Trump hits back at Jack Smith case in presidential immunity appeal filing: Live

Federal prosecutors have recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for a man at the center of a right-wing conspiracy theory about the Capitol riot — an attack that he has admitted to joining.

Ray Epps, who is scheduled to be sentenced next Tuesday, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct on restricted grounds.

Epps, a onetime Trump supporter from Arizona, became the focus of a conspiracy theory that he was an undercover government agent who incited the Capitol attack.

Right-wing news outlets amplified the conspiracy theory and drove him into hiding after the events of Jan 6.

Lawyers for Donald Trump have filed their response to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals urging that it throw out the federal election subversion charges against him.

The 41-page brief hits back at a filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith over the weekend, and claims the former president’s claim that his actions were protected by presidential immunity from criminal charges as they were “official acts”.

“President Trump has immunity from prosecution for his official acts,” the former president’s lawyers argue, going on to say that under the Constitution’s checks and balances the judicial branch “cannot issue equitable relief directly against the President’s official acts, including his power under the Take Care Clause. So also, it cannot sit in criminal judgment over them”.

The Constitution’s Impeachment Judgment Clause, they continue, “presupposes the existence of Presidential criminal immunity”.

Further, they say: “The likelihood of mushrooming politically motivated prosecutions, and future cycles of recrimination, are far more menacing and crippling to the Presidency than the threat of civil liability.”

Mr Smith’s office argued in a Saturday filing that Mr Trump’s claim “threatens to license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office.”

The filing came in the federal election subversion case ahead of 9 January oral arguments before a US appeals court in Washington DC, reported CNN.

“The defendant asserts (Br.1) that this prosecution ‘threatens … to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic.’ To the contrary: it is the defendant’s claim that he cannot be held to answer for the charges that he engaged in an unprecedented effort to retain power through criminal means, despite having lost the election, that threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation of our Republic,” Mr Smith wrote.

“This Court should affirm and issue the mandate expeditiously to further the public’s — and the defendant’s — compelling interest in a prompt resolution of this case,” he added.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to four counts, including conspiring to defraud the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding.

The one-term president has appealed a district court’s ruling that he is not entitled to immunity for any crimes committed while he was in the White House.

In his filing, the special counsel’s office stated that it would be dangerous to give a president that kind of broad immunity.

One year from now, President Joe Biden will either be a victorious first-term president preparing for his second and final four years in office, or a defeated one-termer presiding over a transition for a man who tried to prevent him from taking office four years earlier and spent the last four years undermining him and denying his very legitimacy, all with the aim of reshaping the American government into an instrument of personal revenge.

At the moment, it’s not clear at all which of those outcomes will come to pass. But with the days until next year’s general election passing with what seems to be increasing speed each month, Biden’s team appears confident in their plan to win the coming rematch which their putative opponent — former president Donald Trump — has called “the final battle” for the country itself.

Andrew Feinberg has more.

Alex Woodward offers this analysis of Trump’s deams for a second stint as commander-in-chief:

“His plans for the White House aren’t a secret. He spends hours on the stages of his campaign rallies outlining a violent agenda for a second term. His supporters applaud. His allies are even more explicit.

“Donald Trump’s volatile campaign – calling his adversaries ‘vermin’ and echoing the pages of Mein Kampf and white supremacist manifestos – has flooded news outlets and social media with so many appeals to authoritarianism and violence that they barely register as news.

“Republicans shrug. His surrogates laugh off criticism. Americans are told not to take him seriously while he’s also the subject of countless warnings about the country’s dissolution into autocracy.”

You can read more from Alex below.

Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer has become the latest high-ranking GOP lawmaker to fall in line and endorse Donald Trump’s bid to be the party’s presidential nominee.

The whole of the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives are no backing the former president.

Police received a call last week from a man claiming to have broken into Shenna Bellows’s home in Manchester, Maine, according to a statement from Maine State Police.

Bellows was not home on 29 December and police found nothing suspicious in or around the home when they searched but the incident remains under investigation, officers said.

A “swatting” incident refers to fake calls to 911 that can lead to heavily armed and armoured law enforcement teams being dispatched.

Katie Hawkinson has more.

Trump’s attorneys have appealed a decision from Maine’s top elections official to remove him from 2024 presidential ballots for his actions surrounding the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Last week’s decision from Maine’s secretary of state Shenna Bellows challenges his eligibility under a provision of the 14th Amendment, which bars any person who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.

The attack, fuelled by Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, “were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law,” Bellows wrote in her decision.

Andrew Romeo, communications director for the Ron DeSantis 2024 campaign, has issued the following statement about Trump’s decision to not participate in yet another debate and offer his own counter-programming on Fox News:

“We understand Donald Trump is scared to get on the stage because he’d have to finally explain why he didn’t build the wall, added nearly $8 trillion to the debt, and turned the country over to Fauci.

“But even Gavin Newsom had the courage to stand on the stage to debate his own failed record against Ron DeSantis.

“If it would make the debate more inviting, we would gladly agree to make it a seated format where the former president would be more comfortable.”

In addition to Ramaswamy putting on his own event after being called out for spreading conspiracy theories, Trump will also be counter-programming CNN Iowa debate on 10 January with a town hall on Fox News, live from Des Moines.

The program will air live at the same time as the CNN debate and will be moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

Both Baier and MacCallum moderated the first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee, drawing an audience of 13 million viewers.

Here’s more from Gustaf Kilander.

Outsider Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has said he won’t be participating in CNN’s Iowa debate on 10 January.

His reason? CNN reporters, anchors and commentators called out his wild conspiracy theories and damaging rhetoric.

Here’s what he posted on X on Tuesday morning:

Semafor’s David Weigel notes that the polling cutoff for the Iowa debate is for the candidate to get 10 per cent in at least three polls, including one in Iowa.

Ramaswamy has never achieved more than 10 per cent in any poll in the state and therefore has not qualified.

Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have, however.

To help keep track, here’s Rachel Sharp on which Republicans have and haven’t qualified for next Wednesday’s face-off.