The Supreme Court delivered former President Donald Trump a significant victory in his fight against federal election interference charges, ruling that he cannot be prosecuted “for all his official acts,” in office.
The 6-3 majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts on behalf of the court’s conservative majority, found that “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”
The opinion continued, “and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
The ruling came in response to Trump’s appeal of election interference charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith in connection with actions before and leading up to the January 6 siege of the Capitol.
The court did not dismiss the indictment, as Trump wanted, but sent it back to a lower court for further analysis.
The ruling drew a scathing dissent from the court’s liberal justices, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in an opinion she read from the bench, “the President is now a king above the law.”
“The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation,” she wrote on behalf of the court’s three liberal-leaning justices.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote.
“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she wrote.
Speculation about the possibility of a Seal Team 6 political assassination was initially referenced in arguments when the case was heard before the court.
The former president and now Republican candidate said the ruling was a “big win for our constitution and democracy” which should ultimately bring an end to his most pressing personal legal complications.
“Today’s Historic Decision by the Supreme Court should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me, including the New York Hoaxes – The Manhattan SCAM cooked up by Soros backed D.A., Alvin Bragg, Racist New York Attorney General Tish James’ shameless ATTACK on the amazing business that I have built, and the FAKE Bergdorf’s ‘case.’ PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, capitalization his.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the decision is “a victory for former President Trump and all future presidents.”
The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign, in a press call held shortly after the court’s decision in Trump v. United States was released, said that the high court had just handed the former president — or any commander-in-chief shy enough on scruples — the “keys to a dictatorship,” so long as they are smart enough to label their actions “official” parts of the job.
“According to this decision, if it’s an official act to ask his justice department to jail his political opponents: he’s immune. …If it’s an official act to have his Vice President overturn the fair and free results of an election: he’s immune,” Biden-Harris Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks said.
Biden himself responded in brief remarks Monday night.
“No one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden said from the White House.
U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, who previously served as one of the House’s lawyers during Trump’s first impeachment proceedings, said that the court’s decision gives a president “carte blanche” to break the law, and that it represents the “biggest threat” to the Constitution “since the Civil War.”
“If Joe Biden is not elected in November, we will not have a democracy that we have known for 250 years,” he said.
The Bay State’s junior senator, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, said the court has created a “dangerous” standard for presidential behavior and undermined its own legitimacy in the process.
“This is a rogue, untethered, and damaging Supreme Court. MAGA extremist justices also are ignoring the festering corruption in their ranks. We need justices committed to justice. Stolen seats filled with partisan hacks lead to alarming results. Today’s ruling is devastating to our democracy. We must reclaim the stolen seats, restore balance and legitimacy to the Court, and begin to undo the damage the MAGA Republican party has wrought,” he said.
House minority whip, U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, said the decision showed that the court has “abdicated its responsibility to unequivocally declare that in America, no one is above the law. This decision undermines a founding principle — that we are a country of laws and accountability, not absolute power and privilege.”
And U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton said the nation’s founding fathers would be “rolling in their graves.”
“As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent: ‘The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.’ One of our founding principles, when we shed the shackles of a king, was that all are equal under the law,” the Salem Democrat said.
