WHATS NEXT: Court Rules Against Trump on Immunity | OfficialACLJ

➡ Join OfficialACLJ with Jordan Sekulow as he discusses the DC Court of Appeals decision that a president can be taken to court for things they did while in office, even after they’re not president anymore. This is about a case against Donald Trump for four things he did while he was president. The court said that once a president leaves office, they can be sued just like any other person. This is a big change in how our government works.

The DC Court of Appeals has held that member Jack Smith was looking before he started his trial against. Criminal trial against Donald Trump on four issues. Those four issues were conspiracy to defraud the US by overturning the election results, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, the obstruction of an attempt to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote, and conspiracy against the rights of one or more person to vote and to have their votes counted in violation of us code.

Now, all of those, again, were challenged by President Trump under. These were done as presidential acts. Presidential. There’s immunity here, so you can’t bring the charge. Congress could impeach and things like that, but can’t bring charges, and yet they have. This case goes to the fundamental issue of presidential authority and the role of the courts and the president. And this is why this matters to the american people.

Put Donald Trump aside. The idea that a president of the United States can be sued. I mean, think about this is one thing. Clinton versus Jones. Clinton was sued, criminally prosecuted, for a decision you make while president puts the courts, the article three branch of government, in priority. The reason you have presidential immunity is so that a president makes a decision while he’s in office. Even a controversial one.

Going into Iraq, George W. Bush looking for weapons of mass destruction. There are none. Not closing the border. So fentanyl’s getting in and people are dying. Can the president then be criminally charged for accessory to murder because he let this happen while they were president, or in Trump’s situation? So here is what’s fundamentally at stake here. This court, the DC circuit, ruled that first immunity evaporates the moment you leave the White House.

So on January 20, at twelve one, you’re free game to be sued or indicted on page three of their opinion. For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all 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. Even though all of the acts he is being prosecuted over happened while he was president of the United States.

These are not acts post presidency. That’s totally different issue. But they’re saying he’s lost the ability to assert the executive immunity because he’s no longer in office for things he did while in office. This totally fundamentally changes the way our government operates. We believe in a unitary executive. The president is uniquely the only branch of government that is one person, the president. And the reason you have immunity, and I’ve argued immunity cases for presidents before the Supreme Court of the United States, three of them.

And the reason you have forms of immunity is so that a president is not worried while they’re making a decision that they could be criminally prosecuted for it the moment they leave office. To say that somehow presidential immunity evaporates after you leave office is ridiculous. To say that this president, while acting as president of the United States, is not only longer clothed with immunity once he leaves office and he becomes just citizen Trump is to chill any action taken by a president to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution while he’s in office that he or she may think is appropriate.

And it makes them subject not just to civil actions, but to criminal prosecution, because they no longer have that cloak of immunity once they leave office. My reading of the opinion of the DC circuit is that they misunderstood the question that they were presented with. So they argue on the first page of their opinion that the indictment alleges that former President Trump understood that he lost the election and that the election results were legitimate, but that he nevertheless was determined to remain in power.

Instead, they should have read that particular fact pattern as follows, that President Trump understood that he had won the election and the election results were illegitimate. Therefore, he pursued actions in his official capacity to vindicate his opinion. Now, you can debate whether the President Trump was right or wrong in having that opinion, but if you accept the latter interpretation of his conduct, then I think it’s easy to see that virtually each and every act that he took was designed to vindicate his opinion.

Whether it was right or wrong, he took action to vindicate his opinion. And if he took action to vindicate his opinion while president, and assuming that action was legitimate, I would argue that immunity would still apply going forward. The one thing that the Democrats are doing because they hate Trump so much is they’re literally attacking common sense and suspending the Constitution. They literally are going to do anything.

They can change any rule, change any law, attack any institution, manipulate any institution, just to get Donald Trump. We talk a lot about attacks on democracy. I think that the Democrats who constantly say that Donald Trump is attacking democracy need to look in the mirror and see what they’re doing to our institutions in order just to get them. There’s a specific statement that says official acts can never be examinable by the courts.

But of course, this court, and of course, that’s what Trump argued. But this court just simply says, oh, well, Trump misreads that. And as you read through the multiple pages of that discussion, it’s the same thing of they actually will say, something that actually supports Trump’s statement. But then in the next sentence, they’ll say something exactly opposite, which is the same as what they did. As has been pointed out.

Know, we’re going to assume all the allegations are true. And in the very next statement, they say, oh, but they haven’t been proven by the evidence. And here’s the difficulty with that whole thing. So what they’re saying is we’ve got to assume that the charges as set forth in the indictment are true and then determine immunity, which is the opposite of what Trump’s alleging. But what they’re saying with Marlberry versus Madison is official acts.

And then, of course, this court’s saying basically that the election integrity issue was not an official act. And how does a court get to make that call?.

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