الكاتب: kafej

Donald Trump has appeared in court as he tries to dismiss a federal criminal case where he faces charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Mr Trump‘s lawyers argued in front of appeal judges in Washington DC that he was immune from prosecution because he was president at the time of the alleged crimes.

But prosecutors argue he was acting as a candidate, not a president, when he pressured officials to overturn the results and encouraged supporters to march on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, where they stormed the building in a riot.

“The president has a unique constitutional role but he is not above the law,” prosecutor James Pearce argued in court.

Trump protests innocence after being ‘agitated’ in court – latest updates

Mr Pearce also called it an “extraordinarily frightening future” if a president was to be granted complete presidential immunity.

Mr Trump, who is due to go on trial in March, has pleaded not guilty to four charges: conspiracy to defraud the US; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction; and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have votes counted.

The panel of three judges, two of whom were appointed by President Biden, were sceptical the former commander-in-chief, who lost to Mr Biden in the 2020 White House race, was immune from prosecution.

“You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could tell SEAL Team Six to assassinate a
political rival?” Judge Florence Pan asked Trump lawyer D John Sauer.

Mr Sauer said a former president could be charged for such conduct only if they were first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate.

In Washington, Mr Trump walked into court, took a sigh, unbuttoned his jacket and sat at his lawyers’ table, said NBC reporter Ryan Reilly.

Mr Trump was “mostly muted during his lawyers’ arguments”, but “grew flustered” during the arguments made by the special counsel, who is prosecuting him, Reilly added.

“Trump appeared agitated at times during the special counsel’s arguments, passing notes to his lawyers on a yellow legal pad,” he continued.

“He grew most animated when his lawyer claimed on rebuttal that Trump was winning in the polls, vigorously shaking his head yes.”

Later at a news conference in a Washington hotel, Mr Trump told reporters: “I feel that as a president, you have to have immunity – it’s very simple.

“I did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

He also said he felt “very confident” he would win his case.

Earlier at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Mr Sauer hit back at Mr Pearce’s “frightening future” claims, saying: “The ‘frightening future’ that he alleges, where presidents are very, very seldom if ever prosecuted because they have to be impeached and convicted first, is the one we’ve lived under for the last 235 years.

“That’s not a frightening future, that’s our republic.”

He warned that authorising the prosecution of a president for official acts would “open a Pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover”.

He claimed presidents could be prosecuted for giving Congress “false information” to enter war or for allowing drone strikes targeting Americans abroad.

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The three judges questioned whether they had jurisdiction to consider the appeal at this point in the case, raising the prospect that Mr Trump’s efforts could be rejected.

They also pushed Mr Trump’s lawyer to defend claims he was shielded from criminal charges for acts he says fell within his official duties as president.

That was an argument which was rejected last month by a lower-court judge, Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case.

The appeals court decision could take several weeks or months and its ruling is almost certain to be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Mr Trump, who is the first former US president to be criminally prosecuted, faces 91 criminal counts in four separate cases.

Astrobotic have given up on their Peregrine-1 spacecraft landing on the moon after it sprang a crippling propellant leak.

The problem occurred in the first few hours of the lunar lander’s journey into space.

The Pittsburgh-based firm – which had been hoping to be the first private company to complete a moon landing – said there was “no chance” of the spacecraft being able to survive the descent.

“Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon,” Astrobotic said in a statement.

However, the company said the lander has enough fuel left to allow it to operate “as a spacecraft” while engineers decide on its new mission in orbit.

US space agency NASA, which paid $108m (£85m) to send scientific instruments up with the lander, had hoped the craft would scope out an area of the moon ahead of its own planned landing next year.

However, on Tuesday, following Astrobotic’s statement, NASA announced it had postponed landing astronauts on the moon until at least 2026.

What happened to Peregrine?

Peregrine Mission-1 took off in Florida on a new Vulcan rocket at 7.18am UK time on Monday and had been scheduled to land on 23 February.

It was intended to be the first US spacecraft to land on the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 in 1972 and appeared to lift off into space as planned.

The problems with the Peregrine Mission-1 lander were reported around seven hours after Monday’s pre-dawn lift-off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Astrobotic previously said Peregrine “successfully” separated from the rocket but an “anomaly” had occurred.

The company said the propulsion system problem had “threatened the ability of the spacecraft to soft land on the moon”.

Astrobotic said a photo from a lander-mounted camera, showed a “disturbance” in a section of thermal insulation – which aligned with what was so far known of the problem.

The company was aiming to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon, something only four countries have accomplished.

A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch next month. NASA gave the two companies millions to build and fly their own lunar landers.

The space agency wanted the privately owned landers to scope out the area before astronauts arrive while delivering tech and science experiments for the space agency, other countries and universities.

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The $108m (£85m) paid to Astrobotic, a space logistics start-up, was a fraction of the cost of launching one of NASA’s own missions.

The lander, which is the size of a garden shed, is also carrying the remains of several Star Trek cast members and the DNA of former US presidents including John F Kennedy.

NASA postpones its moon landing

The last time the US launched a moon landing mission was in December 1972. Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon.

NASA had been planning to return astronauts to the moon’s surface within the next few years under its Artemis programme.

However, on Tuesday, the space agency pushed its crewed flight around the moon – Artemis 2 – to September 2025 because of technical issues.

It was previously reported by the news agency Reuters, quoting two unnamed sources, that the mission was set to be pushed beyond its planned late-2024 target after issues were uncovered with the Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew capsule’s batteries during vibration tests.

NASA also pushed its first human moon landing in 50 years – Artemis 3 – back to September 2026.

واس – القدس المحتلة – غزة:

واصل مركز الملك سلمان للإغاثة والأعمال الإنسانية تقديم المساعدات الإغاثية للفلسطينيين المتضررين في قطاع غزة، بالتنسيق مع الهلال الأحمر الفلسطيني, حيث جرى أمس توزيع سلال غذائية للنازحين في إحدى المدارس بمدينة رفح جنوب قطاع غزة، بهدف تلبية الاحتياجات الضرورية وتخفيف معاناة السكان في عموم القطاع، استفاد منها 1.300 فرد بواقع 300 أسرة.

وتأتي هذه المساعدات ضمن الحملة الشعبية السعودية لإغاثة الشعب الفلسطيني الشقيق في قطاع غزة.

غزة – وكالات:

أعلنت وزارة الصحة في غزة، أن عدد الشهداء جراء الهجمات الإسرائيلية على قطاع غزة، ارتفع إلى 23210 شهداء، في حين بلغ عدد المصابين 59167 مصاباً منذ السابع من أكتوبر (تشرين الأول) الماضي.

وأضافت الوزارة أن 126 فلسطينياً قتلوا وأصيب 241 جراء القصف الإسرائيلي بالقطاع خلال الـ24 ساعة الماضية، وفقاً لوكالة «أنباء العالم العربي».

وكانت وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية في غزة قد ذكرت أن مستشفى «شهداء الأقصى» بوسط القطاع استقبل جثامين 57 شهيداً، بالإضافة إلى 65 مصاباً خلال الساعات الـ24 الماضية، وفقاً لوكالة «أنباء العالم العربي».