The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday took up Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges. Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington. And even if the high court resoundingly follows suit, the timing of its decision may be as important as the outcome. That’s because Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed. The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, which is roughly four months before the election.
Quick Read
- Supreme Court Hearings on Presidential Immunity: The Supreme Court began arguments on whether former President Donald Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken during his presidency, related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
- Trump’s Ongoing Legal Battles: Concurrently, Trump is on trial in New York for falsifying business records linked to hush money payments. The outcomes of the Supreme Court decision could significantly influence the timing of his trials as he faces multiple criminal cases.
- Legal Arguments and Judicial Precedents: Trump’s defense argues for absolute immunity to prevent politically motivated prosecutions, which they claim could impede presidential duties. However, this position has previously been rejected by lower courts, including a unanimous decision by a Washington D.C. appeals court.
- Implications for the Presidential Role: The case tests constitutional boundaries concerning presidential immunity, with potential lasting implications on the separation of powers and future presidential conduct.
- Judicial Considerations and Potential Outcomes: The Supreme Court’s decision, expected by the end of June, could either uphold the lower court’s decision or set new precedents regarding the prosecutorial reach over former presidents’ official acts. The decision could also dictate the immediacy of Trump’s ongoing trials and their influence on the 2024 Presidential election.
- Supreme Court Justices Express Skepticism: During arguments on Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts showed skepticism about the broad application of presidential immunity. Alito found the idea of a president ordering the assassination of a rival as legally implausible, highlighting the tension between official acts and personal actions.
- Key Legal Questions Examined: Barrett directly challenged Trump’s attorney on whether actions detailed in the indictment were official or personal, emphasizing the need to distinguish between the two. Roberts questioned the practicality of removing official acts from the indictment, hinting at potential complications in the legal arguments presented by Trump’s defense.
- Liberal Justices Question Immunity Claims: Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan pointed out the absence of a constitutional immunity clause for presidents, with Kagan noting the Founding Fathers’ intentional exclusion of such a provision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed difficulty accepting immunity for a president engaging in clearly criminal acts, such as falsifying documents or other misconduct.
- Opening Arguments and Public Demonstrations: Attorney D. John Sauer opened the defense, relying on a 1982 Supreme Court decision regarding civil lawsuit immunity for former presidents. Outside the court, demonstrations reflected the public’s intense interest and concern over the implications of the case for justice and presidential accountability.
The Associated Press has the story:
Justices pose scenarios, express skepticism in Trump’s bid before Supreme Court
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP) —
Supreme Court arguments have begun over whether former President Donald Trump can avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The justices on Thursday took up for the first time whether a former president has absolute immunity from criminal charges for actions he took while in office, as Trump claims. He is the first former president to be charged with crimes.
Trump had said he wanted to be at the Supreme Court on Thursday. Instead, he was in a courtroom in New York, where he is standing trial on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed hush money payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.
The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision could be as important as the outcome. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team is asking for a speedy resolution. The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, about four months before the election.
Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.
Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C.
The election interference conspiracy case brought by Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump.
Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties.
Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.
“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.
The lack of apparent support on the court for the sort of blanket immunity Trump seeks has caused commentators to speculate about why the court has taken up the case in the first place.
Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”
The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.
But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.
“If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election,” Roosevelt said. “Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree.”
The court has several options for deciding the case. The justices could reject Trump’s arguments and unfreeze the case so that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan can resume trial preparations, which she has indicated may last up to three months.
The court could end Smith’s prosecution by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for official acts they took while in office.
It also might spell out when former presidents are shielded for prosecution and either declare that Trump’s alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so that she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial.
JUSTICES POSE SCENARIOS AND EXPRESS SKEPTICISM
Some Supreme Court justices posed scenarios or expressed skepticism Thursday as arguments started in Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said he considered it “implausible” that a president could legally order Navy SEALs to order the assassination of a political rival. That skepticism matters because the hypothetical is something the Trump team, which includes attorney D. John Sauer, has suggested could theoretically be protected from prosecution.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Sauer a question that cut to the heart of the case, reading aloud allegations from the indictment and asking him to respond whether Trump’s actions in each instance were private or official.
Trump’s attorneys concede that immunity does not extend to personal actions but instead protects official acts. Sauer said he believed most of the acts are unquestionably official.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who could be a key swing vote, struck a skeptical note about the idea of expunging from the indictment acts that are official rather than personal, saying such a move would render the case a “one-legged stool.”
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Sauer was asking for a change in the immunity law. She raised Richard Nixon’s pardon, asking, “I think that if everybody thought that presidents couldn’t be prosecuted, then what was that about?”
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan noted the Founding Fathers did not insert an immunity clause for presidents into the Constitution — but, she said, “they knew how to.”
THOMAS GETS FIRST QUESTION; SOTOMAYOR SKEPTICAL
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pressed Donald Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer at the outset of arguments Thursday, asking where the principle of absolute immunity comes from.
The question was the first during arguments at the Supreme Court in Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Sauer fell back quickly on a Supreme Court case that’s core to the defense — a 1982 decision that held that former presidents are immune from civil lawsuits.
A skeptical Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointedly noted to Sauer that the indictment alleges that Trump acted for personal gain.
She said the Founding Fathers had contemplated the idea of immunity for presidents but had explicitly decided against it.
She made clear her opposition to the Trump legal team’s position, saying she was having a hard time envisioning immunity for a president who creates and submits false documents, orders the assassination of a political rival, and any number of other criminal acts.
SUPREME COURT ARGUMENTS ARE UNDERWAY
First up on Thursday was D. John Sauer, making Donald Trump’s argument that he’s immune from criminal prosecution. A former Missouri solicitor general and onetime Supreme Court clerk, Sauer also represented Trump at the appeals court level.
Trump went to those arguments even though he wasn’t required to be there, but he won’t be in the audience at the Supreme Court today. He’s required to be in New York for his hush money trial.
About 30 demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court before arguments, some wearing judicial robes with kangaroo masks and others holding signs like “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied.” That’s an apparent reference to the the timing of the high court’s ultimate decision in the case, which could determine whether a trial can be held before the election in November.
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