Supreme Court rules for broad presidential immunity in Donald Trump election subversion case

“The Framers’ design of the Presidency did not envision such counterproductive burdens on the ‘vigor[]’ and ‘energy’ of the Executive,” Roberts wrote. 

While recognizing the interests of these criminal prosecutions, Roberts said presidents should still have presumptive immunity for duties outside of their core responsibilities. 

“Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution,” Roberts wrote. 

The court’s ambivalence did not extend to unofficial acts, which the court said had no immunity. These would include actions taken completely outside of the executive office, such as before the president took office. 

Roberts said the lower court’s expediency prevented the significant constitutional questions from being fully fleshed out. Sorting Trump’s conduct, Roberts said, raised multiple unprecedented and momentous questions about presidential authority. 

“Given all these circumstances, it is particularly incumbent upon us to be mindful of our frequent admonition that ‘[o]urs is a court of final review and not first view,’” Roberts wrote.  

The court does comment on some of Trump’s charges. Roberts said Trump’s communications with the Justice Department would be considered official actions but there’s a possibility the circumstances around Trump’s conversations with Vice President Mike Pence would make those discussions exempt from immunity. 

Trump’s efforts to advance election fraud allegations to state officials left the most room for the lower court’s interpretation. 

Consequently, the court said any conduct covered by presidential immunity cannot be presented to a jury as evidence. Smith’s team suggested a jury could consider evidence concerning official acts to prove that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false. The Supreme Court threw out this possibility. 

“That proposal threatens to eviscerate the immunity we have recognized,” Roberts wrote. “It would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly — invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution to nonetheless prove his liability on any charge.” 

Sotomayor claimed Smith’s indictment painted Trump as a president desperate to stay in power. Against that backdrop, Sotomayor said the court invented an atextual, ahistorical and unjustifiable immunity to put the president above the law. 

The three buckets of immunity recognized by the court, Sotomayor claimed, have the effect of insulating presidents from criminal liability. 

“No matter how you look at it, the majority’s official-acts immunity is utterly indefensible,” Sotomayor wrote. 

Sotomayor said the majority ignored settled understandings of the Constitution to recognize a view of immunity never considered by the founders. 

“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” Sotomayor wrote. “Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity.” 

In a separate dissent, Jackson said the court’s ruling broke new and dangerous ground, making the most powerful official in the American government exempt from criminal law. 

“To the extent that the majority’s new accountability paradigm allows Presidents to evade punishment for their criminal acts while in office, the seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted,” the Joe Biden appointee wrote. “And, without a doubt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

Jackson said the court suggested that the judiciary will still remain a check on presidential accountability. She said leaving this decision up to judges has the potential for great harm. 

“The majority of my colleagues seems to have put their trust in our court’s ability to prevent Presidents from becoming Kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new Presidential accountability paradigm,” Jackson wrote. “I fear that they are wrong.” 

In remarks from the White House on Monday evening, President Joe Biden said “I dissent,” calling the decision dangerous. Biden said the ruling meant there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. He pledged to respect the limits of presidential power but said the court’s decision would allow other presidents, like Trump, to ignore the rule of law.  

“Because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court in the United States, the only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone,” Biden said. 

Biden said the American people had a responsibility to do what the justices did not, render a judgment about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“Most importantly, the American people must decide if they want to entrust once again the presidency to Donald Trump now knowing he'll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it,” Biden said.

Trump’s D.C. trial was originally scheduled to begin in March, but he succeeded in delaying proceedings while his immunity plea was resolved. The Supreme Court refused Smith’s attempt to fast-track the appeal in December. The justices didn’t schedule arguments in the case until late April, leaving little time for the trial to move forward before the 2024 election. 

The setback mired the court in controversy over the possibility of preventing the trial from moving forward. Leaving the trial on an extended pause has put Trump’s election subversion case on a collision course with his 2024 presidential campaign, and it's unlikely a trial could be held so close to the November elections. While presidential immunity for former presidents was up for debate, the Justice Department has a rule against prosecuting the current office holder.

In May, Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of a felony after a unanimous New York jury found him guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Follow @KelseyReichmann

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