The decision marks the second time in as many months that judges have spurned Trump’s immunity arguments and held that he can be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The one-month gap between when the appeals court heard arguments and when it issued its ruling has already created uncertainty about the timing of any trial in a calendar-jammed election year, with the judge overseeing the case last week canceling the March 4 date that was initially set and not immediately scheduling a replacement one.

The trial date carries obvious and enormous political ramifications, with special counsel Jack Smith’s team hoping to prosecute Trump this year and the Republican primary front-runner seeking to delay it until after the November election.

The unanimous ruling, which had been expected given the skepticism with which the three judges on the panel greeted the Trump team’s arguments, was unsparing in its repudiation of the claim that a former president could be shielded from prosecution for actions taken while in office.

They also sharply rejected Trump’s claim that “a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results.”

The judges made clear their skepticism of Trump’s claims during arguments last month, when they peppered his lawyer with tough questions and posed a series of extreme hypotheticals as a way to test his legal theory of immunity — including whether a president who directed Navy commandos to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted.

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