politics

This gets complicated because the media does indeed summarize it as just simple "Presidential immunity" but Trump's lawyers are approaching this legal theory from various angles all which have different underlying basis.

There are two cases to note here. A civil trail related to the January 6th attempted coup and a criminal case related to the same event. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied cause for dismissal in that case based on the legal theory that Trump was immune from CIVIL prosecution on that mater for having been once the President. Trump was granted the ability to carry the three judge ruling to SCOTUS to which Trump's legal passed on moving on that appeal by allowing the time period to elapse.

The criminal case is being handled by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, that is in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and is being handled by Judge Tanya Chutkan. Trump's legal team has recently filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from CRIMINAL prosecution on that matter for having been once the President. That is pending schedule upon the docket.

Okay with that background. This case is being heard in the United States District Court Southern District of Florida, this is related to criminal charges that Trump mishandled classified documents in violation of the Presidential Records Act. This story circles around Trump's legal team filing a request with the aforementioned court, a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from questioning about the classification of records for having been once the President.

Interestingly, part of the cause for dismissal that was also filed in this filing were the following (and no, I shit you not):

• The law is vague and cannot be ruled upon, therefore the law should be ruled unconstitutional. (Basically vague laws = unconstitutional).
• The law targets Presidents to which, a law cannot regulate Presidents and thus should be ruled unconstitutional. (Presidents cannot be restricted by laws passed by Congress)
• Special Counsel appointments are not well founded in law and are therefore unconstitutional. (* I'll have a second comment on this if you really, really want to know the basis for this one.)
• The Presidential Records Act in it's entirety is unconstitutional. (Kitchen sink attempt.)

There were additional motions filed with the court but those were done via email and have not been released by the Court at this time.

Yeah, it's easy to be confused because there's a lot of this going around. But so far, SCOTUS hasn't actually ruled on the matter to put the nail into the proverbial coffin. But we don't hear about the Trump legal team basically starting every court case thus far with a motion to have the Judge recuse themselves because it is impossible for them to be fair. Why is it impossible for them to be fair? Changes from Judge to Judge, but the most recent one was because of an opinion the Judge had shared in her personal capacity that Trump's legal team felt was too Democrat-ish to render fair rulings. It was summarily dismissed.

So Trump's legal team uses a lot of various arguments with slight changes a lot in various venues. So that might be why you keep hearing them in the news.