Trump’s Christmas Eve Immunity Gambit Collides With the Court Schedule

Edition · December 24, 2023

Trump’s Christmas Eve Immunity Gambit Collides With the Court Schedule

A holiday-week filing tried to rebrand an election-subversion indictment as presidential duty, while the legal and political fallout kept stacking up.

On December 24, 2023, Trump’s lawyers leaned hard into an immunity argument in the election-subversion case, arguing that his push to overturn the 2020 result was protected presidential conduct. The filing was part legal theory, part alarm-bell rhetoric, and it landed in a week when the Supreme Court had just declined to fast-track the issue. For a candidate already juggling multiple criminal cases, the move underscored the strategy: delay, deny, and hope the calendar does the heavy lifting.

Closing take

Christmas Eve is a strange time to ask the public to forget the difference between governing and trying to stay in power. But Trump’s legal team keeps acting as if the right filing, in the right court, at the right time, can turn a political disaster into a constitutional principle. So far, the courts look unimpressed.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

Trump’s Christmas Eve immunity dodge tried to turn coup-talk into presidential duty

Immunity dodge Confidence 5/5

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

Trump’s lawyers filed a new round of arguments on December 23–24, 2023, telling a federal appeals court that his pressure campaign around the 2020 election was part of his presidential job. The filing came right after the Supreme Court declined to fast-track the case, leaving Trump to keep pushing delay while insisting the indictment itself threatens the republic. It is a bold argument, but it is also a deeply revealing one: the defense is no longer just about innocence, it is about laundering alleged election subversion through the language of official power.

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