Trump says he will attend January 6 riot appeal hearing but insists he has presidential immunity

Donald Trump said he will attend an appeals court hearing over whether he enjoyed presidential immunity when his supporters stormed Capitol Hill.

Tomorrow’s hearing comes after a lower court judge issued a scathing ruling last month, insisting the president is not a monarch and that Trump should be answerable for his words and actions leading up to the deadly riot of January 6, 2021.

“I will be attending the Federal Appeals Court Arguments on Presidential Immunity in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Of course I was entitled, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief, to Immunity,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“I wasn’t campaigning, the Election was long over. I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise running our Country.”

Trump is adamant that his supporters’ actions did not amount to an insurrection against the federal government, after he gave a fiery speech declaring that Joe Biden’s election victory was a fraud.

But at the same time, he insists that as commander-in-chief, he enjoyed immunity from prosecution, as federal prosecutors press four counts of criminal conduct related to his dishonest claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

If he loses the appeal, he is due to go on trial in March on those federal charges, which are running in parallel with multiple state lawsuits against the Republican as he runs for president again this year. The nominating marathon starts next week in Iowa.

“As President, I was protecting our Country, and doing a great job of doing so, just look around at the complete mess that Crooked Joe Biden has caused. The least I am entitled to is Presidential Immunity on Fake Biden Indictments!” Trump said in his post.

However, that argument was demolished by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in her ruling on December 1, which prompted Trump’s appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Stressing America’s historic commitment to the rule of law, she wrote: “Nothing in the Constitution’s text or allocation of government powers requires exempting former Presidents from that solemn process.

“And neither the People who adopted the Constitution nor those who have safeguarded it across generations have ever understood it to do so.

“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

The US Supreme Court has declined to immediately intervene in the immunity case. But it has agreed to adjudicate on the decision of judges in Colorado to strip Trump from the White House ballot citing a constitutional bar on “insurrectionists” from running for office.

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