And a good morning to you.
We're coming on the air with breaking news about former
President Donald Trump.
Just moments ago, a federal appeals court in Washington,
DC rejected Mr. Trump's legal claim that the former president
is immune from criminal charges for his efforts to overturn
the 2020 election results.
This all ahead of his criminal trials that are slated
to start a little bit later this year,
As early as March, perhaps.
Let's go straight to our senior legal correspondent,
Laura Jarrett. So let's just start with what this
ruling means and what it does not mean.
And I would assume that the president will likely appeal
immediately to the Supreme Court.
He may go to the Supreme Court,
Craig, but just to walk people through what has happened
here,
the former president tried to file this motion to try
to get the case completely wiped away from the books.
Right, Because if he's immune from prosecution,
then he cannot be trialed at all.
And again, this isn't the case in Washington DC where
he's been accused of trying to overturn the last election.
Now he lost in the lower court on that issue.
He appealed up to this three judge,
panel, 2 Biden appointees, 1 Bush appointee has rejected that
completely.
Now that he's lost at this level,
he can try to go to the full panel of
DC Circuit judges there.
They're about 11 or 13 active judges.
Or if he wants, he can go to the Supreme
Court.
Now my why might he want to go to the
full DC Circuit?
Because the whole point of this is to delay,
delay, delay. And so if he does that,
it slows this train down.
Craig NBC's Garrett Haake has has been covering the former
president.
Garrett joins us now. They're from Washington.
Garrett, have we heard anything so far from the from
the former president or his team?
We've not yet, Craig, but I think we know what
we will hear from the former president.
I suspect he will announce an appeal either to the
District Court,
to the appeals court and bancas,
as Laura was suggesting, or to the Supreme Court.
He has been really singularly focused on this case,
including posting on social media overnight what he believes is
the importance of continuing this concept of presidential immunity past
the presidency,
suggesting that any future president would immediately be indicted after
leaving office by the opposing party.
He argues in public to lesser degree than in his
filings before the courts, that a sitting president would be
unable to properly function if this ruling had gone against
him.
Again, that was a post from last night.
I suspect we will soon hear more from him today.
And Craig, remember that Donald Trump has made all of
these legal battles that he's engaged with,
especially this case central to his campaign.
He argues that this is all political speech that he
was involved in,
that he's being targeted by the courts and by the
Biden Justice Department because he cannot be beaten by President
Biden electorally.
Now he has this court defeat on his plate.
I suspect we will soon see this continue to be
a centerpiece of his political arguments.
It has worked for him with his base winning these
first early primaries
in the Republican presidential nominating contest.
Many Republican voters I've talked to say they could have
agree with Donald Trump in theory about these cases.
But there's peril for him politically down the line if
these cases do move forward into the summer and early
fall election season.
Craig, Laura, you've been following this case closer than most
of know.
You've been pouring over some of these documents.
One thing that's important for the timing here,
because remember, that's of course what the former president's goal
is here is to slow this down.
The DC Circuit, this federal appeals court,
has said that he has a certain period in which
he can try to appeal as to the Supreme Court,
as we were talking about,
and he can try to go to the DC Circuit.
But they've given him a very narrow window.
So he can't just sort of sit on this as
long as he wants.
He has roughly a week through about February 12th,
if he wants to go to the Supreme Court.
And if he goes to the Supreme Court,
everything on here that's happening right now will stay on
pause.
He can do that while it works its way through
the court system.
If he doesn't go to the Supreme Court by February
12th,
then this is back in action.
What does that mean? Then the trial date is back
on.
Because right now, remember, this case has been working its
way through the courts for months now and so the
trial date has essentially been frozen in time.
But now that they said he's not immune,
theoretically he could be tried.
But what they're saying is he will have some time
now to go to the Supreme Court again,
roughly till about February 12th.
Are we at all surprised,
surprised about the decision from the three judge panel?
I think it's it's significant,
although not wholly surprising. What's been most surprising is how
long it took based on oral argument.
They seemed very skeptical of his claims.
They seemed very troubled by some of the scenarios that
his lawyers had laid out about why he might be
immune,
essentially suggesting that he could try to have his political
rival assassinated.
And he would still be immune if he hadn't been
impeached and convicted,
as the former president was not convicted by the Senate.
I think those were arguments that this panel was troubled
by.
We're going to pour through it,
actually see some of their reasoning as we go through
all the many different pages here.
But there's still a host of arguments that he could
make in front of the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court might rule differently than this federal
appeals court.
And again to be clear we're talking about one of
the four cases involving the former President right now.
Yes. And this will not have any effect on those
cases.
This is narrowly cabin to the one in Washington DC
We have the one in New York,
we have the one in Florida.
We have many cases around the country involving him.
This is very limited to the one in DC about
overturning the last election.
I'll let you continue to sift through those documents while
we turn to our
Garrett Haake once again there in in Washington.
Garrett let me bring you back into the conversation and
spend a little bit more time talking about a point
that you just made.
We saw what the former president did in Iowa.
We saw what he did in New Hampshire.
He is leading by double digits in all major polls
so far.
In South Carolina, he is the front runner.
This does not seem to be having any sort of
measurable effect on Republican primary voters so far,
does it? No, it hasn't so far,
Craig. But that's not to say that it remains the
case in the future entirely here.
I mean, when you look across the 1st 2 primaries
and the ones coming up,
including the caucus on Nevada on Thursday night,
which will be the next state to award any delegates,
Republican primary voters have indicated that they essentially believe what
Donald Trump has told them.
The idea that he is being unfairly targeted in this
case for political speech.
But across all of these cases because he is the
strongest challenger to Joe Biden.
But when you look at polling data,
including our new NBC News poll that came out over
the weekend,
you do see the potential peril for Donald Trump in
a general election down the line.
The numbers in that poll would show him leading Joe
Biden narrowly,
right now nationally, turn against him if he is convicted
of a crime.
And so the timing here becomes very important.
Does this case actually go to trial before Republican convention?
Does it go to trial before voters start casting their
ballots in a general election in the early fall?
Remember, Election Day is now Election Month.
In many cases. When and if these things are adjudicated
and how they go could still be a determining factor.
I've been covering Donald Trump for more than a year
now,
covering this campaign since its inception.
And the one thing that has been clear to me
across all of this is that the things that are
driving
voter beliefs about Donald Trump and about his relative strength
against Joe Biden and the Republican field have had far
more to do with what's happened in courtrooms than what's
happened in traditional campaign trail stops.
And it's worth pointing out Craig Donald Trump's attorneys will
be back in court in Washington,
DC in front of the Supreme Court on Thursday,
when they'll be arguing whether he should be able to
stay on the ballot in Colorado.
Remember, he was he was a judge there.
The Colorado Supreme Court rather had determined he's ineligible to
be on the ballot in Colorado
under the 14th Amendment for having him been involved in
insurrection.
The The challenges for Donald Trump and his both ability
to
remain a candidate and to remain a viable candidate,
to remain somebody who's not locked down in a courtroom
until Election Day,
are broad and manifest across many different cases in many
different jurisdictions.
And this week, the 1-2 punch of this appeals court
hearing today,
that court hearing on Thursday,
the day of the next contest in this race,
I think really display that quite clearly.
Garrett again, we just got this,
this word about 20 minutes ago,
haven't heard anything from Mr.
Trump's campaign, anything from the White House so far.
And do we expect at some point today perhaps to
hear anything from,
from the White House?
That's a good question, Craig.
I mean, the White House has in general tried to
keep some distance between themselves and Donald Trump and all
of these legal challenges.
They don't want to feed into the perception that somehow
the White House is connected to this or behind this
the way that Donald Trump talks about it.
But that said, the White House did make pretty clear,
and Joe Biden, I think is made fairly clear,
that they didn't believe in this concept of presidential immunity
the way that Donald Trump described it.
As Laura pointed out, his lawyers were forced to answer
questions in the extreme,
if this idea of presidential immunity was real,
could a president order an assassination of a political rival?
And when? When Trump's lawyers were pushed that far,
I think it made it easier for this White House
to say,
yeah, we definitely don't agree with their interpretation of that.
But from a from a governing standpoint,
I don't think it's particularly valuable for the Biden White
House to get involved in.
From a political standpoint, they want to keep some distance
here.
Now, I wouldn't expect the same from Democratic allies of
the current president that we're going to want to amplify
any message about Donald Trump,
legal challenges, the possibility of him going on trial,
the possibility of him being convicted.
They understand the politics quite clearly.
But who the messenger is here today and going forward,
I think will be very important.
All right, Garrett, stand by for me.
Let me bring in our our senior Washington correspondent Hallie
Jackson.
Now, Hallie's on the phone for us.
Hallie, what, what, What say you in terms of what
all of this could mean politically for the president moving
forward for this race?
Or does it mean anything at all?
Well, listen, it depends on which electorate you're talking to.
Craig, it's a great question.
And as we look at it through this political lens,
because as Garrett and others have pointed out,
it is a legal issue,
obviously, for former President Trump,
it is also a political one.
If you're talking about the primary electorate,
that is Republican voters, most of whom back former President
Trump.
This is likely to only add to dissent.
And I'm being on the road talking with some of
these folks.
You hear it again and again.
They feel that former President Trump is being persecuted by
the Justice Department,
persecuted by President Biden, persecuted by Democrats who are essentially
in charge of some of the government and governmental levels
here in Washington.
So politically for the former president,
as it relates to the primary,
which by the way, we're still in Craig,
right? Technically, we're still in the primary.
Nikki Haley is obviously trailing far behind for President Trump,
but that is still the process.
He is not the nominee officially,
at least not yet. That's the landscape there.
The question is what happens in a general election.
And I think some of the new poll numbers that
we have out today are particularly interesting that six in
10 voters say they are concerned about former President Trump's
legal issues here, the criminal trials,
the civil trials that he is facing.
And now with this new decision,
it guarantees that this is going to be in the
spotlight for a while longer.
And so that dynamic is one that is going to
be critical come November depending on how much it moves
voters.
Again, I'm talking about the general election,
right, the stuff that happens in November once we get
through conventions and everything else.
So that's, I think some of the dynamic of the
political landscape from the primary and the general.
You've also got to look at what this means for
the Supreme Court moving forward as well.
And obviously the former presidents nominees who are now Supreme
Court justices on that court too.
Craig. All right, Hallie, stand by.
Laura Jared here in studio.
I want to read just for a moment here,
an excerpt from from the ruling,
perhaps arguably the thesis quote for the purpose of this
criminal case.
Former President Trump has become Citizen Trump
with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,
But any executive immunity that may have protected him while
he served as president no longer protects him against this
process.
In other words, he's not special.
In other words, now that he's no longer president,
he doesn't get to enjoy all of those privileges.
But I should just point out,
even if he has lost this battle,
he may have won the war because the war was
to try to make sure that this trial date did
not happen before the next election.
And it's not at all clear that it will for
all the reasons that Hallie and Garrett pointed out this,
this was supposed to go to trial next month.
That is off the table right now.
There's not a chance that this can go to trial
next March
and this coming March. And it's not even clear that
it can go to trial in the coming months after
that.
And so this is obviously a unanimous sort of renunciation
of all of his claims.
But again, if the whole point was to get rid
of that trial day,
as of right now, he has succeeded in that effort.
Correct. And and to remind folks again,
in terms of timetable and next steps,
he has a week to appeal this.
He can take this up to the Supreme Court if
he chooses to do that.
It's not at all clear that the Supreme Court will
necessarily take this up.
They could decide not to hear it,
in which case this all then comes back into play
and then we're back down seeing this case go to
trial.
Alright. Our senior legal correspondent,
Laura Jarrett. Laura, thank you.
Garrett Hague there in DC.
A big thanks to you as well.
And Hallie Jackson.