Supreme Court says Trump has some immunity, further delaying trial
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks as he participates in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with US President Joe Biden at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. (AFP)
‘Organize a coup? Immune’
The three liberal justices dissented from Monday’s ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying she was doing so “with fear for our democracy.” “Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” Sotomayor said. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” “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,” she said. Trump, in posts on Truth Social, welcomed the decision calling it a “big win for our Constitution and democracy.” “Today’s Historic Decision by the Supreme Court should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me,” he said. Biden’s Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks expressed outrage. “They just handed Donald Trump the keys to a dictatorship,” Fulks said. The White House said Biden would personally address the Supreme Court ruling in remarks to reporters at 7:45 pm (2345 GMT). Trump’s original trial date in the election subversion case had been March 4. But the Supreme Court — dominated by conservatives, including three appointed by Trump — agreed to hear his argument for absolute immunity, putting the case on hold while they considered the matter in April.‘Drag on’
Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the ruling means the case “is going to drag on more and more and longer and longer and well beyond the election.” “To the extent that Trump was trying to drag his feet and extend this beyond the election, he has succeeded wildly,” Schwinn said. The opinion also provides a “roadmap” for a US leader to avoid prosecution for a particular action “simply by intertwining it with official government action,” he added. “That’s going to seriously hamstring the prosecution of a former president because the president’s official actions and unofficial actions are so often intertwined,” he said. Facing four criminal cases, Trump has been doing everything in his power to delay the trials until after the election. Trump was convicted in New York in May of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, making him the first former US president ever convicted of a crime. His sentencing will take place on July 11. By filing a blizzard of pre-trial motions, Trump’s lawyers have managed to put on hold the three other trials, which deal with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding top-secret documents at his home in Florida. If reelected, Trump could, once sworn in as president in January 2025, order the federal cases against him closed.
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