Donald Trump Headed 'Directly to Conviction' for Jan. 6: Legal Analyst

Former President Donald Trump is headed "directly to conviction" for his alleged involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to legal analyst Laurence Tribe on Friday.

Trump faces four criminal cases across the country, the most prominent of which is a federal election interference case brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith pertaining to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that led to the riot. On January 6, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., where Congress was certifying the results of Joe Biden's 2020 election win. The riot followed unsubstantiated claims made by the former president that the election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud.

The trial is set for March 2024, presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, with Trump having previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Trump has also pleaded not guilty to all charges in the other three criminal cases.

On Friday, Chutkan issued a ruling in the case, finding that Trump is not immune from prosecution stemming from his election interference attempts just because he was president at the time, as his legal team had argued.

"Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability," Chutkan wrote. "Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office. 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."

In response to Friday's ruling, Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University, took to X, formerly Twitter, to share that Chutkan's rejection of Trump's immunity defense points towards the former president "headed directly to conviction" in the Washington, D.C., case.

"The prediction I made 2 hours ago proved right more quickly than I expected: Trump is now headed directly to conviction in DC for corruptly plotting to upend the Constitution's system for transferring the executive power to the winner of the quadrennial presidential election," Tribe wrote Friday.

He added in another post: "We can confidently expect Judge Chutkan to reject Mr. Trump's immunity defense in his DC trial for criminally trying to overturn the election and seize power, a trial in which I fully expect him to be convicted, thereby losing much of his current support in the polls."

Newsweek has reached out to Trump via email for comment.

Tribe is not the first to suggest Friday's ruling has a significant impact on Trump's defense as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said in making the decision, Chutkan also seemed to have been preemptively making the argument for the rejection to immunity to the Supreme Court.

If an appeal is sought against Chutkan's decision, it is likely to end up being argued before the Supreme Court.

"She is making a compelling argument to the Supreme Court, saying we value the separation of powers, but we also value the ability of each branch to perform its functions," Vance told host Ali Velshi during a Friday appearance on MSNBC.

She added: "And so she is telling the Supreme Court, 'If you reverse my decision, you will impair essential functions of government.' [Chutkan] has been reading the Supreme Court's opinions for the last term in particular, when they've been focused on the Founding Father's intent on history and tradition. She says 'Here's American history and tradition for you Supreme Court.'"

Trump's office has previously decried the decision from Chutkan in a statement provided to Newsweek.

"Radical Democrats, under the direction of Crooked Joe Biden, continue to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election," Trump spokesman Steven Cheung wrote.