The Supreme Courts ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for "official acts" will reverberate far beyond Donald Trump’s criminal case for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.
The federal and state charges Trump faces in Florida and Georgia, as well as related cases facing some of his closest White House advisers, may turn on how other judges apply the immunity decision.
Although the ruling’s most immediate impact is on the federal election case in Washington, D.C., the implications for the presidency itself — including for Joe Biden and any successors — are likely vast, Politico reports.
Monday’s immunity decision threw a wrench in special counsel Jack Smith’s bid to put Trump on trial for what Smith has described as a criminal conspiracy to overturn Biden’s victory. Trump is certain to try to harness the ruling to derail his other cases as well.
In Georgia, where he is charged with trying to corrupt the state's election results in 2020, Trump has tried to shield himself by claiming his conduct is immune from prosecution because he was acting as president. Judge Scott McAfee, has yet to rule, and now the Supreme Court may help guide his hand.
In Florida, where Trump is charged with hoarding classified documents in his home after leaving office, Trump has also lodged an immunity claim, contending that his decision to transfer the classified records to Mar-a-Lago in the final days of his presidency renders it protected from prosecution.
Taken to its extreme conclusion, the court has embraced a constitutional framework that makes it nearly impossible for a president to be held legally accountable for any use of official power, no matter how nefarious — with Congress’ impeachment power being the only recourse.
“Although the Court doesn’t quite say it, the commander in chief power has to be a ‘core’ power by its logic, and so can never be a basis for a criminal prosecution,” noted Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago professor of constitutional law. “This licenses the misuse of … the surveillance and intrusive powers of the national security state.”
Historians and legal experts warned that the immunity ruling opens the door to dangerous abuses of power and strikes against foundational American principles of accountability under the law, reports Roll Call.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said the court "issued an instruction manual for lawbreaking presidents. Make sure you conspire only with other government employees. You’ll never be held to account.”
Historian and author Garrett Graff, who wrote a book on Watergate, brought up the infamous quote from President Richard Nixon — that if a president does it, that means it’s not illegal — and said nobody had believed it was true. “All of American history argues the opposite. And yet that’s exactly what the Supreme Court agreed today,” Graff said.
Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who ran unsuccessfully in the GOP 2024 presidential primary, said the Supreme Court gave presidents greater control of the Justice Department. That’s because the decision says an “official act” that gets immunity includes threatening to fire the attorney general if he does not take an action. “I can only imagine how this may be abused,” Hutchinson tweeted.
Orin Kerr, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley predicted that, if Trump wins the 2024 election, “he’s going to preface every blatantly illegal thing he does by saying, ‘Official act, this is an official act.’”