Former US president Donald Trump denounced an appeals court ruling on Tuesday that he is not immune from prosecution, calling it “nation-destroying.”
“A President of the United States must have Full Immunity in order to properly function and do what has to be done for the good of our Country,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “A Nation-destroying ruling like this cannot be allowed to stand.”
Donald Trump has no immunity from prosecution as a former president and can be tried on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal liability for actions he took while in the White House is “unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution.”
The ruling is a major legal setback for Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and he is expected to appeal it to the full DC appeals court and potentially the US Supreme Court.
A spokesman for Trump said the former president would appeal.
Trump had been scheduled to go on trial on March 4 on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden but the district judge overseeing the case was forced to postpone the start of the trial pending a ruling on the immunity issue by the appeals court.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is to preside over Trump’s election interference trial, rejected Trump’s immunity claim in December and the three judges who heard his appeal last month were also unconvinced by his arguments.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the judges said in a unanimous ruling.
“But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” they said.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the election conspiracy case against Trump, had been trying to keep the March start date for Trump’s trial on track while lawyers for the former president have sought repeatedly to delay it until after the November presidential election.
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