Trump is not ‘above the law’ and should not get blanket immunity, DOJ states : NPR

The Justice Office urged a choose Thursday to reject Donald Trump’s bid to dismiss the federal election interference case against him, arguing for the bedrock theory that “no 1 is higher than the law.”

“He is issue to the federal prison guidelines like extra than 330 million other Us citizens, such as Associates of Congress, federal judges, and day-to-day citizens,” wrote assistant exclusive counsel James Pearce.

Previously this thirty day period, Trump’s authorized group moved to dismiss four felony fees versus him in Washington, D.C., on the floor that he must love presidential “immunity.” The Supreme Court docket has not dominated on these a assert of absolute immunity from a existing or previous president.

Trump’s lawful crew has instructed that they may seek out overview of the concern just before the nation’s highest court, which could also enable him acquire a delay of the trial scheduled for March 4, 2024.

But in their new filing, prosecutors wrote that the lawful issue is not a shut or intricate a person. Alternatively, they said, Trump mischaracterized the allegations against him and vastly overstated the historic and constitutional aid for his claims.

Less than Justice Section interpretations, sitting down presidents appreciate only non permanent immunity from prosecution that ends soon after they depart the White Home, the unique counsel crew claimed. To increase this kind of protections to a former president would “properly preclude any variety of accountability for a president who commits crimes at the end of his expression of business.”

If the court docket accepts Trump’s sweeping arguments, the Justice Division mentioned, it would protect presidents who consider bribes in trade for rewarding federal contracts for their family associates presidents who instruct the FBI to plant evidence on political adversaries and presidents who sell nuclear tricks to overseas rivals. The logic is especially troubling in a president’s next time period, the distinctive counsel group wrote, when a president no more time requires to deal with voters in another election, removing nevertheless a further check on his habits.

“Immunity from legal prosecution would be significantly inappropriate wherever, as right here, the previous president is alleged to have engaged in prison perform aimed at overturning the effects of a presidential election in buy to continue being in workplace,” assistant special counsel Pearce wrote in the submitting late Thursday.

The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury put Trump at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the election outcomes and exploit an environment that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, injuring additional than 140 legislation enforcement officers. Trump stands accused of conspiring from the governing administration he once led and of violating the civil rights of tens of millions of American voters. He has pleaded not responsible.

“Breaking 234 decades of precedent, the incumbent administration has billed President Trump for functions that lie not just within the ‘outer perimeter,’ but at the coronary heart of his official responsibilities as President,” wrote Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche in their Oct. 5 motion to dismiss the election interference situation. “In carrying out so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to make certain election integrity, and to advocate for the similar, have been outside the scope of his responsibilities.”

In his bid to dismiss the scenario, Trump’s legal professionals argued that no other American president experienced confronted federal criminal prosecution, putting historical past and custom on the side of presidential immunity. But prosecutors claimed it could be that Trump’s unparalleled legal troubles could merely replicate his unparalleled actions. In all, he faces prison expenses in 4 separate jurisdictions: Florida Fulton County, Ga New York and Washington, D.C.

Legal professionals working for unique counsel Jack Smith cited the words of well known conservative authorized thinkers and Republican lawmakers in the course of Trump’s impeachment, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who mentioned only weeks immediately after the Capitol siege: “We have a legal justice procedure in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by both one.”