Appeals Court's Trump immunity decision contains a colorful, devastating summary of charges against the appellant

[bigtree]

Link to tweet

(excerpts)

PER CURIAM: Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States on November 8, 2016. He was sworn into office at noon on January 20, 2017, and served until his term expired at noon on January 20, 2021. At that moment, President Trump became former President Trump and his successor, Joseph R. Biden, became President and began his own four-year term.

Although this sequence is set by the Constitution, it did not proceed peacefully. Indeed, from election day 2020 forward, the government alleges that President Trump denied that he had lost his bid for a second term and challenged the election results through litigation, pressure on state and federal officers, the organization of an alternate slate of electors and other means. His alleged interference in the constitutionally prescribed sequence culminated with a Washington, D.C., rally held on January 6, 2021, the day set by the Electoral Count Act for the Congress to meet in joint session to certify the election results. The rally headlined by President Trump resulted in a march of thousands to the Capitol and the violent breach of the Capitol Building. The breach delayed the congressional proceedings for several hours and it was not until the early morning of January 7th that the 2020 presidential election results were certified, naming Joseph R. Biden as the soon-to-be 46th President.

Since then, hundreds of people who breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been prosecuted and imprisoned. And on August 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C., former President Trump was charged in a four-count Indictment as a result of his actions challenging the election results and interfering with the sequence set forth in the Constitution for the transfer of power from one President to the next. Former President Trump moved to dismiss the Indictment and the district court denied his motion. Today, we affirm the denial. 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.

Former President Trump did not concede the 2020 election and, in the ensuing months, he and his supporters made numerous attempts to challenge the results. Many of their attempts were allegedly criminal.1 A District of Columbia federal grand jury indicted former President Trump on four criminal counts arising from the steps he allegedly took to change the outcome of the election: (1) conspiracy to defraud the United States by overturning the election results, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; (2) conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — i.e., the Congress’s certification of the electoral vote — in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); (3) obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, the certification of the electoral vote, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2; and (4) conspiracy against the rights of one or more persons to vote and to have their votes counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.

At this stage of the prosecution, we assume that the allegations set forth in the Indictment are true. We emphasize that whether the Indictment’s allegations are supported by evidence sufficient to sustain convictions must be determined at a later stage of the prosecution.

The Indictment alleges that former President Trump understood that he had lost the election and that the election results were legitimate but that he nevertheless was “determined to remain in power.?? He then conspired with others to cast doubt on the election’s outcome and contrived to have himself declared the winner. (The Former President Trump’s campaign and his supporters also unsuccessfully challenged the election results in several state and federal courts.)

Indictment charges that he and his co-conspirators allegedly advanced their goal through five primary means:

First, they “used knowingly false claims of election fraud” to attempt to persuade state legislators and election officials to change each state’s electoral votes in former President Trump’s favor. For example, he and his allies falsely declared “that more than ten thousand dead voters had voted in Georgia”; “that there had been 205,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania”; “that more than 30,000 non- citizens had voted in Arizona”; and “that voting machines . . . had switched votes from [Trump] to Biden.”

Second, then-President Trump and his co-conspirators “organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states . . . attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow.” They “then caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the Vice President and other government officials to be counted at the certification proceeding on January 6.”

Third, then-President Trump and his co-conspirators pressed officials at the Department of Justice “to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.”

Third, then-President Trump and his co-conspirators pressed officials at the Department of Justice “to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.”

Fourth, then-President Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to “use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.” When the Vice President rebuffed them, he stirred his base of supporters to increase pressure on the Vice President. Ultimately, on the morning of January 6, 2021, he held a rally in Washington D.C. where he “repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters” and “directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding and exert pressure on the Vice President to take the fraudulent actions he had previously refused.”

Fifth, and finally, from the January 6 rally, thousands of his supporters — “including individuals who had traveled to Washington and to the Capitol at [his] direction” — swarmed the United States Capitol, causing “violence and chaos” that required the Congress to temporarily halt the election- certification proceeding. At that point, he and his co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification.”

Then-President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results were unsuccessful and the Congress certified the Electoral College vote in favor of President-Elect Biden. On January 11, 2021, nine days before President-Elect Biden’s inauguration, the House of Representatives adopted an impeachment resolution charging then-President Trump with “Incitement of Insurrection.” H.R. Res. 24, 117th Cong. (2021). The single article of impeachment alleged that he had violated “his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States . . . [and] his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed . . . by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” The impeachment resolution asserted that “President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or that his statements on the morning of January 6 “encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol,” and that he attempted to “subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election” by other means, including by threatening a Georgia state official into manipulating the results.

Importantly, by the time the United States Senate conducted a trial on the article of impeachment, he had become former President Trump. At the close of the trial, on February 13, 2021, fifty-seven Senators voted to convict him and forty- three voted to acquit him. Because two-thirds of the Senate did not vote for conviction, he was acquitted on the article of impeachment.

more: https://t.co/gFP5xgpWOf


...some more tidbits:

(Jackson, J., concurring). 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.

* * *

At bottom, former President Trump’s stance 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. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude that there is no functional justification for immunizing former Presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former President Trump from the specific charges in the Indictment. In so holding, we act, “not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance.”

read the full opinion: https://t.co/gFP5xgpWOf

MoJones: Best Lines in the Court Decision Blasting Trump’s Immunity Claim
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/trump-immunity-federal-appeals-court-2024-election-january-6/

[Ocelot II]

1. I see now why it took longer than expected.

They were carefully sealing up all the cracks.

And it's also interesting that it was an unsigned per curiam opinion.

[bigtree]

4. I'd guess the jusrisdiction section took the most time

...and the most care.

That's where I think they were most vulnerable in upholding the judge's ruling, not the actual question, but the ability of the appeals court to hear the case before trial.

Although, they had a solid case for taking up the appeal, I think.

[Ocelot II]

6. That's my guess as well.

The basic immunity issues are pretty straightforward but the question of whether the decision was immediately appealable, giving the court jurisdiction, was more complicated and they had to be sure they nailed it down.

[cilla4progress]

2. Gratifying,

to say the least.

[Takket]

3. That was very well written

Not sure how SCOTUS can overturn that but I’m more worried about the 14th amendment appeals than the immunity one. Immunity always seemed completely absurd.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. There it is, consistent with 14A Sec 3 "At this stage of the prosecution, we assume that the allegations set forth ..."

"At this stage of the prosecution, we assume that the allegations set forth in the Indictment are true."

So, IF it turns out the allegations are false, Trump can ask the Congress to remove the disqualification IF he wins the election. All his chestnuts would have to align with the planets.

"Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

So from this ruling, high level courts seem to want to return to normalcy, meaning the pre-Trump era. No way that Bozo will capture 2/3 of each House. SCOTUS will disqualify him. And if he feels differently, and wins the election, he can go challenge it in Congress. This is why it doesn't say there must be a conviction. The courts may disqualify, or the Congress may decline to re-qualify. It's politics, and we may still be in for a year of "was it an insurrection? No! It was tourists!"