President Joe Biden delivered remarks on Monday condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that granted broad immunity to Donald Trump and other presidents from prosecution. Biden said the public has a “right to know” Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, which likely won’t be revealed until after the election.
Biden condemned the ruling, stating that the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity means “there are virtually no limits” on a president’s actions. “I know I will respect the limits of presidential power as I have for the past three and a half years, but any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,” he said.
The ruling extends the delay in the Washington criminal case against ex-President Donald Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss, reducing the likelihood that Trump could be tried before the November election. The justices have ordered the trial judge to determine how to apply the decision to the Republican ex-president’s case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized the ruling, saying it undermines the principle that no one is above the law. Trump called it a big win. Biden’s campaign previously stated that the ruling “doesn’t change the facts” about the events of Jan. 6.
The Supreme Court has cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside in public places, overturning a ruling that found such laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the ruling as “a disgraceful decision,” influenced by the three justices Trump appointed. “It undermines SCOTUS’s credibility and suggests political influence trumps all in our courts today,” the New York Democrat said on X.
Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group, said the high court’s ruling on immunity was more evidence that the conservative majority has “replaced jurisprudence with politics.” “Today’s decision to punt the specifics of the case back down to the lower courts, taken with the months of delay in hearing the case, reveal even more politically motivated acts, making it even less likely that this critical question will be resolved before the election,” he said.
Virginia Kase Solomón, president of Common Cause, a national voting rights advocacy group said the immunity ruling was filled with dangerous potential and will likely deprive the American people of a trial a verdict they deserve ahead of the November election. “Today, I join Justice Sotomayor in her ‘fear for our democracy.’” Solomón said in a statement. “Today’s decision means that presidents and former presidents are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for actions related to their core constitutional powers, and presumptively immune from prosecution for ‘official acts.’ In practice, this makes it nearly impossible for a president to be prosecuted for actions they took in office — even if those acts were criminal. This is not how a democracy that works for all should function, nor what the framers intended.”
Anti-Trump influencers and meme accounts on social media are reacting to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling by suggesting Biden should take advantage. Social media posts darkly joked that Biden should pack the courts, imprison Trump or postpone the November election, shielded by his newfound presidential immunity. Others made reference to “King Biden” or shared images depicting the president in a crown. Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project, posted on the social platform X to “thank the Supreme Court for granting Joe Biden godlike official powers.” “I think his first step should be to declare all Trump golf courses as protected Federal wildlife preserves and seize them by eminent domain…it’s an official act, so it’s cool, right?” Wilson wrote.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement after Monday’s immunity ruling that the Supreme Court had “gone rogue with its decision, violating the foundational American principle that no one is above the law.” The Democratic congresswoman from California said the decision further erodes the court’s credibility “in the eyes of all those who believe in the rule of law.”
For future presidents, the immunity ruling is an “open invitation to abuse power,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy programs at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “This is much worse than I expected, than I was even contemplating as an outcome,” she said, adding that the decision gives “virtual king-like immunity for the president.” Weiser said Justice Samuel Alito should have recused himself from the case after his flag controversy. She said his decision-making vote on a section of the ruling relating to how prosecutors can use evidence shows his participation made a difference. “I think the absence of recusal was not just a misjudgment but a miscarriage of justice, and I think that we can see here that it was consequential,” Weiser said.
One of the most immediate impacts is the decision adds additional insurance that there will be no court interventions before the November election. “Certainly the decision will further delay the federal criminal case against Trump for his role in the insurrection, said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of Public Citizen, which filed an amicus brief in the case. Individual actions on what are official acts of a president will have to be litigated. And if former President Trump regains the White House it is “unlikely in the extreme” that as sitting president he will be prosecuted. “If he is president again, we would not expect Jack Smith to be in position to move forward with this criminal case.”
Presidential power has been dramatically expanding for half a century — and the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling falls in line with that trend, said Leah Wright Rigueur, a history professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Still, she said, the Supreme Court’s punt to lower courts on the question of which actions are in a president’s official capacity leaves some potential for the absolute power of the presidency to be checked. “I know the Trump people are crowing about this and saying yes, yes, we won, we won, this is a victory,” she said. “It’s actually not a victory. It’s a pass-off.” The Supreme Court has kicked several rulings back to lower courts lately — a sign that some members of the court are still concerned about the appearance of impartiality and objectivity, she said.
The high court’s conservative majority accused the liberal justices who dissented of “fear-mongering” and striking a “tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.” The majority said the dissenters in the immunity case “overlook” the concern that presidents will be restrained from “boldly and fearlessly” carrying out their official duties out of fear that they could be subject to prosecution. The majority opinion noted that presidents are routinely criticized for not sufficiently enforcing some aspect of federal law. “An enterprising prosecutor in a new administration” could allege the previous president broke the law, it said. “Without immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex-Presidents could quickly become routine,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “The enfeebling of the Presidency and our Government that would result from such a cycle of factional strife is exactly what the Framers intended to avoid.”
“We can’t count on the Supreme Court or any institution to hold him responsible. It’s going to be up to the voters in November,” Harry Dunn, a former police officer who defended the U.S. Capitol against rioters on Jan. 6, said on a Monday conference call organized by President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. On the same call, New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman said Trump will see the ruling “as a personal get out of jail free card.” “He does not care about this country, he does not care about the American people,” Goldman said. “He cares solely about himself.”
The Biden campaign began fundraising off the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling within a few hours of the decision. A new fundraising email called on Biden supporters to “hold Trump accountable” because “our democracy and ALL of our fundamental rights hang in the balance.” “The Supreme Court just granted Donald Trump breathtaking immunity from prosecution,” the email read. “If Trump wins again, he’ll be even more dangerous and unhinged because he knows the courts won’t hold him back.”
The majority opinion on the immunity case is striking for what it does not talk about, the basis for the criminal case, said Cliff Sloan, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law. “When the court, in its opinion, kind of goes through the different elements, such as talking to the Justice Department, talking to the vice president, one thing I find surprising is the court says very little about the grave nature of the crime,” said Sloan, a former law clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. “The crime that was charged is a systematic plan to overthrow, a fair and free election. That is the heart of the case before the court … that through these different activities, President Trump was really seeking to overturn the election and stage a coup. There’s no sense of that coming through the majority opinion.”
In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts chided the lower courts for their quick decisions on the consequential case and for not analyzing whether Trump’s conduct detailed in the indictment was official or unofficial. “Despite the unprecedented nature of this case, and the very significant constitutional questions that it raises, the lower courts rendered their decisions on a highly expedited basis,” Roberts wrote. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in her ruling in December said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.” Washington’s federal appeals court similarly rejected Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity two months later. In that ruling, the appeals court said any immunity that may have protected Trump while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.
The Supreme Court’s ruling makes it all but certain that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, will not face trial in Washington ahead of the November election. In a 6-3 ruling, the justices said former presidents are shielded from prosecution for official acts but do not have immunity for unofficial acts. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to determine whether core aspects of the indictment are unofficial versus official, and therefore potentially shielded from prosecution.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries pledged Monday that the party will respond to the high court’s ruling with “aggressive oversight and legislative activity” if Democrats win back the majority in November. “The Framers of the Constitution envisioned a democracy governed by the rule of law and the consent of the American people,” Jeffries said in a statement. “They did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling “doesn’t change the facts” about the events of Jan. 6, 2021. “Let’s be very clear about what happened on January 6: Donald Trump snapped after he lost the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overthrow the results of a free and fair election,” the campaign said. “Trump is already running for president as a convicted felon for the very same reason he sat idly by while the mob violently attacked the Capitol: he thinks he’s above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and hold onto power for himself.” The campaign accused the former president of growing “more unhinged” since the 2021 attack and said Biden will make sure Americans reject Trump’s quest for power “for good” this November.
Source: Associated Press, The Lincoln Project, Common Cause, Accountable.US, Public Citizen, Brennan Center for Justice, SNF Agora Institute, Georgetown Law
