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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] 
Excerpt from historian news analyst Heather Cox Richardson blog for yesterday … some historical - pleased to see 19 former Republican Congress people stepping up to the plate to hold Trump accountable before the law …

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-9-2024?r=1urel1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

On the docket today in front of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was the question of whether former presidents can be prosecuted for things they did while in office. [u]The issue at hand is whether Trump can be tried for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but Trump has also been charged in three other criminal cases: a national case over his mishandling of national security documents, a state case in Georgia for interfering with the 2020 election there, and a state case in New York for paying hush money to adult film actress Storm[/u]y

While presidential immunity is a crucially important question, [u]it seems unlikely that any court will conclude that a U.S. president can act however they wish without any accountability before the law[/u]. Certainly the framers of the Constitution never intended such a thing (if you listen closely, you can hear them spinning in their graves). [b]More recently, in 1974, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon ruled unanimously that President Richard Nixon could not use claims of executive privilege to withhold evidence from a criminal prosecution[/b]. [u]Even more recently, on December 29, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Trump does not have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits.[/u]
 
But the more pressing immediate question is when the court can resume progress on the case, which is stalled during appeals. The case is scheduled for trial on March 4, and Trump has been trying to drag it out—as he has all his trials—with the evident hope that it can be delayed until after the election. When Trump appealed the decision of the district court that he was not immune, Special Counsel Smith tried to move things along by taking the case directly to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to take it at that point. The case will almost certainly end up there again, at which time the justices could let the appeals court decision stand or agree to take it up. If they take it up, they could decide it quickly or delay it until after the election.

[u]Today, in The Bulwark, nineteen former Republican members of Congress called on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to move the case forward as quickly as possibl[/u]e. [b]Calling out “Trump’s gambit to escape accountability altogether: assert an unprecedented claim of absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution and use the appellate process to delay the trial until after the November election[/b],” they defended the public’s right to have “critical information they need before they cast their ballots in November.”[/quote]
Here's the most important part of your post:

[b]former Republican members of Congress[/b]

No sitting R member of Congress will go against Trump in this. And that is the danger of allowing blanket presidential immunity when there is a sycophantic Congress supporting a deranged POTUS.[/quote]

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