If any Supreme Court justices entertain Donald J. Trump’s notion that he is immune from being prosecuted for actions he took while president, it would be a break from how his argument has fared in lower courts. To date, all four judges to hear the argument have rejected it.
Mr. Trump first asserted the idea of presidential immunity in October in an effort to derail the federal indictment against him for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.
He argued that a president’s official actions should be immune, and that the actions cited in the indictment were official acts he undertook as president rather than private acts he undertook as a political candidate.
In December, the trial judge overseeing that case, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, forcefully rejected his immunity claim, taking a position that meant she did not need to decide whether the charged actions were official or private.
“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Judge Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability. Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”
Mr. Trump appealed to a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which heard arguments on the matter in January. The following month, the panel unanimously repudiated Mr. Trump’s claim as well. Echoing Judge Chutkan’s approach, they said former presidents have no immunity at all, regardless of the nature of their actions.
“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,” they wrote in an unsigned opinion, adding with an emphatic echo: “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”
Three of the judges were appointed by Democratic presidents: Judge Chutkan was named to the bench by former President Barack Obama, and two members of the appellate panel, Judges Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs, were appointed by President Biden.
The third member of the panel, Judge Karen L. Henderson, was appointed by a Republican — the first President George Bush — and, notably, had sided with Mr. Trump in several earlier legal disputes.
