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      Chief justice Roberts pushed for quick immunity ruling in Trump’s favor – report

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      John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly – and in favor – of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on – and generally favoring – the Republican former president.Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings, and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts – who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency – took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official – including Trump – from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former president’s supporters aimed at Congress.The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.In the leaked memo, the Times reported that he criticized a lower court decision that allowed the case to move forward – and he argued to the other justices that Trump was protected by presidential immunity. He reportedly said that the supreme court ought to hear the case and grant Trump greater protection from prosecution.“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” the Times said that Roberts wrote to the other supreme court justices in the private memo.According to the Times, some of the conservative justices wanted to delay the decision on the presidential immunity case until after Trump finished running for a second term in the White House in November. But Roberts advocated for an early hearing and decision – and ultimately wrote the majority opinion himself.Before the opinion and ruling went public, the Times reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh had praised Roberts on the ruling, calling it “extraordinary”. Their fellow conservative justice Neil Gorsuch – who, like Kavanaugh, was appointed to the supreme court during Trump’s presidency – called it “remarkable”.The decision came out on 1 July and stated that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution. Both conservatives and liberals saw it as a huge win for Trump, who – among a spate of legal problems – is awaiting sentencing for a criminal conviction in May of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.The supreme court then returned the case to district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for allegedly participating in an illicit effort to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. That left her tasked with having to figure out how to apply the US supreme court’s decision.The Times also reported that in the case about whether individual states could kick Trump off the ballot based on language in the US constitution which bars insurrections from holding office, Roberts told his colleagues that he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned.All nine justices initially agreed that Trump should remain on state ballots. But then, the Times reports, four conservative justices suggested additions to the ruling, including proposing that Congress would have to approve enforcement of the insurrectionist ban in the constitution.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFour justices – liberals Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett – reportedly disagreed. They said they thought that went too far and wrote concurrences in disagreement, according to the Times.Ultimately, Roberts sided with the four remaining justices – fellow conservatives Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr – in an opinion that he wrote and was issued unsigned.In the third case scrutinized by the Times, which involved the Capitol attack participants’ obstruction of justice charges, Roberts had originally assigned the writing of the majority opinion to Alito.But then in May, Roberts – in an unusual move – informed the court that he would write the opinion himself. The chief justice did that days after a scandal enveloped Alito in the wake of reports that his wife had flown an upside-down flag outside the couple’s home following the Capitol attack. Flying flags upside down, a universal sign of distress, has been associated with a movement that boosted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being unduly stolen from him.The Times wrote that it was unclear whether there was a link between the flag scandal and Roberts’ decision to write the Capitol attack-related opinion, in which a 6-3 conservative majority found the federal government could not apply its obstruction of justice statute so broadly. The justices did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment. More

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      David Brock on Clarence Thomas and supreme court hijack: ‘The original sin’

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      Thirty years ago, David Brock made his name as a reporter with The Real Anita Hill, a book attacking the woman who accused Clarence Thomas, George HW Bush’s second supreme court nominee, of sexual harassment. After tempestuous hearings, Thomas was confirmed. Brock – who memorably characterized Hill, a law professor, in sexist terms as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” – was launched as a rightwing media star.Thirty years on, Thomas still sits on the court, the longest-serving hardliner on a bench tilted 6-3 to the right by three confirmations under Donald Trump. But Brock switched sides long ago, disillusioned by rightwing lies. He apologized for smearing Hill and eventually became a prominent Democratic operative, close to Bill and Hillary Clinton.He founded watchdogs and Super Pacs and kept on writing books. He dealt with his political conversion 20 years ago in Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Now, with Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America, he has returned to what he calls “the original sin” of the modern supreme court: “Thomas’s perjury to get on the court” and his allegedly untruthful answers to questions about his treatment of Hill and other women.“That’s my starting point,” Brock says. “And then I show over time that other justices misled the public in their Senate confirmation hearings based on their denial of the fact that they were opposed to Roe all along – which sort of came out in the wash with the Dobbs decision.”Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade, removing the federal right to abortion, came in June 2022. The way it went down helped give Brock his subtitle. John Roberts, the conservative chief justice, sought to uphold Roe but Dobbs was decided 5-4 anyway, Roberts unable to sway any other rightwinger. As Brock sees it, Thomas now owns the court.View image in fullscreen“That was a tipping point,” Brock says, pointing to major rulings on guns, affirmative action, environmental regulation, corporate bribery, presidential immunity and more, all rightwing wins. “But the other thing about about Roberts is he’s let these ethical issues just sit there. They cast their own ethics code about a year ago – and it has no enforcement mechanism. He’s been a weak leader, I think.”If 2022 was the year of Dobbs, 2023 and 2024 have been the years of gifts and grift: a parade of reports, Pulitzer prize-winning in ProPublica’s case, about how Thomas did not declare lavish gifts from mega-donors with business before the court, prominent among them Harlan Crow, a billionaire with a penchant for Nazi collectibles.For Brock, “all the revelations about Clarence Thomas and the gifts put another layer on top of the book I was writing about the crisis of legitimacy at the court, as a result of the fact Dobbs was so unpopular. You had that ethical crisis as well.”Thomas denies wrongdoing. So do Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, other hardliners with reported ties to rightwing money. Roberts refuses to testify on the issue in Congress. The result, as Brock says, is “a situation where polls show the supreme court is held in very low regard”.Brock holds Thomas in low regard too. On the page, he calls the justice “a scrapper and a battler”, a “supreme court justice turned showman”, and a “Bork without the brains” – a stinging reference to Robert Bork, the hardliner whose nomination failed in 1987, fueling rightwing determination to dominate at all costs.Brock says: “We went for a number of years when Thomas didn’t really speak from the bench at all [but] he’s been much more active in these last few years, and I think he’s a bit emboldened by the fact that he has now at least four colleagues who on many of these cases are going to agree with him.”Another driver of the court’s sharp rightward turn is Leonard Leo, the dark money impresario Thomas once called “the number three most powerful person in the world”. Brock could have used “the Leo Court” for a subtitle too, given Leo was “clearly was responsible for the three Trump justices”, via “an unprecedented move by Trump during the 2016 campaign, to provide lists to the Federal Society [which Leo co-chairs] of who he would nominate, as a way of bolstering his credibility with the evangelical right, which was skeptical of his personal behavior”.Leo also provided ballast for Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, as he ruthlessly blocked Barack Obama’s last pick for the court, Merrick Garland, “and so Trump was able to campaign on there being an open seat, and so … the McConnell strategy and the Leo strategy came together, and that is basically how Trump got elected”.In such terms, Brock has written a broad history of the court’s rightward shift from Nixon to Trump and after. But he has also written an old-fashioned broadside, a 300-page call for political action. Regarding Thomas, Brock wants impeachment.Identifying “eight specific areas of wrongdoing that require further investigation by Congress”, Brock says Thomas should first face scrutiny for his “bald-faced lie” in his confirmation hearings, when he categorically denied “any sexual discussion within the workplace”, a statement challenged by numerous witnesses.Brock’s other counts are linked to Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife and a prominent far-right activist, and include failure to recuse in cases connected to her lobbying work and involvement in Trump’s election subversion; failure to disclose her earnings from the rightwing Heritage Foundation; and failure to disclose his own gifts from Crow, Leo and others.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenBrock is not the first to call for Thomas to be impeached. In July, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched her own attempt in Congress. Like the New York Democrat, Brock is a realist: he knows that even should Democrats retake the House and impeach Thomas, a closely divided Senate would be extremely unlikely to convict and remove. But that is no reason not to try.“Sometimes I play this thought experiment with myself about how the Republicans would exploit an opportunity to take advantage of their opponents’ vulnerabilities. I have no doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot and you had a Democratic Clarence Thomas, you’d have hearing after hearing, and I think you probably would have an impeachment inquiry.“And so what I argue is that even if you only get an impeachment hearing or investigation in the House, it would still shine light on all of this, and it’s still worth doing, even though we know we wouldn’t have the votes required to remove him. I think it would be a good experience for the public to air all this out.”Brock also says impeachment “would help make the case for supreme court reform”, yearned for by the left, in the face of staunch rightwing opposition.Another good idea for Democrats in election season, Brock says, is to keep a spotlight on Ginni Thomas. That spotlight may soon grow brighter. Citing two anonymous sources, Brock reports that Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump Republican, was responsible for blocking serious scrutiny of the Thomases by the January 6 committee, even as it uncovered evidence of close involvement in Trump’s 2020 election subversion.It’s an explosive claim – particularly as Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president. To Brock, it’s simply indicative of the damage the Thomases have done.“I think increasingly people are becoming aware that there’s something rotten at the core of the fact that Thomas refuses to recuse himself from these cases where his wife is actively involved 100% … she’s been a longtime, but very behind the scenes, influential operative.”So of course has Brock. Once, he was on the same side as Clarence Thomas’s most prominent supporters, among them Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and former Trump administration official Brock says “knew the truth of the Anita Hill accusations” but worked to instal Thomas on the court regardless.Strikingly, Brock also once moved in the same circles as Brett Kavanaugh, then a Republican aide and attack dog, now another member of the far-right bloc that dominates the supreme court, his own controversial confirmation, also beset by allegations of sexual misconduct, also part of American history.Such close connections to his subject help make Brock’s book a fascinating read. Asked how he will respond to attacks from former comrades, whether they read the book or not, he says: “Those will come with the territory.”

      Stench is published in the US by Knopf More

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      Samuel Alito accepted concert tickets from conservative German aristocrat

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      Samuel Alito, the US supreme court justice, accepted $900 concert tickets from a Catholic German aristocrat known for her unabashed conservative views and ties to rightwing activists, his latest financial disclosure form reveals.Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis reportedly gifted the tickets to Alito and his wife to allow them to attend the Regensburg castle festival, an annual summer music extravaganza hosted at her 500-room castle in Bavaria.The princess, a descendant of princes of the Holy Roman empire, is noted for ties with Steve Bannon, a key supporter and former aide of Donald Trump, and connections to figures in the Catholic hierarchy opposed to Pope Francis.Her donation to Alito is set out in the justice’s annual financial disclosure report, which he filed late after requesting an extension.The declaration follows a series of controversies over the ethics of supreme court justices amid revelations that some, including Alito himself and Justice Clarence Thomas, have accepted gifts from wealthy benefactors without disclosing on mandatory forms.Alito has been at the centre of reports that he accepted a private jet free travel gift for a luxury salmon fishing trip from a conservative billionaire who had cases pending before the supreme court.He previously met von Thurn und Taxis along with fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh when she visited the supreme court in 2019 along with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who was dismissed from his position as head of the Catholic’s church’s doctrinal body by Pope Francis, and Brian Brown, a leading anti-LGBTQ+ activist.Von Thurn und Taxis’s palatial castle in Regensburg – the venue for the concert attended by Alito and his wife – has been mooted by Bannon as a potential venue for a European network of finishing schools for rightwing conservatives.Once nicknamed Princess TNT by Vanity Fair for her supposedly combustible personality, the princess previously affected a less traditional persona and was known for associating with the likes of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Michael Jackson.A Tatler profile featuring a 1980s photo of her sporting a luxuriantly punk hairstyle, described her as “equal parts Helena Bonham Carter and Princess Diana”, adding: “She struck the socialite community with her outgoing personality and her rambunctious punk aesthetic.”After he reinvention as a conservative Catholic activist, she drew criticism in 2001 after saying on a television talkshow that the high rate of Aids in Africa was due, not to a lack of safe sex, but because “the Blacks like to copulate a lot”. She later tried to amend her remarks, saying Africans had a lot of sex due to the continent’s hot climate. More

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      Republicans want to steal reproductive freedom. Black women will suffer most | Monica Raye Simpson

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      As the 2024 elections continue to heat up, there are increasing concerns about the rise of fascism around the world and in the United States. Regardless of the word or label used, Black people, living with the legacy of slavery and multiple forms of reproductive oppression including rape and forced pregnancies, sterilizations and the killing of our children and loved ones by vigilantes and police, have a lot of experience with authoritarian regimes that oppress and dehumanize.There is a strategic agenda from the far right – laid out in clear language in Project 2025 to keep power in the hands of a chosen few and prevent the United States from becoming a truly representative, multiracial democracy that embraces and supports all people including those with the capacity for pregnancy.According to US census projections, people of color are on par to be the majority by the middle of the century. With this imminent reality, the focus on controlling our fertility and denying us bodily autonomy is the age-old strategy of authoritarian, democracy-denying regimes. And to have a conservative-leaning supreme court that has proved that it will roll back some of the most critical protections further supports their agenda.One of those critical protections was the right to abortion recognized and protected in Roe v Wade. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe – and not only denied women the right to abortion, but also laid the groundwork for dismantling all reproductive rights and aspects of pregnancy-related healthcare.For decades, we have seen a focus on reversing Roe v Wade with numerous states implementing barriers to access through proposing Trap (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws, expanding funding to crisis pregnancy centers and promoting declarations of personhood for the unborn from the moment of fertilization, all while gerrymandering states to stack our state legislatures with conservative leaders. We are also fighting abortion bans and increased criminalization for those seeking abortions and for pregnant women who are targeted for creating imagined risks of harm to personified eggs, embryos and fetuses.And it is not just about ending a pregnancy. Before the Dobbs decision, the US already had an appalling and shameful rate of maternal mortality that is from four to 12 times higher for Black women. As OB-GYNs flee states that have banned abortions and women are forced to wait out ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths and continue pregnancies with non-viable or already dead fetuses – because doctors have been terrorized into inaction – that rate will no doubt go up. As if that wasn’t enough, research consistently finds that US Black maternal mortality is fueled by racism that goes unaddressed and reinforced by our opposition.While devastating, we can at least note that the Dobbs decision shook the nation and brought the longstanding fight for abortion to the mainstream. While so many wondered how we got here, Black women and people of color had warned about the danger of single-issue litigation and organizing strategies within the historically predominantly white-led reproductive health and rights movements for decades.Thirty years ago, Black women came up with the term reproductive justice and started a human-rights-based movement that not only fought for the right to prevent or end pregnancies but to expand the fight to have the children that we want, to parent them in safe and sustainable communities. This new intersectional movement centered the leadership and lived experiences and bodily autonomy of those historically pushed to the margins.Fascism thrives when the masses are conditioned to think, organize and create policies that are not intersectional thus creating fertile ground for authoritarianism. I believe the kryptonite to fascism is the work being done by those who laid the foundation for the reproductive justice movement – Black women.Black women have found every way possible to resist while also remaining innovative. We consistently vote for our values to save our democracy. From the Black women who were the backbone of the civil rights and Black liberation movements to the Black women who redefined feminism at the Combahee River, to the Black women who created new movements like reproductive justice, Black Lives Matter and Me Too – it is clear we have decades of receipts that show our commitment to dismantling white supremacist, patriarchal authoritarian regimes.With this election we are faced with a serious question: “What world do we want for ourselves and the generations to come?” Do we want to live in a world where we do not have the human right to make our own decisions around our bodies, our families and our futures? Or do we want to live in a world where our lives are dictated by insidious policies?Our future is in the hands of those who are ready to fight for our freedom. This is the time to not only vote but also organize. This is the time to sit at the table and build with people we don’t know and deepen our relationships with our current allies. This is the time to study and learn from the historical victories over fascism. Because fascism always loses when it comes against the collective power of those determined to achieve our human rights.

      Monica Raye Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong, the southern-based national Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Monica is a proud Black queer feminist & cultural strategist who is committed to organizing for LGBTQ+ liberation, civil and human rights, and sexual and reproductive justice by any means necessary. She was also named a New Civil Rights Leader by Essence Magazine and as one of TIME 100’s most influential people of 2023. More

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      Clarence Thomas’s wife thanks group for efforts to block court ethics reforms

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      Ginni Thomas, the far-right activist wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has thanked a religious liberties group for its efforts to block reforms of the court aimed at reining in the justices’ ethical breaches, including those of her husband.A new recording obtained by the investigative website ProPublica and the watchdog Documented discloses a July email in which Ginni Thomas thanked First Liberty Institute for fighting to oppose supreme court reforms. She specifically referred to White House proposals from Joe Biden designed to rein in wayward justices on the country’s highest court, of which her husband is the prime example.“I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the supreme court. Many were so depressed by the lack of response by R[epublican]s and conservatives,” she said.Writing in all caps, she added: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”The email was read out by the head of First Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford, on a 31 July call with donors to the group. He said the email had been written by Ginni Thomas that same day.Two days previously, Biden had called for sweeping changes to the court, including term limits for the nine justices and a code of ethics that would be enforced by an outside body. Under current arrangements, the justices are liable to a voluntary code which they individually police themselves.In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, the US president explained why he thought a tougher code of ethics was now necessary. He pointed to “scandals involving several justices” that had damaged public confidence in the court, including “undisclosed gifts to justices” and “conflicts of interest connected with Jan 6 insurrectionists”.Biden did not mention names, but Clarence Thomas has been implicated in both types of ethically questionable behaviour. ProPublica has exposed the lavish international travel that the justice enjoyed courtesy of the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.A conflict of interest relating to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump has also been revealed by the House committee investigating the insurrection. It showed that Ginni Thomas was deeply implicated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the lead-up to January 6, writing several messages to the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the conspiracy unfolded.When the supreme court was asked to adjudicate on Trump’s request that White House records – which, it was later found, included Ginni Thomas’s messages – should not be disclosed to the House committee, only one justice sided with Trump: Clarence Thomas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFirst Liberty Institute is an influential player in rightwing judicial circles. With income of $25m, it has regularly argued cases before the supreme court calling for greater involvement of religion in the public square.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used to work as a lawyer for the group and has called Shackelford a mentor. More

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      Federal judge rejects Trump’s request to intervene in hush-money criminal case

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      A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush-money criminal case, thwarting the former president’s latest bid to overturn his felony conviction and delay his sentencing.US district judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled that Trump had not satisfied the burden of proof required for a federal court to take control of the case from the state court where it was tried.Hellerstein’s ruling came hours after Manhattan prosecutors raised objections to Trump’s effort to delay post-trial decisions in the case while he sought to have the federal court step in.The Manhattan district attorney’s office argued in a letter to the judge presiding over the case in state court that he had no legal obligation to hold off on post-trial decisions and wait for Hellerstein to rule.Prosecutors urged the trial judge, Juan M Merchan, not to delay his rulings on two key defense requests: Trump’s call to delay sentencing until after the November election, and his bid to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case in the wake of the US supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling.Merchan has said he will rule 16 September on Trump’s motion to overturn the verdict. His decision on delaying sentencing has been expected in the coming days.Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 presidential run. Trump has denied her claim and said he did nothing wrong.Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation or a fine.In a letter Tuesday, assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo reiterated that prosecutors have not staked a position on whether to delay sentencing, deferring to Merchan on an “appropriate post-trial schedule”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers have argued that sentencing Trump as scheduled, just two days after Merchan’s expected immunity decision, would not give him enough time to weigh next steps – including a possible appeal – if Merchan rules to uphold the verdict.They also argued that sentencing Trump on 18 September, about seven weeks before election day, would be election interference, raising the specter that Trump could be sent to jail as early voting is getting under way.Colangelo said Tuesday that prosecutors were open to a schedule that allows “adequate time” to adjudicate Trump’s motion to set aside the verdict while also sentencing him “without unreasonable delay”.In a letter to Merchan last week, Trump’s lawyers said delaying the proceedings is the “only appropriate course” as they seek to have the federal court rectify a verdict they say was tainted by violations of the Republican presidential nominee’s constitutional rights and the supreme court’s ruling that gives ex-presidents broad protections from prosecution.If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers said they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.The supreme court’s 1 July ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.Trump’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the supreme court’s presidential immunity decision, and that prosecutors erred by showing jurors evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how Trump reacted to news coverage of the hush-money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018.Trump’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity in a failed bid last year to get the hush-money case moved from state court to federal court. More

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      Special counsel files new indictment against Trump over 2020 election

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      The justice department filed a new indictment against Donald Trump on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The maneuver does not substantially change the criminal case against him but protects it in the wake of a July supreme court decision ruling saying that Trump and other presidents have immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones.“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” lawyers for Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the case, said in a filing that accompanied what is known as a superseding indictment.“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v United States.”The document retains the same four criminal charges against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment are rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try to overturn the election.The new document, for example, removes mention of Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who aided Trump’s attempt to try to overturn the election. Clark was the only government official who was listed as an unnamed co-conspirator in the original indictment.“Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials,” the supreme court wrote in its ruling in July.The supreme court also suggested that a president could be criminally immune in connection to acts between him and the vice-president. The superseding indictment reframes Trump’s interactions with Mike Pence, emphasizing that he was Trump’s running mate.At other points in the document, prosecutors emphasize that Trump was acting outside the scope of his official duties.“The defendant had no official responsibilities related to any state’s certification of the election results,” the document says.Prosecutors also highlighted that Trump used his Twitter/X account both for official and personal acts. They noted that the rally he attended on the Ellipse, near the White House, on 6 January 2021 was a “campaign speech”.Even if the case is still unlikely to go to trial before the 2024 election in November, and even if the Trump lawyers file motions seeking to excise more parts of the indictment, the decision to pursue a superseding indictment may have been to avoid more delay.Trump has been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, which came as part of a broader strategy to push his legal troubles past November, in the hopes that he wins and can appoint a loyalist as the attorney general who would then drop the cases entirely.In July, the supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of their office, most notably any interactions with the justice department and executive branch officials.The framework of criminal accountability for presidents, as laid out by the ruling, has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The court also ruled that the special counsel, Jack Smith, could not introduce as evidence at trial any acts deemed to be official, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent. More

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      Supreme court immunity ruling to cause new delay in Trump 2020 election case

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      Donald Trump’s criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is expected to be delayed by another month after special counsel prosecutors said they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision would narrow their case.On Thursday, the prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team told Tanya Chutkan, the US district judge presiding over the case, that they needed her to delay until 30 August a deadline to submit a possible schedule for how to proceed with a complicated fact-finding mission ordered by the court.“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in a two-page court filing.“The Government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision. The Government therefore respectfully requests additional time to provide the Court with an informed proposal.”The supreme court ruled last month that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, marking a victory for Trump.Precisely what prosecutors are now stuck on remains unclear, although the ruling struck some of the charges against Trump and is expected to see Chutkan needing to pare back the indictment further.Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, including two counts of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, conspiring to defraud the government, and conspiring to disenfranchise voters.The alleged illegal conduct includes Trump pressing justice department officials to open sham investigations, Trump obstructing Congress from certifying the election, including by trying to co-opt his vice-president, Trump helping prompt the Capitol attack, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors.View image in fullscreenThe supreme court decided that criminal accountability for presidents has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The ruling meant that the charges related to core executive functions will be thrown out, and for Chutkan to determine through a fact-finding exercise if any other charges that might come under official acts must be expunged.Whether Chutkan will do the fact-finding on legal arguments or legal briefs, or will consider evidence perhaps given by witnesses, was supposed to become clearer after Trump and the special counsel jointly submitted the now-delayed scheduling brief.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers are expected to ask for few or no witnesses, the Guardian has previously reported. And in a statement on Truth Social, Trump called anew for the case to be tossed: “It is clear that the supreme court’s historic decision on immunity demands and requires a complete and total dismissal.”The deadline for the scheduling brief was the first activity in the case since December, when it was frozen after Trump asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit and then the supreme court to consider his argument that he had absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.The supreme court issued its immunity ruling on 1 July, but the case only returned to Chutkan’s jurisdiction last week because of the court’s 25-day waiting period for any rehearing requests, and an additional week for the judgment to be formally sent down to the trial judge.Trump has already been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, a strategy he adopted in the hope that winning the 2024 election would enable him to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who he could direct to drop the charges.It is all but impossible now for the special counsel to bring the case to trial before election day, given Trump can make interim appeals for any decisions that Chutkan makes about the impact of the immunity decision. More