Former President Donald Trump has just asked for immunity, which means he doesn’t want to be charged with a crime.
Trump is being charged with 40 counts of different crimes, including mishandling important papers and keeping information about national defense. Jack Smith, the special counsel, says he took government records marked “confidential” to his home in Mar-a-Lago.
The lawyers for Trump told the judge why his case should be thrown out. They brought up things like the Presidential Records Act, which says that all government records can also be personal records. This means that Trump did not break the law by having these records at his home.
Plus, they said that Donald Trump couldn’t and shouldn’t be charged because of Presidential Immunity. They also said that if all presidents were charged for things they did while in office, it would make it harder for the president to make decisions.
The filing said, “President Trump was still President of the United States when, for example, many of the documents in question were packed (likely by the GSA), transported, and brought to Mar-a-Lago.”
Federal investigators went to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and found more than 300 papers that were marked as secret. They found the papers in the bathroom, the hall, and the storage room, where they were packed into more than 80 boxes.
Trump says that being charged with these crimes he committed while he was president would change how a president works. He stated that it would “hang like a millstone around every future President’s neck, distorting Presidential decision-making.”
Trump hasn’t been able to get his case thrown out because the judges say that presidential protection doesn’t mean a president can’t be charged for things they did while they were in office. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to put off his case while he files other appeals, but the court has not yet made a decision.
