The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit court and District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.

Ruling by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan sets clock ticking on whether Supreme Court will agree and allow Trump to face federal trial in Washington before 2024 election.

A federal judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for actions taken while he was president, setting the stage for a legal battle over presidential power probably headed to the U.S. Supreme Court and starting the clock ticking on whether the justices will agree to allow him to face trial in Washington before the 2024 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan denied Trump’s request to toss out his four-count August indictment on charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government’s election process, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the vote on Jan. 6, 2021, and to disenfranchise American voters.

“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote in the 48-page opinion. She said Trump may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.

“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,” Chutkan added.

Chutkan said no court or any other branch of government has ever accepted Trump’s contention that former presidents enjoy “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.” Nor, she said, was there any basis for Trump’s double jeopardy argument asserting he could not be prosecuted for a crime unless he had been impeached and convicted of those actions while in office. It defied the Constitution’s “plain meaning, original understanding, and common sense,” she wrote.

Attorneys for Trump are expected to appeal immediately to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, potentially delaying Trump’s scheduled March 4 trial.

The decision by the judge, a 2014 appointee of President Barack Obama, was a defeat for Trump, whose defense has said it would raise similar immunity claims in four criminal prosecutions charged this year in which he has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The others include a federal indictment in Florida over Trump’s alleged retention and mishandling of classified documents and obstruction after leaving the White House; a state trial in Georgia that involves similar allegations of trying to obstruct the state’s election results; and a New York state business fraud prosecution accusing Trump of covering up hush money payments made during his 2016 election campaign.

The case before Chutkan is the soonest scheduled to reach trial, and Trump has other motions pending to toss it. However, only his claims involving a constitutional right not to face trial at all must be decided before trial, posing a key hurdle as well a potential history-setting legal precedent.

U.S. prosecutors had urged Chutkan to deny Trump’s immunity claim, asserting that he is “not above the law.”

The Justice Department argued that legal principles, historical evidence and sound policy reasons establish that once former presidents leave office, they are subject to federal criminal prosecution “like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens.”

Chutkan’s decision followed a unanimous opinion earlier in the day by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit rejecting Trump’s claim of blanket immunity from civil liability for inciting the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The 67-page appeals court opinion in the lawsuit filed by police officers and lawmakers distinguished between protected conduct in his “official capacity as president” and actions taken “in his unofficial capacity as presidential candidate.”

A former president has never been charged with a crime before, so Chutkan was the first federal judge confronted with the question of whether Trump had any immunity from criminal, rather than civil, liability. Trump argued that he could not be charged at all, either because he was acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial, or because he was protected by the same immunity he argued for in the civil suit.

“The Constitution’s text, structure, and history do not support that contention,” Chutkan wrote. “No court—or any other branch of government—has ever accepted it.” She noted that former vice presidents have been charged with crimes despite escaping impeachment, and that it is “longstanding legal precedent that all government officials—even those immune from civil claims—may be held to criminal account.”

Although the appeals court panel included a judge appointed by Trump, his campaign spokesman Steven Cheung in a statement Friday night blamed “Radical Democrats” for “dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole.” He vowed that “Trump will keep fighting for America and Americans, including by challenging these wrongful decisions in higher courts.”

The appellate court in the civil case relied on U.S. Supreme Court precedent set 40 years ago that presidents cannot be sued over actions within even “the outer perimeter” of their duties as the chief executive. The novel question raised by the police officers and Democratic lawmakers who sued Trump was whether telling supporters the election was stolen and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” fell within that boundary. While he could still try to convince a lower court judge his conduct was presidential, they said “Trump … has made no argument as to why his actions alleged here should be treated more like the State of the Union than [a] campaign ad.”

The civil plaintiffs sued under a roughly 150-year-old law that bars the use of force, threats or intimidation to prevent government officials from carrying out their duties and allows anyone injured by such actions to collect damages. They argued that Trump violated the statute — designed to combat Ku Klux Klan violence after the Civil War — by conspiring with members of far-right groups to keep lawmakers from confirming Joe Biden’s election win.

“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” James Blassingame, one of the police plaintiffs, said in a statement. “I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”

Special counsel Jack Smith also accused Trump of violating a civil rights law written to target the Klan, along with obstructing Congress, conspiring to obstruct Congress, and defrauding the government. His office has also charged Trump in Florida with illegally hoarding classified information after leaving office. Separately, Trump is also charged in Georgia state court with a conspiracy to undo his election loss there and in a New York state business fraud prosecution accusing him of covering up hush money payments made during the 2016 election campaign.

At a hearing nearly a year ago, the D.C. Circuit judges argued about how to distinguish between protected presidential speechmaking and unprotected personal agitating. One judge, a Trump appointee who served in his administration, said during the December 2022 hearing that Trump’s case was complicated because the former president was plausibly accused of instigating violence in his message to supporters.

The “arguable incitement,” Judge Gregory G. Katsas said, “makes this a hard case.”

But in the end, the judges drew the line differently, saying what mattered was not the violence of the rhetoric but the fact that Trump had offered no evidence that his speechifying before and on Jan. 6 were about anything other than his own desire for reelection.

“The Office of the Presidency as an institution is agnostic about who will occupy it next,” Srinivasan wrote.

Katsas joined Srinivasan’s opinion in full, adding that “when the President speaks at campaign events … he normally does so in a private capacity,” although he “may occasionally render official speech even during a typical campaign event.”

Legal analysts said both rulings undercut Trump’s argument that as long as his actions were “within the ambit of his office, he is absolutely immune from prosecution.”

Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and law instructor at George Washington University, said Chutkan’s decision “seems clearly correct, particularly in light of” the earlier ruling from the D.C. Circuit. He added that “the key question now is whether the appellate courts are willing to fast-track that appeal to allow the trial to go forward as scheduled, or whether Trump will be able to delay the trial for months, potentially past the presidential election.”

Judges, analysts suggested, may want to act swiftly so voters will know before next November whether a candidate is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the last election.

“This one is for all the marbles,” said former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade. “The question is how long it will take, and it is really up to the D.C. Circuit how quickly they can decide the case.”