The Supreme Court ruled Monday that presidents enjoy “absolute immunity” for official acts taken under their core responsibilities and may have some immunity from criminal prosecution for other official behavior, but they do not enjoy immunity for unofficial acts.
The court’s groundbreaking 6-3 ruling will delay ongoing prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, sending lower courts scrambling to see whether any of the criminal cases against him can survive. But the justices set a tough bar for prosecutors to reach.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing the majority opinion, said the founders saw a country where no person — including a president — is above the law. But they also wrote a Constitution with a separation of powers that puts some presidential actions beyond the reach of Congress’ criminal laws.
The court, he said, had to draw a balance.
“The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy or party,” the chief justice wrote.
Republicans hailed the ruling. Democrats, who reviled the majority ruling, cheered Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, in which she wrote that the court has made the presidency a dangerous office.
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“The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding,” she wrote. “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 said the ruling gives her “fear for our democracy.”
Mr. Trump immediately embraced the decision and his campaign sent out fundraising appeals celebrating the ruling.
“BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” the former president said on social media.
President Biden, in a hastily scheduled statement to reporters at the White House Monday night, urged voters to “dissent” from the ruling by voting him back into office.
“Now the American people have to do what the court should have been willing to do but did not,” he said. “The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy on Jan. 6 makes him unfit for public office.”
The case, one of two prosecutions of Mr. Trump by special counsel Jack Smith, accuses the former president of trying to subvert the 2020 election results.
Chief Justice Roberts said the indictment against Mr. Trump accused him of four illegal acts: Asking the Justice Department to pressure states over their electoral counts; communicating with then-Vice President Mike Pence on not certifying the count; orchestrating alternate slates of electors; and using social media to talk to supporters who would go on to storm the Capitol.
The court said the communications with the Justice Department fall under core presidential powers and enjoy “absolute immunity.”
The other three areas are fact-specific questions that the justices said the district court must explore.
Still, the majority suggested prosecutors will have to meet a high bar. They said communications with a vice president and with the public are presumably part of a president’s role, which would entail some immunity.
The justices also said lower courts cannot analyze motives when determining what does or does not constitute an official versus an unofficial act. That’s a win for Mr. Trump because federal prosecutors have cited his self-interest in staying in the White House as proof he wasn’t acting in his official capacity.
Monday’s ruling sends Mr. Smith’s prosecution back to the district court, where Judge Tanya Chutkan must decide whether any of the four charges in the indictment can survive scrutiny under the court’s new standard.
That decision would then likely face a new round of appeals, making it unthinkable that a trial could be held before Election Day in November. Other criminal cases facing Mr. Trump also will have to grapple with the court’s new official acts standard.
That includes U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, overseeing Mr. Trump’s case in the Southern District of Florida, where he’s accused of mishandling classified documents, and a case in Georgia where he stands accused of trying to subvert that state’s electors.
“Everything is going to get delayed,” said Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project.
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, took to social media platform X to say the decision “will hamstring efforts to prosecute even those acts for which there *isn’t* immunity.”
Pushing trial dates back would be another victory for Mr. Trump, said Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic campaign lawyer.
“Not only has Trump’s gambit for delay worked, but if he’s reelected in November, he will have full control of the Department of Justice and be empowered to make the most of it. Plus, there will never be a trial,” Mr. Elias said in an email to his readers at Democracy Docket.
Mr. Trump urged prosecutors to shut down all the cases against him now. He said that should extend to all his legal woes, including a Georgia criminal prosecution over his 2020 election activities; a New York felony conviction for violations stemming from hush money paid to an adult film actress; a civil judgment against him by a woman who says he sexually abused her; and a New York civil case against the Trump Organization.
“The Supreme Court totally dismantled most of the charges against me,” Mr. Trump posted to Truth Social. “Joe Biden should now call off his ‘dogs.’”
Mr. Trump wasted no time trying to capitalize.
His legal team filed a motion Monday asking the judge presiding over the New York felony case to set aside his conviction in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to the Associated Press.
Democrats, meanwhile, were furious at the decision.
“Today, the Supreme Court has gone rogue with its decision, violating the foundational American principle that no one is above the law,” said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The Biden campaign, in a fundraising message, told supporters the ruling is all the more reason to rally to defeat Mr. Trump’s bid to reclaim the White House.
“If Trump wins again, he’ll be even more dangerous and unhinged because he knows the courts won’t hold him back,” the campaign wrote. “The highest court in the land just gave Donald Trump what he wanted. You better bet he is going to fight tooth and nail to get back in the Oval Office.”
Even the timing of the case angered Democrats, who suggested it should have been decided earlier.
It was argued in April, the last case the justices heard, and it was the final opinion released Monday before they began their three-month summer recess.
Mr. Trump missed the oral arguments in the case because he was standing trial in the New York felony case at the time.
The immunity case is the second major decision involving the former president that the justices have issued this term.
Earlier this year they sped a ruling that kept Mr. Trump on state primary ballots, overturning a Colorado Supreme Court decision that had ordered him ousted from that state’s GOP primary.
The state had relied on a part of the 14th Amendment that bars certain persons who “engaged” in insurrection from holding certain offices.
The federal justices ruled unanimously that Colorado had overstepped. The court’s Republican-appointed majority went further and ruled that only Congress can rule whether a presidential candidate is barred from holding office.
The justices delivered another ruling last week that could assist Mr. Trump.
In a 6-3 decision, they said the Justice Department had overstretched a law forbidding obstruction of an official proceeding in applying it to those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Smith has used that same section of law for two of the charges in his 2020 election subversion prosecution, and legal analysts say that could further hinder the case.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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