Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued a landmark ruling in the case Trump v. United States, concluding that the president enjoys substantial immunity from prosecution for official actions taken while in office, but not for unofficial actions.
The decision clarifies whether a former president can be criminally charged by prosecutors for acts committed while in office. Former President Trump He raised the question before the court after special counsel Jack Smith charged him with a variety of crimes related to Trump’s effort to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Smith has charged Trump following a months-long investigation into whether the former president was involved in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 and interfered with the results of the 2020 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has argued that he should be exempt from prosecution for official actions he took as president of the United States.
The five key points of the judgement are as follows:
Former President Trump participates in the first presidential debate at the CNN studios on June 27 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Chief Justice John Roberts said the president has no immunity for his informal actions
In a 6-3 majority decision in the case, the high court sent the matter back to the lower court after the justices did not apply a ruling on whether former President Trump is immune from prosecution in connection with actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump immunity case: Supreme Court grants former presidents substantial protection from prosecution
“The President enjoys no immunity for his informal actions, and not everything the President does is official,” Roberts, writing for the majority, said.
“The president is not above the law,” Roberts added. “But the Congress The president’s conduct in carrying out the executive branch’s responsibilities under the Constitution cannot be criminalized. And the system of separation of powers designed by the Constitution’s framers has always demanded an energetic, independent executive.
“The president therefore cannot be prosecuted for the exercise of his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least potential immunity from prosecution for all of his official actions,” he said. “This immunity applies equally to everyone in the Oval Office, regardless of their politics, policy or party.”
Justice Sonia Sotomore argued that ‘the president is now a king above the law’
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomore dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing that “in every exercise of official power, the President is now king above the law.”
“Let the President break the law, let him exploit the dignity of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for the wrong purposes. Because if he knew that he could one day be held accountable for breaking the law, he might not be as brave and fearless as we would like him to be,” they wrote. “That is the message of the majority today.”
“Even if these nightmare scenarios never occur, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done,” Sotomayor said. “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has been irrevocably changed.”
Supreme Court Judges posing for an official photo at the Supreme Court. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
Roberts responds to dissenting opinions, saying the president is ‘different from everyone else’
Roberts responded to the liberal justices: “In the absence of argument, dissenters repeatedly level variations of the charge that the Court has put the President ‘above the law.'”
“Like everyone else, the president is subject to prosecution in his unofficial capacity. But unlike anyone else, the president is a branch of government, and the Constitution gives him broad powers and duties. Keeping that reality in mind — and ensuring that the president can exercise those powers forcefully, as the Constitution’s framers anticipated — does not put him above the law; it preserves the basic framework of the Constitution from which that law flows.”
Biden criticizes SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling, ignores questions about election cancellation
“The dissenters’ position ultimately comes down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead spreading fear based on extreme hypotheticals about a future where the president “feels empowered to violate federal criminal law,” he wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas said it is the law to give the president immunity from prosecution for his official actions
Thomas, who was in the majority, wrote in the decision that “in this case, there has been much discussion about how to ensure that the President is not ‘above the law.’
He added, “But, as the Court has made clear, it is the law to grant the president immunity from prosecution for his official acts.” “The Constitution provides for an ‘energetic executive,’ because such an executive is ‘essential to the security of liberty.'”
President Biden in his address Monday evening criticized the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity in the case Trump v. United States, saying it means there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. (AP/Jacqueline Martin)
Thomas also said, “Respecting the protections the Constitution provides for the presidency secures liberty. Likewise, the Constitution also secures liberty by separating the powers to create and fill offices.” “And, there are serious questions about whether the attorney general violated that structure by creating an office of special counsel that is not established by law.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority was “abandoning the model of accountability for criminal acts.”
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that she “cannot tolerate the majority’s needless rejection of a model of accountability for criminal acts that treats every citizen of this country as equally subject to the law — as the rule of law requires.”
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He added, “That core principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into autocracy. Yet the Court is now choosing to relax the law’s protections for an extremely powerful category of citizens: any future president who wishes to violate Congress’s established limits.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
