Trump asks appeals court to throw out 2020 election subversion charges

WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump on Saturday made a plea before the appeals court in Washington DC to throw out the federal charges alleging he tried to steal the 2020 Presidential election.

He faces charges of conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election verdict that put Joe Biden in the White House besides violating the rights of voters to have their votes counted and declared in Washington and Georgia.

Attorneys for the former President argued in a 71-page filing to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that the charges against Trump should be dismissed.

The lawyers claim Trump's actions following the 2020 race for the White House fell under his official responsibilities as President. This has been sharply contested by the Department of Justice's special counsel and the Congressional committee that investigated the Jan 6 Capitol Hill insurrection in 2021 by Trump's supporters to prevent the election verdict from being announced.

He is also charged with his failure of duties as Commander in Chief and President to call the National Guard to quell the mob on the Capitol that endangered the lives of Senators and Vice President Mike Pence.

A federal grand jury indicted Trump in August over his efforts to overturn the race, and he was arrested just weeks later in Georgia on election charges in the Peach State.

"The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic - the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system," Trump’s lawyers wrote in the Saturday filing, which only applied to the federal election case against the former President, but excluded the case in Georgia.

The case in Georgia falls under the RICO Act of using racketeering methods to give the state officials more votes to make Trump win and threatening and intimidating court officials and witnesses to alter the election results.

Trump has repeatedly argued that his actions following the 2020 election are protected because he was acting in an official capacity as the Commander-in-Chief. The filing on Saturday called on the Washington appeals court to reject a lower court's ruling that refused this claim of executive immunity.

Trump's trial in the case is scheduled to begin in March. The charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith could land him in prison for decades, media reports said.

The Supreme Court on Friday sidestepped the question of whether Trump may claim immunity from criminal charges tied to his alleged interference in the 2020 election, but the legal wrangling over the issue is far from over. The same case will almost certainly return to the Supreme Court in the coming months, but the move signals that the issue will first be decided by federal appeals courts, USA TODAY reported.