AOC Threatens Major Response After Supreme Court Immunity Ruling

In response to the Supreme Court’s disastrous 6–3 decision on Monday granting Trump expansive immunity from criminal prosecution, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a stern condemnation of the court’s “corruption crisis beyond its control” and vowed to issue articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court once Congress reconvenes after Labor Day.

“Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response to the Supreme Court deciding on Monday that presidents are above the law. “It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.” Ocasio-Cortez’s bold declaration prompted a since-deleted response from Representative Veronica Escobar saying, “Count me in,” suggesting there may soon be more lawmakers behind the effort.

Prior to Monday’s ruling in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court significantly expanded its judicial power and overturned the Chevron doctrine—and then further obliterated modern administrative law in yet another case. The Supreme Court also dismantled a law used to convict hundreds of Capitol rioters on the basis that the relevant subsection of the law comes after an irrelevant subsection, a barely cogent legal argument that conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett described as “textual backflips.”

According to the Constitution, Supreme Court justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” meaning justices remain on the Supreme Court until they either step down, die, or are removed by impeachment. Impeaching a Supreme Court justice requires a simple majority vote in the House followed by a conviction in the Senate with a two-thirds majority vote—meaning the success of AOC’s prospective efforts to impeach any Supreme Court justice relies in part on Democrats winning control of the House and substantially increasing their majority in the Senate, as well as ginning up enough support to pursue impeachment in the first place.

The only Supreme Court justice ever to be impeached was Samuel Chase in 1804. The House successfully passed articles of impeachment against Chase on charges that he used his position to promote his political agenda, which at the time the House’s impeachment articles described as “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan.” Despite the House’s successful impeachment vote, the Senate later acquitted Chase.

It’s unclear whether the articles of impeachment Ocasio-Cortez intends to file would be levied against all six conservative justices behind the majority opinion in the immunity ruling, or whether the effort would focus on specific justices, such as Clarence Thomas and his chronic failure to disclose gifts from conservative billionaires or Samuel Alito and his wife’s love of far-right flags. Regardless, it’s a massive threat that will take a Herculean effort to pull off.

Political conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon is turning to establishment conservatives to guest-host his podcast while he serves his prison sentence—and they’re all too ready to take on the job.

A couple dozen guest hosts are slated to take over Bannon’s far-right podcast, War Room, before he wraps up his stint in federal prison. The names filling up the time slots—and effectively elevating the fringe platform—include top conservative lawmakers such as Representatives Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert.

They’ll join the likes of alt-right conspiracy theorist and white supremacist Jack Posobiec, Trump administration officials Kash Patel and Peter Navarro (who will join once he finishes his own prison sentence on July 17), former Fox News commentator Monica Crowley, and, strangely, Osama bin Laden’s niece, Noor bin Laden.

Bannon headed to prison Monday for defying a congressional subpoena from the house January 6 investigative committee. The former Trump adviser played a key role in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and helped stoke the anger among conservatives that boiled into the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building. Bannon is scheduled to be released November 1, just days before the next election.

“It doesn’t matter that I’m in prison,” Bannon told The Daily Beast on Sunday. “The show will be bigger.… They’re making me a martyr.”

“The audience will not notice any difference in the intensity, the urgency, the topics we cover, contributors,” he continued.

But the 70-year-old’s perspective on his own imprisonment is still a bit askew from the reality of his situation. Rather than viewing it as an immediate and legally expected consequence of failing to respond to a mandatory congressional inquiry, Bannon seemed to believe the prison sentence boiled down to an effort to shutter his peripheral political platform. For the alt-right, that makes the podcast’s longevity a symbolic success.

“It’s very simple,” Bannon said. “I’m a political prisoner, because I have a very successful platform that reaches the common man. They hate that; they will do anything to shut that down.”

Meanwhile, the former Trump strategist seemed ready to take on his sentence, telling the Beast that he wasn’t expecting any “special deals.”

“I’m just showing up tomorrow,” Bannon told the publication. “Let’s roll.”

As a part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday on presidential immunity, the highest court in the land officially determined that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, promising an abrupt end to some of Donald Trump’s remaining criminal trials should he be elected in November.

While the Department of Justice has long held that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, the Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled on the issue—until now. In one brief footnote of his majority opinion granting sweeping protections to the president, Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed the department’s rule.

“Our decision in Clinton permitted claims alleging unofficial acts to proceed against the sitting President,” he wrote, referring to Clinton v. Jones, a civil suit brought against former President Bill Clinton over conduct from before he was president. “In the criminal context, however, the Justice Department ‘has long recognized’ that ‘the separation of powers precludes the criminal prosecution of a sitting President.’”

The decision in Trump v. United States has gutted Jack Smith’s indictment alleging that the former president attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections; it also makes clear that if Trump is elected, he won’t face justice for crimes committed out of office, either.

If he makes it back into the White House, Trump will likely never face trial over allegations that he illegally kept a trove of classified documents and obstructed their return, a trial that has faced significant delays at the hands of a Trump-appointed judge, pushing its start date to well after the election.

The Supreme Court decision further incentivizes Trump to do anything necessary to seize the presidency in November, so that he can evade prosecution for his alleged crimes. This significantly increases the vigor with which the former president will oppose the results of the democratic elections if he doesn’t come out victorious.

As Steve Bannon turned himself in to Danbury federal prison in Connecticut on Monday to serve out a four-month stint for refusing to testify to Congress for his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, demonstrators led by ruckus royalty Anarchy Princess carried signs reading, “Bleach blonde bad built butch body” behind Bannon ally Marjorie Taylor Greene and smirkingly chanted, “Lock him up” against competing chants of “USA,” which inadvertently aided in the cacophony.

Demonstrators drowned out the MAGA press conference with cowbells and chants, making Bannon’s last words before heading off to the big house indecipherable.

Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena in 2022 and sentenced to four months in federal prison. He unsuccessfully attempted to appeal his conviction, with the Supreme Court refusing to save him just last week. Greene has fumed at Bannon’s conviction, calling it “a DISGRACE to our country, and an affront to the principles of justice it was founded upon.”

Anarchy Princess first came to prominence when she stood behind Trump ally Peter Navarro during his own press conference after he too was found guilty of contempt of Congress, in September 2023. During that presser, Anarchy Princess’s simple yet effective antics ruffled Navarro’s feathers so much he attempted to take her sign blazoned with the words “Trump lost (and you know it!),” which she deftly kept out of his reach as she reminded him, “You’re already facing charges.”

Bannon will be in prison until just before the general election, serving his time in a facility slightly less glamorous than the “Club Fed” minimum-security facility he had hoped for, due to yet another open criminal case against him in New York.* Bannon is accused of defrauding donors with empty promises to build a border wall. He pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy in September 2022 and is expected to stand trial this September in the same courthouse that convicted Trump.

* This article originally misstated when Bannon will get out of prison.

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.