Donald Trump loses appeal of his 'presidential immunity' from criminal prosecution for J6

The Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals published its decision in Donald Trump's appeal of his "presidential immunity" claim on Tuesday.

“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes…Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count," the ruling says in the 3-0 decision.

Last year, Trump argued E. Jean Carroll couldn't sue him in a civil capacity because he had "presidential immunity." He lost that case, and this one has been about the federal criminal case involving the 2020 election. That trial has been on hold for the past month because Trump's lawyers demanded that there be a "stay" until the court ruled. They rushed at "lightning speed," one legal analyst said, to get the ruling.

"In cases of national importance, delay can lead to a broad denial of rights, as it did when the Supreme Court was so slow to rule in the Alabama gerrymandering case that it allowed maps it later held were unconstitutional and discriminatory to be used in the 2022 midterm election," former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote.

Trump has already indicated that he will appeal to the Supreme Court. Still, legal analysts anticipated that if the ruling was written well enough, the High Court could ignore it entirely.

Trump's "backup argument is that even if it applies to what's called the 'outer perimeter' of the president's functions, this case does not involve conduct that is within the president's functions," said former FBI general counsel and NYU Law professor, Andrew Weissmann.

Defense lawyer Alina Habba has already begun sending public messages on conservative media to Supreme Court justices.

"You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place," Habba said.

Trump's excuse for presidential immunity is that not having it means that the president can be sued for anything; his example was that Joe Biden had a "disaster" on the southern border.

It's a mischaracterization of what the law says, however. Anything performed within the duties of the office is protected. What Trump did trying to overthrow the 2020 election was for his campaign. It's a key reason his excuse has evolved over the past month, with him saying he had a duty to fight against election fraud. The problem he will have in court is that the filings already show a steady stream of Trump advisers and loyalists who testified that he knew he'd lost but pressed forward anyway.