The judges also questioned the attorneys about whether they should even render a decision on his claim of immunity and instead allow the case to move forward in the trial court.
Federal appeals court judges on Tuesday questioned former President Donald Trump broad claim of immunity from prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that resulted in a chain of events that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The all-woman three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said nothing to suggest they would embrace Trump’s immunity argument, although they raised several options on how they could rule.
The court could issue a ruling that decisively resolves the immunity question, allowing the trial to move quickly forward, or alight on a more narrow ruling that could leave some issues unresolved. They could also simply rule that Trump had no right to bring an appeal at this stage of the litigation.
If presidents were immune, Nixon would not have needed a pardon.
I’ve heard that notion posed several times. IANAL, but just because Ford and Nixon both thought he needed a pardon does not necessarily mean that he actually needed a pardon. Those are two different things; it is possible that Ford and Nixon were both wrong on the necessity. (Edit: Of note, I don’t think they were wrong, but I’m also not a federal judge, so what I think doesn’t matter, in the same way as what Ford and Nixon thought didn’t matter.)