannot accept former President Trump's claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results."
"Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count," the panel wrote.
The three-judge panel said Trump's stance on presidential immunity "would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches."
"Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review," the judges wrote. "We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter."
Trump had a sweeping victory in the Iowa caucuses and is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. That would set him up for a rematch with President Joe Biden this year.
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
The Supreme Court will be in uncharted territory if it agrees to take up an appeal. And if Trump is convicted in Smith's case and elected for a second term, it would mark another unprecedented moment in US history: the first time the country had a president-elect who was convicted of a felony.
The scenario could also test the limits of the presidential pardon as Trump could try to pardon himself.
Trump also faces a potential felony conviction in his Manhattan hush-money case. That state-level business-fraud indictment may now be the first criminal case to go to trial. Jury selection for that case is scheduled for March 25.
Tuesday's appeals-court ruling came after the panel last month grilled Trump's legal team about the merits of its argument that Trump can't be prosecuted for a crime unless he was first impeached and convicted by Congress for it.
It culminated in Judge Florence Pan posing a series of hypotheticals to Trump lawyer D. John Sauer, and Sauer saying a former president could not be criminally prosecuted for selling pardons or military secrets if he wasn't first impeached for it.
He also refused to say if a president could be prosecuted for ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate a rival if he wasn't impeached first.
"He would have to be, and would, speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution — " Sauer began in January, but Pan cut him off.
"I asked you a yes or no question," she said. "Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?"
"If he were impeached and convicted first, and so — " Sauer began.
"So your answer is no," Pan said.
The judges also then pointed out that Trump's legal team is now arguing the exact opposite of what his defense lawyers argued when he was impeached following the Capitol riot in 2021.
His attorneys argued at the time that Trump should not be impeached and should face the courts instead.