“What time did you get here?” a federal court aide asked, curious about the hoops the crowd before him jumped through in the dark hours before sunrise Tuesday morning just to gawk at defendant Donald Trump during a historic hearing about whether a president can ever face criminal charges for actions taken while in office.

The court official’s interest was apparently piqued because, as others in the legal community noted, the embattled former president didn’t have to spend his morning in a cold and rainy Washington, D.C., sitting stone-faced before the trio of federal appellate judges weighing his legal team’s arguments about absolute presidential immunity.

But since he’d trumpeted his innocence on social media and blasted out a fundraising email the night before alerting supporters that he was marching “into the belly of the beast” to stave off charges of subverting the 2020 election, Trump showed up for his latest showdown against Special Counsel Jack Smith.

And contributed absolutely nothing to the fairly speedy proceedings.

Trump didn’t say a word when he was escorted into the fifth-floor courtroom at 9:25 a.m. or when he shuffled out with his bodyman 82 minutes later. And he didn’t fill in the intervening hour with any clamoring about “witch hunts,” “rigged elections” or any of his other campaign trail refrains.

With no jury to play to, or media cameras to mug for, all Trump could do was sit. And wait. The others around him debated his polarizing political reign and the unprecedented legal questions and challenges that are now playing out in a federal courthouse just down Capitol Hill from the site of the Jan. 6 insurrection and where in less than two months Trump is scheduled to stand trial before a Washington, D.C., jury.

The motorcade with former US President Donald Trump departs the federal court for a hearing regarding the extent of his presidential immunity in Washington, DC, January 9, 2024.

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Trump, the prohibitive favorite in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, didn’t offer his interpretation of Marbury vs. Madison, or U.S. vs Cisneros, leaving the legal wrangling to one of his newest personal attorneys, D. John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general.

For the most part, Trump just seemed to take it all in, cocking his head slightly to the right as Sauer spun novel legal theories about why Trump is immune from prosecution for any misdeeds he may have committed while in office.

At another point, Trump mouthed “yes,” and nodded approvingly as Sauer argued that presidents can’t be punished for performing their official duties.

Trump otherwise just occasionally passed notes back and forth to Sauer via a yellow legal pad his legal team slid back and forth across the table as needed.

Sauer was the only one who got animated during the course of the exhaustive Q&A before presiding Circuit Judges Karen Henderson, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan. He gestured towards Trump and slightly raised his raspy voice to assert that incumbent President Joe Biden stands to benefit from the prosecution of his “political rival” after Childs mentioned something about government prosecutors historically remaining impartial.

Former President Trump Attends D.C. Appeals Court Hearing Over Immunity In 2020 Election Case — Former U.S. President Donald Trump departs the Waldorf Astoria to attend D.C. Circuit arguments considering his immunity claims on Jan., 9 2024 in Washington, DC.

The hearing was to appeal U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's Dec. 1 order denying Trump's motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that he could not be charged for actions he took within the "outer perimeter" of his official duties as president.

A man protests before former U.S. President Donald Trump's motorcade departs the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse on January 9, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Sauer spent most of his allotted time trying the Trump trick of creating canon by simply repeating things over and over again. But the judges didn’t bite, reframing questions a couple of times and conjuring up hypotheticals to try and draw Sauer out of his comfort zone.

“I think you’re missing what I’m asking,” Henderson, a 1990 appointee of President George H.W. Bush, said after Sauer went in a different direction than she had anticipated.

“Okay, let me try again,” Pan, a far more recent 2022 Biden appointee, said after failing to get the “simple yes or no” answer she’d been seeking.

“What I would say is,” Sauer fired right back, seeding his response with a qualifier to leave himself future wiggle room.

James Pearce, an assistant special counsel to Jack Smith, tried to whittle away at the blanket immunity claims, urging the judges to avoid creating a “plausibly official” standard that would presumably allow a sitting president to arbitrarily dispatch SEAL Team Six to liquidate opponents.

“That is frightening,” Pearce said of being barred from ever holding a rogue president accountable.

The only other commentary in the room came from a self-styled heckler sitting in the back rows reserved for the general public.

“That’s Boris Epshteyn — the Dr. Evil of Trumpworld,” the armchair pundit alerted a seatmate as Trump’s long standing advisor slid into the row of seats directly behind the former president.

“He’s saying, ‘That check I just mailed you is no good,’” the same razzer-in-chief whispered to those closest to him after seeing Trump lean in to huddle with his lawyers.

A pair of Trump supporters try to shelter from the rain while waiting outside the D.C. courthouse during the former president's latest appeals hearing. — A pair of Trump supporters try to shelter from the rain while waiting outside the D.C. courthouse during the former president’s latest appeals hearing.

The only discernible Trump supporters around seemed to be a couple posted up beneath a neighboring overpass as rain poured down on the nation’s capital.

He was sporting a generic MAGA hat and toting a giant American flag, while she was narrating their stakeout of the District courthouse and craning her neck for a glimpse of Trump’s post-presidential motorcade.

Warren Rojas

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