Supreme Court Grants Trump Immunity From Prosecution for ‘Official’ Acts
The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents are entitled to immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office. The landmark decision delivers a critical blow to the Justice Department’s ongoing election interference case against former president Donald Trump, and virtually guarantees the case will not go to trial before November’s election.
In a 6-3 decision, with all three of the court’s liberal justices dissenting, the court ruled that “the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “Trump asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one we have recognized. He contends that the indictment must be dismissed because the Impeachment Judgment Clause requires that impeachment and Senate conviction precede a President’s criminal prosecution … The text of the Clause provides little support for such an absolute immunity.”
The case decided on Monday stems from Trump’s ongoing efforts to delay or dismiss the Justice Department’s criminal indictment against him over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. Last August, Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The former president pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Trump celebrated the ruling on Truth Social, writing that the decision was a “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”
The court further ruled that specific questions about whether Trump’s actions surrounding the election — such as his efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to usurp the Electoral College certification — constitute “official” or “unofficial” acts will be remanded back to the District Court. However, those decisions could likely be appealed back to the Supreme Court.
In a critical blow to the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute the case, the court also severely limited prosecutors ability to introduce evidence or testimony related to a former president’s “official” conduct in a case prosecuting “unofficial” conduct.
The Supreme Court’s decision to take up Trump’s immunity claims was surprising in itself given the utterly ridiculous arguments posed by his legal team before the D.C. appeals court. His lawyer, John Sauer, took Trump’s expansive immunity claim to its logical extreme, arguing that, yes, presidential immunity would even protect a president from prosecution if they attempted to order a hit on their political rival.
In January, an appeals court judge asked Sauer the following: “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, and is not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”
Sauer replied, “If he were impeached and convicted first … my answer is qualified yes, there is a political process that would have to occur first.”
While Sauer argued in a filing that the Supreme Court justices should not concern themselves with the appeals court’s “lurid hypotheticals,” because they “almost certainly never will occur, and would virtually certainly result in impeachment and Senate conviction,” the Trump lawyer made the same argument again when pressed at oral arguments before the Supreme Court in April.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer: “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
He responded, “It would depend on the hypothetical. We can see that could well be an official act.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the majority’s opinion will now protect this exact type of conduct.
“The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world,” wrote Sotomayor. “When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
Trump attorneys and close advisers privately braced to lose this Supreme Court case, but they have been uncorking the champagne — at times literally so — for months over the court’s decision to take up the case. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s decision to take the case and the pace with which it handled it effectively bumped Trump’s federal criminal trials off the 2024 calendar — or at least past the November election.
Senior Trump aides had feared that the election-subversion federal trial would have begun around the time of the 2024 Republican National Convention, and may have caused him significant political damage during a critical stretch of Trump’s campaign to take the White House back from President Joe Biden.
If Trump wins the election in November, the delays to his federal trials would give his second administration and a fully MAGAfied Justice Department the ability to shut down the cases and then pursue the prosecutors who dared to cross Trump.
“We won already, even if we don’t win,” a source close to Trump bluntly noted before the decision.
Furthermore, according to various sources with direct knowledge of the matter, several of Trump’s top lawyers and aides predicted for weeks that the Supreme Court conservative majority wouldn’t co-sign the former president’s absolute immunity arguments, but would instead endorse some forms of presidential immunity and kick the legal debate back down to a lower court.
“That would be insane if the [Supreme] Court agreed it was legal for a president to kill the other party’s leader,” says a conservative lawyer close to the Trump family. “But they are likely to give the Trump side something to work with.”
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