The Most Chilling Line in Supreme Court’s Trump Immunity Ruling

With its ruling in favor of presidential immunity Monday morning, the Supreme Court has heavily undermined much of the evidence expected to be used against Donald Trump in his pending criminal trials. 

In the ruling, the court stated that “testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial,” referring to anything a president does as an “official” act.

Much of the evidence gathered against Trump in his January 6 trial, for example, relies on what he said to his advisers and to Vice President Mike Pence, as well as records that were kept on such discussions in the White House. It could also erase evidence of Trump speaking to lawmakers on the evening of January 6 to delay the certification of Biden’s victory. According to the Supreme Court, all such evidence is now unusable, an interpretation that, fortunately for Trump, guts that case against him. 

As some commentators on X (formerly Twitter) noted, even the Watergate case against former President Richard Nixon would have been heavily undermined by Monday’s ruling. In the 1974 case United States v. Nixon, Nixon was required to deliver audiotapes of his conversations in the Oval Office to a district court, which contained damning evidence against him and ultimately led to his resignation.

It’s little wonder that Trump immediately celebrated Monday morning’s ruling, as he very likely will escape prosecution for January 6. But, as other commentators on social media noted, the Supreme Court has very well opened the door for Joe Biden to discuss taking outrageous actions in his capacity as president, since the ability to gather evidence against him has been rendered moot.

The Justice Department will no longer be an independent authority on the law, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity case Monday. Instead, it will be an arm to be leveraged by the Oval Office, with open communication enabled between the federal law enforcement agency and the presidency for all future investigations.

Chief Justice John Roberts slipped the allowance into his majority opinion, as the justices ruled 6–3 in Trump’s favor along ideological lines. In a quiet sentence, Roberts argued that the fresh take on the executive branch relationship would help the president carry out his constitutional duties.

“The president may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’” Roberts wrote.

“And the Attorney General, as head of the Justice Department, acts as the President’s ‘chief law enforcement officer’ who ‘provides vital assistance to [him] in the performance of [his] constitutional duty to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,’” Roberts continued, citing a precedent from an immunity case argued for Cabinet members, Mitchell v. Forsyth.

This means that if Trump returns to office, he will have free rein to wield the Justice Department as he sees fit—and he and his allies have already given plenty of indications as to what they plan to do.

The decision from the conservative majority overturned a federal appeals court ruling that had unanimously rejected all three of Trump’s presidential immunity arguments in his January 6 case, “patiently, painstakingly, and unsparingly” dismantling his arguments in an “airtight” opinion, according to George Conway, a conservative attorney and ex-husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Monday’s ruling has effectively killed the January 6 trial, which would have been overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that the president is entitled to presumptive immunity from all official acts has severely undermined the case against Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, making it even less likely he will face justice for his actions.

In his majority opinion granting sweeping protections to the president, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that part of the Department of Justice’s indictment against the former president “alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators ‘attempted to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.’”

“In particular, the indictment alleges several conversations in which Trump pressured the Vice President to reject States’ legitimate electoral votes or send them back to state legislatures for review,” Roberts continued.

“Whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct,” wrote Roberts, meaning that Trump can no longer be prosecuted for outright demanding that his former Vice President Mike Pence not certify the 2020 election results.

“Presiding over the January 6 certification proceeding at which Members of Congress count the electoral votes is a constitutional and statutory duty of the Vice President,” Roberts said. “The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct.”

The ruling established that the president may not be indicted on conduct that is immune to prosecution, specifically including conversations between the president and his allies, nor can those acts be considered when trying to prove guilt.

“Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial,” the ruling stated—a surprising new precedent in the face of 1974’s United States v. Nixon, which required then-President Richard Nixon to deliver tapes of his conversations in the Oval Office to a district court, a ruling that ultimately paved the way for his resignation.

A major part of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump hinges on the allegation that Trump knew he had lost the election but continued to urge his supporters to subvert it via unlawful means. This includes demanding Pence delay certifying the nation’s votes, which Trump’s lawyer John Lauro essentially admitted in August was illegal. But now, those conversations cannot be used as evidence in the case.

Monday’s decision has effectively gutted Trump’s January 6 trial, which would have been overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Trump has already started celebrating, and it’s clear it also would’ve made Nixon pretty happy.

Donald Trump is celebrating after the Supreme Court ruled Monday morning on partisan lines that presidents have “presumptive immunity from prosecution for all of his official acts.”

On Truth Social, the former president and convicted felon immediately posted, “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”

Of course Trump would be happy with this ruling. On Sunday night, Trump was practically begging the Supreme Court for a favorable ruling, and that is what he got from the six conservative justices on the court. The ruling throws into question whether there are any lines that a president can cross while in office. It also throws the federal trial over Trump’s attempts to intervene in the certification of the 2020 election into jeopardy, and allows him to breathe easier yet again regarding the criminal cases against him.

Currently, the only criminal verdict against him is his conviction on hush-money charges in New York. Trump’s Georgia election interference case against him is currently held up as his legal team attempts to get prosecutor Fani Willis thrown off of the case. His classified documents case has been continuously delayed by Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed.

And now, if Trump were to return to the White House as president, he can in theory do whatever he wants and never have to fear prosecution. Those actions could be quite dangerous: Trump’s allies have spoken of retribution against those who sought to hold him accountable in the first place, and use the Justice Department against his opponents. He’s poised to give Christian nationalists a bigger role in his administration the second time around, and to clamp down on immigration with mass deportation camps. There’s also his general anti-democracy activities.

With Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, it’s not just Trump who is celebrating, it’s all of his allies and bad actors who are eyeing November’s election as an opportunity to push their agendas without fear from the law. 

Donald Trump Jr. cheered his father’s massive victory on presidential immunity that essentially puts him above the law.

The Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a seismic win in his immunity case Monday, giving his legal team more than they asked for in terms of what qualifies as prosecutable official acts of the presidency while effectively killing Trump’s January 6 criminal trial.

But that wasn’t enough for Trump’s eldest son, who was quick to amplify the news that the former president can’t be held accountable for some of his actions related to the effort to overturn the 2020 election results. And Don Jr. couldn’t resist throwing another dig at special counsel Jack Smith, whose January 6 case against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is now in tatters.

“Solid SCOTUS ruling today,” posted Don Jr. “I’m sure the corrupt prosecutors and DC judge will work overtime to continue their lawfare. It’s all they have left.”