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.
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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.
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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.”
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5:57
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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.
It’s court as a curtain call
Any stage will do.
Donald Trump didn’t have to attend the appeal hearing in Washington DC but in this, an election year, he insisted.
No wonder. It’s a no-brainer.
Trump’s legal troubles continue to propel his popularity and his fundraising.
So with a federal courthouse swamped by media for the latest legal twist, there is profile and profit in the personal appearance.
It’s court as a curtain call.
If the three-judge panel falls in Trump’s favour – and that’s a big ‘if’ – it would be good news for him in the US capital and beyond.
Having the case thrown out would bode well for him in his efforts to dismiss similar state-level charges on election interference, with similar arguments, at Fulton County in Georgia.
Trump’s lawyers say he should enjoy absolute immunity for his actions whilst in office and they claim it would be double jeopardy to prosecute him over actions for which he was already impeached and acquitted in the Senate.
A ruling in his favour would also have consequences for his prosecution in New York on false accounting around hush money payments to a former porn star – charges which relate to his time in office.
In such a scenario, three out of four criminal prosecutions would be undermined. The fourth, on the mishandling of classified documents, is presided over by a Trump-appointed judge who has attracted accusations of bias towards the former president in pre-trial rulings.
So there is much riding on the opinions of three appeal judges who sat through the oral arguments in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
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”.
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2:39
Biden hits out at Donald Trump
He claimed presidents could be prosecuted for giving Congress “false information” to enter war or for allowing drone strikes targeting Americans abroad.
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.
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
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Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
In the courtyard of a farmhouse now home to soldiers of the Ukrainian army’s 47th mechanised brigade, I’m introduced to a weary-looking unit by their commander Captain Oleksandr “Sasha” Shyrshyn.
We are about 10km from the border with Russia, and beyond it lies the Kursk region Ukraine invaded in the summer – and where this battalion is now fighting.
The 47th is a crack fighting assault unit.
They’ve been brought to this area from the fierce battles in the country’s eastern Donbas region to bolster Ukrainian forces already here.
Captain Shyrshyn explains that among the many shortages the military has to deal with, the lack of infantry is becoming a critical problem.
Sasha is just 30 years old, but he is worldly-wise. He used to run an organisation helping children in the country’s east before donning his uniform and going to war.
He is famous in Ukraine and is regarded as one of the country’s top field commanders, who isn’t afraid to express his views on the war and how it’s being waged.
His nom de guerre is ‘Genius’, a nickname given to him by his men.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not a minefield’
Sasha invited me to see one of the American Bradley fighting vehicles his unit uses.
We walk down a muddy lane before he says it’s best to go cross-country.
“We can go that way, don’t worry it’s not a minefield,” he jokes.
He leads us across a muddy field and into a forest where the vehicle is hidden from Russian surveillance drones that try to hunt both American vehicles and commanders.
Sasha shows me a picture of the house they had been staying in only days before – it was now completely destroyed after a missile strike.
Fortunately, neither he, nor any of his men, were there at the time.
“They target commanders,” he says with a smirk.
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It takes me a moment or two to realise we are only a few steps away from the Bradley, dug in and well hidden beneath the trees.
Sasha tells me the Bradley is the finest vehicle he has ever used.
A vehicle so good, he says, it’s keeping the Ukrainian army going in the face of Russia’s overwhelming numbers of soldiers.
He explains: “Almost all our work on the battlefield is cooperation infantry with the Bradley. So we use it for evacuations, for moving people from one place to another, as well as for fire-covering.
“This vehicle is very safe and has very good characteristics.”
Billions of dollars in military aid has been given to Ukraine by the United States, and this vehicle is one of the most valuable assets the US has provided.
Ukraine is running low on men to fight, and the weaponry it has is not enough, especially if it can’t fire long-range missiles into Russia itself – which it is currently not allowed to do.
Sasha says: “We have a lack of weapons, we have a lack of artillery, we have a lack of infantry, and as the world doesn’t care about justice, and they don’t want to finish the war by our win, they are afraid of Russia.
“I’m sorry but they’re scared, they’re scared, and it’s not the right way.”
Like pretty much everyone in Ukraine, Sasha is waiting to see what the US election result will mean for his country.
He is sceptical about a deal with Russia.
“Our enemy only understands the language of power. And you cannot finish the war in 24 hours, or during the year without hard decisions, without a fight, so it’s impossible. It’s just talking without results,” he tells me.
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These men expect the fierce battles inside Kursk to intensify in the coming days.
Indeed, alongside the main supply route into Kursk, workers are already building new defensive positions – unfurling miles of razor wire and digging bunkers for the Ukrainian army if it finds itself in retreat.
Sasha and his men are realistic about support fatigue from the outside world but will keep fighting to the last if they have to.
“I understand this is only our problem, it’s only our issue, and we have to fight this battle, like we have to defend ourselves, it’s our responsibility,” Sasha said.
But he points out everyone should realise just how critical this moment in time is.
“If we look at it widely, we have to understand that us losing will be not only our problem, but it will be for all the world.”
Stuart Ramsay reports from northeastern Ukraine with camera operator Toby Nash, and producers Dominique Van Heerden, Azad Safarov, and Nick Davenport.
The adverse weather could lead to total insured losses of more than €4bn (£3.33bn), according to credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS.
Much of the claims are expected to be covered by the Spanish government’s insurance pool, the agency said, but insurance premiums are likely to increase.