Live Updates: Supreme Court Says Trump Is Partly Shielded From Prosecution
The practical effect of the ruling raises the possibility of further delay of the case against the former president on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.
Reporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that may effectively delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
Mr. Trump contended that he was entitled to absolute immunity from the charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities. Lower courts rejected Mr. Trump’s claim, but the Supreme Court’s ruling may delay the case enough that Mr. Trump would be able to make it go away entirely if he prevails in November.
Here’s what to know:
The ruling: The justices said that Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts taken during his presidency but that there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct. The case returns to the lower court, which will decide whether the actions Mr. Trump took were in an official or private capacity.
The charges: The former president faces three charges of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding, all related to his efforts to cling to the presidency after his 2020 loss. He was indicted last August by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in one of two federal criminal cases against him; the other relates to the F.B.I. raid on his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022 that recovered missing government documents.
Lower courts ruled against Trump: The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, denied Mr. Trump’s immunity request in December. “Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed in February, saying that “any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
The timing: Even before the ruling, the court’s decision to take up the case already helped Mr. Trump’s strategy to delay his prosecution until after the November election. With this ruling, the prospects for a trial before the election seem increasingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.
Other Jan. 6 cases: The court heard two other cases this term concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, both of which relate to Mr. Trump. One — an attempt to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot in Colorado under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which made people who engages in insurrection ineligible to hold office — was unanimously rejected in March. The other limited the use of a federal obstruction law to prosecute members of the mob who stormed the Capitol. Two of the four charges against Mr. Trump are based on that law.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned the legitimacy of the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith: “If this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people.” That is an issue that the judge in the Trump classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, just held a hearing about. Notably, none of the other eight justices joined his concurring opinion.
Chief Justice Roberts’s analysis suggests that Trump talking to Pence about the Electoral College vote might not be entitled to immunity because Congress has legislated extensively to define the vice president’s role, and the president plays no direct part in that process. Chief Justice Roberts suggests that another context — a president talking to a vice president about casting a tie-breaking 51st vote in the Senate on legislation that is part of the White House’s agenda — is more likely to be immune.
But despite telegraphing that likely result, the Supreme Court does not just say that. It instead sends the issue back to Judge Chutkan.
Opinion of the court
It is ultimately the government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity. 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.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
The question of when Trump's federal election case will actually go trial is going to be tough to pin down with any real certainty right now. The fact-finding process the court has ordered could take a while not only to conduct, but also to prepare for. Even before the fact-finding process can begin, Trump's lawyers are certain to file preliminary legal motions on setting the terms for the hearing (or hearings, plural) and asking in advance for things like more discovery information from prosecutors.
The court’s ruling now requires Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors to duke it out in what could be an expansive pretrial hearing over the majority of the charges in Jack Smith’s indictment. Only one slice of the indictment is definitely off limits, according to the ruling. And that is the part accusing Trump of seeking to use the Justice Department to validate his claims of election fraud. Everything else will be fought over.
The bottom line practical effect of the court ruling appears to be that the trial judge in Washington, Tanya Chutkan, is going to have to hold an evidentiary hearing on many, if not most, of the allegations in the special counsel’s indictment of Trump. That hearing will delve into the question of whether the allegations were based on official acts Trump took as president or unofficial ones. That process is going to take time. How much time remains unclear at this point.
During oral arguments, prosecutors suggested that even if presidents are immune for official acts, they could still introduce evidence about Trump’s official acts to help the jury understand the unofficial ones. But in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts says no to that.
Opinion of the court
If official conduct for which the president is immune may be scrutinized to help secure his conviction, even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct, the ‘intended effect’ of immunity would be defeated.
We’re still going through the court’s ruling line by line, but one of the practical effects of it on Trump’s federal election case in Washington is that he will now enjoy immunity from any allegation in the indictment concerning his dealings with the Justice Department. Recall that one of the main accusations was that Trump sought to install a loyalist, Jeff Clark, as acting attorney general in order, the indictment says, to do his bid in claiming there was fraud in the election.
Another practical effect on the ruling: The justices have ordered that the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, will have to determine whether Trump is immune from prosecution on allegations related to his pressure campaign on his vice president, Mike Pence. The special counsel, Jack Smith, has charged Trump with trying to strongarm Pence into using his role overseeing the election certification proceeding on Jan. 6, 2021, to throw him the election.
The court has ordered up a similar fact-finding process on most of the remaining allegations in the indictment — those concerning Trump’s attempts to strongarm state officials into helping him win the election as well as his plot to gin up false slates of electors declaring that he won in states he actually lost.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
The Biden campaign clearly recognizes the ruling is unhelpful to the current president politically, as he has sought to make Jan. 6 central to his campaign against Trump. The campaign sent a statement attributed only to a senior Biden campaign official, saying: “Today’s ruling doesn’t change the facts, so let’s be very clear about what happened on January 6: Donald Trump snapped after he lost the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. Trump is already running for president as a convicted felon for the very same reason he sat idly by while the mob violently attacked the Capitol: he thinks he’s above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and hold onto power for himself.”
The Supreme Court has remanded the case to the Federal District Court judge overseeing the matter, Tanya Chutkan, to determine the nature of the acts for which former President Trump has been charged — which are unofficial ones he undertook in his personal capacity and which are official ones he undertook as president.
Reporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that may effectively delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.
The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said Mr. Trump had immunity for his official acts.
“The president is not above the law,” the chief justice wrote. “But Congress may not criminalize the president’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the executive branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent executive. The president therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision was gravely misguided.
“Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency,” she wrote. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”
The justices said there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct and returned the case to the lower courts for additional analysis.
It was not immediately clear how much delay that would entail, but the prospects for a trial before the election seem increasingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.
Mr. Trump contended that he is entitled to absolute immunity from the charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities.
Lower courts rejected that claim.
“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote, “the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get out of jail free’ pass.”
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed. “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote in an unsigned decision. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court said it would decide this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
The court heard two other cases this term concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In March, the court unanimously rejected an attempt to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which made people who engage in insurrection ineligible to hold office. 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.
On Friday, the court ruled that federal prosecutors had improperly used an obstruction law to prosecute some members of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Two of the four charges against Mr. Trump are based on that law.
The court decided the case restoring Mr. Trump to the ballot at a brisk pace, hearing arguments a month after agreeing to hear it and issuing its decision a month after that.
The immunity case has moved at a considerably 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,” adding that “only this court can definitively resolve them.”
The justices denied Mr. Smith’s petition 11 days after he filed it, in a brief order without noted dissents.
After the appeals court ruled against Mr. Trump, he asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Sixteen days later, on Feb. 28, the court agreed to hear his appeal, scheduling arguments for almost two months later, on the last day of the term. Another two months have passed since then.
At the argument, several of the conservative justices did not seem inclined to examine the details of the charges against Mr. Trump. Instead, they said, the court should issue a ruling that applies to presidential power generally.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Supreme Court has ruled 6 to 3 that former presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.
Reporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
Although the court has provided live audio of arguments since the pandemic, it does not do the same for opinion announcements. Audio of announcements is usually made public around the beginning of the court’s next term, in October.
Reporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
The majority opinion in the immunity decision will probably be written by Chief Justice Roberts. He is the most senior member of the court, meaning that decision will probably come last.
News Analysis
The Supreme Court tossed former President Donald J. Trump a legal lifeline months ago by making its original choice to hear his immunity claims, a move that substantially aided Mr. Trump’s efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s argument that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for official actions taken while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts — the justices bought the former president several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.
There is now only a slender possibility that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day.
Given the Supreme Court’s leisurely pace in issuing its decision and the amount of legal business left to conduct in the trial court, the odds are steep that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.
If Mr. Trump is successful in delaying the trial until after Election Day and he wins, he could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether. Moreover, Justice Department policy precludes prosecuting a sitting president, meaning that, once sworn in, he could most likely have any federal trial he is facing postponed until after he left office.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTReporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
The Supreme Court will announce decisions, starting at 10 a.m., one at a time. The most junior justice who wrote a majority opinion will go first, summarizing it from the bench. As he or she starts, reporters in the press room will be handed paper copies, and the court will post the decision on its website. The next decision is made public when the next justice, in reverse order of seniority, starts to read. And so on. Those oral summaries can take some time, particularly if they are accompanied by oral dissents. All of this can take half an hour or more.
Reporting on the Supreme Court since 2008
The Supreme Court had never addressed the scope of a former president’s immunity from prosecution for official actions while in office. But it had taken up related questions.
The court’s precedents — in cases involving Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Donald J. Trump — have pointed in both directions.
Nixon v. Fitzgerald: Presidents have absolute immunity from civil damages suits within the ‘outer perimeter’ of their official duties.
In 1982, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Richard M. Nixon had absolute immunity from civil lawsuits — cases brought by private litigants seeking money — for conduct “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”
The ruling establishes that immunity can be expansive, lives on after a president leaves office and extends to the very limits of what may be said to be official conduct. But it concerns a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution.
The 1982 case arose from a lawsuit brought by an Air Force analyst, A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, Nixon had been out of office for several years.
“In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority 5-to-4 decision, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability” for Nixon’s official conduct, broadly defined.
But the decision drew a sharp line between civil suits, which it said can be abusive and harassing, and criminal prosecutions like the one against Mr. Trump.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger underscored the point in a concurring opinion. “The immunity is limited to civil damages claims,” he wrote.
United States v. Nixon: Presidents do not have absolute executive privilege.
This case concerned access to information rather than immunity from prosecution, but it has been widely understood to have rejected claims that ordinary legal principles do not apply to the president.
In 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mr. Nixon, then still in office, had to comply with a trial subpoena seeking tapes of his conversations in the Oval Office, rejecting claims of executive privilege.
James Pearce, one of the prosecutors on the team assembled by Jack Smith, the special counsel, invoked the United States v. Nixon case to draw a distinction during an appeals court hearing. The Supreme Court, he said, gave Nixon special treatment — to a point — by not requiring him to be held in contempt before he could appeal a trial judge’s order that he turn over the tapes.
But that was as far as the justices would go to accommodate the president, Mr. Pearce said, as the court “of course rejected President Nixon’s absolute executive privilege claim.”
That decision led to Nixon’s resignation in the face of mounting calls for his impeachment.
Trump v. Vance: Even presidents must produce evidence for a criminal inquiry.
The Supreme Court invoked the principle that no one is above the law in 2020, ruling by a 7-to-2 margin in Trump v. Vance that Mr. Trump had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records in a criminal investigation.
“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
Clinton v. Jones: The president does not have immunity for private actions taken before his election.
In Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office, discounting concerns that it would distract him from his official responsibilities. Both of his appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, voted against him.
“The president is subject to judicial process in appropriate circumstances,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court, adding, “We have never suggested that the president, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”
The case was in one sense harder than the current one against Mr. Trump, as it involved a sitting president. In another sense, though, it was easier, as it concerned an episode said to have taken place before Mr. Clinton took office (Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee, said Mr. Clinton had made lewd advances in a hotel room when he was governor of the state).
The Supreme Court conducts its work largely out of public view, letting its opinions stand as one of the most visible markers of the justices’ rigorous debates on all aspects of American life.
The justices typically take the bench to announce their decisions after presiding over arguments that have touched on some of the thorniest topics in the country: guns, abortion and the scope of presidential power.
No cameras are allowed. The New York Times received rare access to capture the courtroom during a momentous term.
The justices enter the courtroom together through the heavy red velvet curtains behind the bench. Courtroom sessions, which begin each year on the first Monday of October, include oral arguments, admission of new members to the bar and, later in the term, the announcement of decisions.
The nine justices sit behind a mahogany, wing-shaped bench, their spots designated according to seniority. The most junior justices sit on either end, with the chief justice occupying the center chair. The seating chart shifts when a justice leaves the court and a new one joins.
All the chairs match. The justices initially brought their own, but Chief Justice Warren E. Burger thought it looked “untidy” and ordered uniform chairs tailored to each new justice. Originally, the bench was straight across the front of the courtroom. However, the justices had trouble seeing and hearing one another and, in the early 1970s, it was angled.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment