A United States court ruled this Tuesday (6) that former President Donald Trump is not entitled to immunity in a case in which he is accused of conspiring to alter the results of the country’s 2020 elections.
As a result, Donald Trump’s defense had asked the court for presidential immunity in this case, one of the four cases he is currently responding to. The lawyers’ claim was that Trump was president at the time and, therefore, was entitled to legal protections, such as being prevented from being criminally prosecuted.
It’s worth remembering that after Democrat Joe Biden was elected president of the United States in 2020, Trump spent weeks publicly insisting that, in fact, he was the one who had won. On January 6, 2021, he encouraged a crowd to go to the Capitol as Biden’s election was made official.
This Tuesday, however, judges at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in the United States, rejected the request. The decision can still be appealed. The trial in this case had been scheduled for March this year, but last week, judges decided to postpone it, and have not yet set a new date.
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Furthermore, Trump’s defense wants the trial to take place only after the US presidential elections in November. Donald Trump is the favorite to win the Republican Party’s internal disputes to be the party’s candidate.
The decision marks the second time in months that the justices have rejected Trump’s immunity arguments and ruled that he can be prosecuted for actions committed while in the White House.
With that, Tuesday’s case is one of four criminal trials that Trump faces as he tries to regain the White House this year.
The former president faces federal charges in Florida for illegally hiding confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate; in Georgia state court of planning to subvert the 2020 state elections and, in New York, of concealing a payment to buy former porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence.