Trump is immune from prosecution for some acts in federal election case
Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for some actions he took as president while fighting to subvert the 2020 election, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, further complicating efforts to put Trump on trial in Washington on criminal charges that he engaged in fraud to try to cling to power.
The largely 6-3 decision, which divided the court along ideological lines, immediately knocked out some of the central allegations that special counsel Jack Smith leveled against Trump, including claims that he attempted to weaponize his Justice Department to concoct or amplify false claims of voter fraud.
However, the opinion also leaves much unresolved, sending the case back to the trial court for further proceedings. There, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan must now sift through the allegations to separate Trump’s official acts — those he took in his capacity as president — from private ones, when he was acting as a presidential candidate. That process could further stall the case by months and is likely to push any trial past Election Day.
The opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts declared that former presidents have “absolute” immunity from criminal prosecution over actions that fall within their “core constitutional powers.”
“There is no immunity,” Roberts wrote, for “unofficial acts.”
Trump immediately rejoiced at the decision. “Big win for our Constitution and democracy, proud to be an American!” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
One particular challenge for Chutkan: The Supreme Court’s opinion leaves significant ambiguity about the scope of Trump’s immunity for acts related to his office but outside the powers specifically accorded to the president under the Constitution. The high court’s majority said those sorts of acts may be immune, but didn’t definitively resolve that question.
That nuance leaves open the question of whether Trump’s interactions with then-Vice President Mike Pence in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021, count as “official” — and therefore immune — actions, or whether they can remain part of the criminal case against Trump. Trump pressured Pence to refuse to certify the election results on Jan. 6 — an effort that Pence rejected as illegal. The special counsel has alleged that Trump’s pressure campaign was one aspect of a broad and illegal abuse of power.
The high court also left it to Chutkan to render similar judgment on Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials to reverse the certified results of their elections.
The opinion was the latest evidence of a bitterly divided court, with the three liberal justices blasting the result as “utterly indefensible” in a blistering dissent.
“This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The decision comes four months after the Supreme Court handed Trump another major victory in a case that also stemmed from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in stoking the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. In that case, the court unanimously rejected state-level efforts to bar Trump from the ballot as an insurrectionist.
Roberts’ majority opinion on the immunity issue declared that “the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive.” As a result, the chief justice wrote, former presidents “may not be prosecuted” for conduct that derives from their constitutional duties.
Former presidents are also likely immune for acts that relate to broader powers that are delegated to the president by Congress.
“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official,” Roberts wrote. “The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”
Roberts emphasized that the decision was not specific to Trump, and he said it should not be viewed as partisan. “That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party,” he wrote.
Reading her dissent aloud from the bench for about 25 minutes, Sotomayor insisted the majority was not executing the founders’ vision but straying from it.
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