Donald Trump claims he did "absolutely nothing wrong" after a Washington appeals court questioned his claims that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump's legal team sought to convince a panel of three judges that former presidents should not be prosecuted for actions they took in office.
The ex-president vowed to return to office and said that America should be "respected" like it "was 3 years ago."
Trump is due to go to trial in March on federal charges of election subversion.
Donald Trump claims he did 'absolutely nothing wrong' after a Washington appeals court questioned his claims that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election
Reuters
The judges reacted skeptically to his argument.
"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.
Sauer said that a former president could be charged for such conduct only if first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted in the Senate.
Following the hearing, Trump said he was the victim of political persecution and warned of "bedlam in this country" if the case is allowed to go forward.
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Speaking to press in a hotel near the courthouse, he said: "It's the opening of Pandora's box."
"This case, we're lost on immunity and I did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong. I'm working for the country and I worked very hard on voter fraud because we have to have free elections, we have to have strong borders, we have to have free elections.
"Those two things almost above all and we found tremendous voter fraud. We have a list of it, we have some findings if you want it. The press doesn't like reporting it, but we found tremendous voter fraud, determinative voter fraud, but we worked on that. That's what I was doing.
"And they were talking about after, well, nothing has to do with after I left - it was during the time. And that was what they really focused on today during the appeal.
Trump is the Republican frontrunnerReuters"And they concede that and everybody concedes that, and if it's during the time you have absolute immunity. So we'll see how it all works out."
Trump, who lost to Biden in the 2020 election, has opened up a commanding lead over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination since the first criminal charge against him was announced last March.
The Republican state-by-state presidential nominating contest is due to kick off next Monday in Iowa and Trump is expected to easily win that contest.