The Daily Fuckup

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on December 1, 2023, rejected Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the federal election-subversion case on presidential-immunity grounds. The order denied Trump’s request to throw out the prosecution at the pretrial stage and kept the case alive in the district court. The judge wrote that a former president is not immune from criminal prosecution for the conduct alleged in the indictment.

That did not end the fight, and it did not decide the case on the merits. It meant only that Trump could not use immunity to erase the charges before trial. His lawyers had argued that the actions described in the indictment were tied to his time in office and therefore shielded from criminal prosecution. Chutkan rejected that bid and also denied a separate motion based on constitutional grounds.

The ruling matters because immunity has been one of Trump’s central legal theories in the case. The defense has tried to frame the alleged post-election conduct as part of his official duties. The court’s order kept that argument from wiping out the indictment at the dismissal stage, though Trump could still press other procedural challenges and seek review in higher courts.

The decision also set up the next phase of the immunity battle. The case was already moving through pretrial litigation, and the dispute over presidential immunity was headed for faster appellate review after the district court’s ruling. For Trump, that meant another loss in a case that remains one of the most consequential criminal prosecutions facing him. For the government, it meant the indictment survived another attempt to shut it down before a jury ever gets to hear the evidence.