A Supreme Court ruling that gives presidents broad protection from prosecution after leaving office has raised concerns expressed by President Biden and Democratic critics that former President Trump will be further emboldened if elected to a second term.
Trump and his allies have more ambitious plans in mind for a second term, pledging to use more forcefully the levers of power at their disposal.
Trump also suggested it would be fair for him to seek revenge against opponents if he were re-elected — raising questions about the extent to which the decision would protect Biden and whether it would give the green light to the retribution sought by Trump.
It was an issue immediately brought to the fore by Biden in a speech Monday night.
“The American people must decide whether they want to trust… the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing that he will have even more courage to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants,” Biden said.
“For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits to what a president can do.”
In Monday’s ruling, the high court ruled that presidents have immunity for major official actions they take while in office. In all other official acts, presidents are “at least presumptively” immune.
The court made clear that even Trump’s pressure campaign on the Justice Department to investigate his unproven claims of voter fraud and his efforts to pressure states not to certify voters are “absolutely immune.”
It’s a decision that Trump’s critics fear will open Pandora’s box.
“Donald Trump has made it clear that if he wins the election, he will use his presidential powers to pardon all of his co-conspirators and weaponize the Justice Department, firing career officials and replacing them with an army of sycophants willing to engage into retributive harassment. against his political opponents,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who served on the now-defunct House committee that investigated Jan. 6, said in a statement after the ruling.
“All of this would presumably be permitted under today’s terrible ruling.”
Raskin described the ruling as allowing a president to “assassinate political rivals, stage a military coup, or accept bribes” — a description that parallels the dissent written by the court’s three liberal justices.
In that dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed to the same crimes, writing that allowing immunity for actions rooted in an official act would prevent courts from addressing any abuse of that power.
And in a concurring dissent, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson also focused on a president’s ability to commit murder.
“While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option of removing the Attorney General, say, by poisoning him to death,” she wrote.
“Put another way, the question here is not whether the President has exclusive power to remove from office, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting homicide can restrict how the President exercises that authority.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing on behalf of the majority, said immunity was necessary to avoid presidential prosecutions by “entrepreneurial” prosecutors.
Roberts nodded to the possibility of executives going after each other without the kind of immunity conferred by his Monday order.
“The dissenters ignore the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive president free to sue his predecessors,” he wrote in the majority opinion.
“An enterprising prosecutor in a new administration might assert that a previous President violated this broad statute. Without immunity, these types of lawsuits against former presidents could quickly become routine.”
Trump has repeatedly suggested during his presidential campaign that revenge is on his mind, while his campaign has asserted that his retribution will be at the ballot box.
Last month, Trump told Newsmax that it was “very possible” that Democrats could face prosecution in the future. The next day, he told Sean Hannity on Fox News that he had “every right to go after them” after his own lawsuit.
And on Monday, after his former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced to prison for defying the Jan. 6 committee subpoena, Trump said Biden would “pay a heavy price,” a comment his campaign said more afternoon be about the election.
“Oh, this is pure weaponry,” he told a local resident. Richmond, Virginia, radio station.
“What they did to this country is unthinkable and Biden will pay a heavy price for it, I believe.”
If a re-elected Trump wanted to go after a soon-to-be former President Biden, Monday’s decision, in some ways, offers a shield.
Like Trump, as a former president, Biden could also not face charges for conduct related to essential official acts.
That could be a hurdle, even as House impeachment leaders suggest they will send a criminal referral to the Justice Department to review what they called influence peddling by the Biden family. It was a risky move by the GOP investigators, as it would require them to name a crime committed by Biden – something their investigation has so far failed to achieve.
But that’s not the case for other Biden officials who have been targeted by the Republican Party, including Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, along with members of Biden’s family. Republican Party members also called for the indictment of special prosecutor Jack Smith.
The decision also opens up other avenues for Trump to investigate or harass Biden, actions that depend on his official authorities and that would likely not be controlled by a court.
The ruling includes other elements that complicate the prosecution, barring the use of anything a president has done within official authority as evidence elsewhere in the case and also instructing courts not to weigh a president’s motive in carrying out an act. .
“A president breaks into the home of a political rival because of their fight, rather than because of any legitimately suspected criminal activity? Meat is legally irrelevant,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote on social platform X.
Political commentator Van Jones described the decision as “a license for crooks.”
“You can do whatever you want, and the Supreme Court will probably let you get away with it. That’s very scary in this case and so I’m very, very concerned,” he said during an appearance on CNN.
Trump celebrated the ruling on his social media site, writing at one point that Smith received a “high-profile BEAT” from the court.
In another post, he stated that he has been completely exonerated despite his pretrial detention from his January 6 case, which will assess whether other actions he took to subvert the 2020 elections fall into the group of essential official acts.
“TOTAL EXEMPTION! Of course, the Supreme Court’s brilliantly written and historic ruling ENDED all of the devious Joe Biden’s witch hunts against me, including the WHITE HOUSE AND DOJ INSPIRED CIVIL HOAXES in New York,” Trump wrote on Tuesday.
“All of these unfair accusations represent the WORST level of election interference ever seen in our country’s long and storied history.”
Biden’s campaign says the decision is alarming and a key issue for the race.
“I’m very scared, and I think Americans are scared and should be scared of what Donald Trump will do, because he’s been telling us for months,” Biden’s top deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said after the decision.
“And so I can guarantee that when you see President Biden on the trail, he will be talking about the reasons why Americans should be afraid of Donald Trump as he has been for months, and this Supreme Court opinion today only amplified that.” ”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
