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Trump lawyers urge dismissal of 2020 election indictment, arguing immunity while in office
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Lawyers for Donald Trump have urged a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, advancing a sweeping interpretation of executive power that contends that former presidents are immune from prosecution for conduct related to their duties while in office.
The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.
The outer perimeter test is widely seen as applying to only civil cases, for instance, and Trump is alleged as having acted not in his capacity as a president, but as a candidate.
The Trump lawyers repeatedly suggested that the outer perimeter test – used by the supreme court in Nixon v Fitzgerald (1982) in which the justices found that presidents have absolute immunity from damages liability for acts related to their presidential duties – should apply to criminal cases.
“To hold otherwise would be to allow the President’s political opponents to usurp his or her constitutional role, fundamentally impairing our system of government,” wrote Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche, John Lauro and Gregory Singer.
The Trump lawyers also claimed that all of the conduct in the indictment was protected, notably including the fake electors plot, since it was related to him trying to get Pence to act in a “certain way” on 6 January 2023 – though omitting that “way” was to unlawfully stop the certification.
The original article contains 620 words, the summary contains 257 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!