The Highest Powers of the Supreme Court: Assessing the Importance of President Trump’s alleged attempts to influence the oversight of the Senate Certification Process
The trial judge should determine if prosecutors can overcome President Trump’s presumed immunity.
That will entail significant delays, and the prospects for a trial before the election seem vanishingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.
The decision togrant former presidents criminal immunity affects the presidency. It makes fools of the principle that no man is above the law.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that it was not the Supreme Court’s job to sift through the evidence and to separate protected conduct from the rest. He said that the analysis is best left to the lower courts.
”We therefore remand to the district court to assess in the first instance, with appropriate input from the parties, whether a prosecution involving Trump’s alleged attempts to influence the vice president’s oversight of the certification proceeding in his capacity as president of the Senate would pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch,” he wrote.
The Supreme Court Rules that a sitting president’s immunity doesn’t mean that he’ll get out of jail. A dissent by a federal district court in Washington
She gave examples: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
A judge wrote on the Federal District Court in Washington that a sitting president’s immunity doesn’t mean they can get out of jail free of charge.
The court turned down an attempt to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot because he engaged in insurrection. The court, without discussing whether Mr. Trump was covered by the provision, ruled that states may not use it to exclude candidates for the presidency from the ballot.
The court ruled that federal prosecutors were wrong to use an obstruction law to prosecute some members of the pro-Trump mob. Two of the four charges against Mr. Trump are based on that law.
The court decided to restore Mr. Trump to the ballot at a fast pace after hearing arguments a month after issuing its decision.
The case has moved at a slower pace. In December, in asking the justices to leapfrog the appeals court and hear the case immediately, Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the prosecution, wrote that “it is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this court.” He added that “only this court can definitively resolve them.”
At the argument, several of the conservative justices did not seem inclined to examine the details of the charges against Mr. Trump. They say that the court should issue a ruling that applies to presidential power generally.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s decision, joined by his fellow conservatives. Dissenting were the three liberals, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
He said that the lower courts had rendered their decisions on a highly expedited basis, but did not consider how to distinguish between official and unofficial acts. He said the lower courts “did not analyze the conduct alleged in the indictment to decide which of it should be categorized as official and which unofficial.”
When Judge Chutkan separates the constitutional wheat from the chaff, Trump can still seek further delays even though immunity questions are very few before a trial.
