The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday at long last tossed disgraced former President Trump’s bid for immunity from federal prosecution over his failed post-2020 election coup attempt.
The bad news is that the court gave the fat fuck six days to appeal for an en banc to the DC Circuit’s full bench or to the Supreme Court, increasing the chances that the stay of the pretrial motions and then the start of the actual trial – which its March 4th kickoff is already shot – will be postponed into summer or even fall. The good news is that the decision was unanimous, decreasing those chances.
“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 panel of three judges wrote in their bloodbath of a decision. More details to come as we read through it.
The hardest dickpunch in the per curium (signed by the three judge panel) opinion: “We have balanced former President Trump’s asserted interests in executive immunity against the vital public interests that favor allowing this prosecution to proceed. We conclude that ‘[c]oncerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case. We also have considered his contention that he is entitled to categorical immunity from criminal liability for any assertedly ‘official’ action that he took as President – a contention that is unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution. Finally, we are unpersuaded by his argument that this prosecution is barred by ‘double jeopardy principles.’ Accordingly, the order of the district court is AFFIRMED.”