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      The supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling mocks the rule of law | Corey Brettschneider

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      The US supreme court found this week that former presidents have presumptive immunity from prosecution for “official acts”. This ruling doesn’t just place Donald Trump above the law. The true danger of the opinion is that it could protect precisely the kind of official acts that might destroy the American republic itself.The origin of the idea that the official acts of a president are immune from prosecution is found in a case about a fired whistleblower. In 1970, President Richard Nixon fired A Ernest Fitzgerald, an air force management analyst, in retaliation for his publicizing information about cost overruns. Fitzgerald brought a civil suit against Nixon, seeking damages for his dismissal. The supreme court sided with Nixon, granting the president absolute immunity from “damages liability predicated on his official acts”.The court of that time defined “official acts” as those associated with the president’s duties under article II of the constitution, including the duty to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed”. It asserted immunity even for presidential acts within the “outer perimeter” of this duty. However, in this case the court was focused on insulating a president from worries about his financial liability so that he could more easily make decisions about everyday matters of governance, such as hiring and firing.The supreme court did not then define these official acts to include criminal acts by a president. In fact, its narrow decision precluded only the “particular private remedy” of a civil suit against a former president and even included a pledge to not “place a president above the law”.This week’s ruling grossly misconstrued the Fitzgerald decision, disregarding this pledge. Instead, it extended an opinion about immunity from civil damages suits to encompass criminal immunity for acts antithetical to the president’s duty to “take care”. The danger of immunity for criminal “official” action is that it protects the enormous power of the president when it is used for the most nefarious political ends, threatening the very existence of democracy.Consider Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning in her thunderous dissent that the decision could protect a president attempting to use the military to illegally retain power after losing an election, what political scientists call a “self-coup”. No courts should incentivize actions that could threaten the very stability of the republic.Yet that is precisely the kind of act the court has potentially protected – not just during a presidency but after it. While the court left open what counts as an “official act” – and returned the case to a trial court to determine whether the crimes Trump is charged with from January 6 fit this description – the door is now open to impunity for these crimes.Indeed, the events of January 6 are rightly understood as an attempted self-coup – acts from which the court has now largely shielded Trump from criminal liability. Even if the trial court tasked with hearing the case now decides that Trump’s actions were not “official”, the supreme court’s delay means the process would almost certainly extend past the election. If Trump were to retake power, he would then receive immunity while in office, effectively ensuring he never faces criminal responsibility for these events.View image in fullscreenThat risk of a presidential self-coup goes beyond Trump. Indeed, it has long been at the heart of the controversy over immunity. As I describe in my new book, The Presidents and the People, released this week, that risk played an unknown but crucial role in the most pivotal moment of the Nixon crisis.In the midst of Watergate, a grand jury of citizens voted in a straw poll to indict Nixon for associated crimes, but the special prosecutor Leon Jaworski sought to dissuade them from moving forward while Nixon was still in office. As he saw it, presidential immunity was needed to maintain national stability. He argued to the grand jurors that an indictment of Nixon might even prompt a self-coup.According to the deputy jury foreman, Harold Evans, “Mr Jaworski gave us some very strong arguments why he shouldn’t be indicted, and he gave us the trauma of the country and he’s the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and what happens if he surrounds his White House with his armed forces?”Jaworski’s rhetorical questions made clear the reasons why it would be dangerous to indict a sitting president. Yet even Jaworski clarified to the grand jury that they were free to indict Nixon after he left office. Only President Gerald Ford’s pardon prevented this. Jaworski’s logic supporting immunity for sitting presidents reinforces why immunity for former presidents is so dangerous. A president who not only committed crimes in office but attempted to cling to power in a self-coup might never face criminal prosecution.Indeed, this week’s opinion incentivizes behavior like a self-coup by ruling that a president can never be punished for such behavior as long as a court construes it as an official act. Such a president could claim the self-coup was official because it was an attempt to protect the country in an emergency. Trump himself has already falsely claimed his actions on January 6 were an attempt to fight voter fraud, an argument that his lawyers will frame as an official action.The irony of this week’s opinion is that it allows prosecution for former presidents only in the areas where their power is much less dangerous. In 1872, when President Ulysses Grant was allegedly stopped for a traffic violation, he is said to have paid the fine, though there is historical debate around the incident. Under this week’s ruling, Grant would receive no immunity for such an act, assuming he was speeding on his way to a private function.While the court was right to deny immunity to private actions like these, private acts are not why the question of immunity matters. The most dangerous acts of a president are those that are official – and those that now potentially receive immunity. At the country’s founding, Patrick Henry warned of a president who would realize that no legal checks limited the presidency. Realizing this, Henry claimed an ambitious president would not hesitate to crown himself a “monarch”.Before this week, that fear might have appeared hyperbolic. Today, however, Henry’s warning feels prescient. He is describing the kind of self-coup that the court could now potentially protect on the grounds that it was pursuant to the president’s duty to an official duty to defend the nation from instability.Given the danger of this opinion, it is imperative that we respond. Citizens must make this election about rescuing our democracy from authoritarianism. That means, first, defeating Trump and preventing him from shutting down this case. More broadly, it means demanding that our next president restore the basic checks of the rule of law on the presidency. We cannot allow a system that immunizes a criminal president from dangerous official actions.The next president must pledge to support legislation that prevents criminal official acts from presidential immunity or at least narrows the scope of immunized presidential behavior significantly. Given that the supreme court might strike down such a law, it is even more crucial to appoint justices who would uphold such a law and, more importantly, reverse the court’s disastrous decision this week.Our country has recovered before from a president’s authoritarian acts by electing leaders who would repudiate them. It is time we did so again.
      Corey Brettschneider is professor of political science at Brown University and the author of The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It More

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      The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt | Rebecca Solnit

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      The violent attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, and all the ancillary attempts to steal the 2020 election, were a coup attempt led from the executive branch of the federal government with support from Republicans in the legislative branch. 1 July 2024 – this Thursday – was a more successful coup attempt orchestrated by six judges of the judicial branch.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in an opinion joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, after the US supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that Donald Trump holds “absolute immunity” for “official acts” done while president. Part of what’s shocking about the state of the union right now is that an entire party and the US supreme court’s conservative majority have abandoned almost everything – the truth, the rule of law, their own legitimacy, their place in history and the fate of the nation – to serve one man.They could not have picked a more outrageous man to throw their weight and reputations behind – a psychotic clown who’s also an indicted felon found liable in civil court for sexual assault, barred from doing business in New York, a stealer of state secrets, a would-be thief of an election and the instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch of government and the constitutionally mandated transition of power after an election. A grifter who in 2016 won a minority victory in a corrupted election – his conviction earlier this year was on charges for one small part of that corruption. A man who has gloated about seizing dictatorial powers and never letting go and a worshiper of tyrants denounced by dozens of his former cabinet members and senior staffers.January 6 was an attack on the constitution and so was 1 July. That no one is above the law has been a pillar of this nation and a cherished value since the 18th century; to knock it down in the 21st destabilizes structures and values that have stood these two centuries and more. A president with total immunity poses obvious threats to the rule of law, the balance of powers and democracy itself, and if that president is the vindictive criminal on the Republican ticket the dangers are immediate and obvious.The day before this ruling Trump approvingly shared a post on his own social media platform calling for Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, to be tried in a televised military tribunal – for boldly opposing his coup attempt and being one of the few members of their party to support his impeachment. She committed no crimes and the military has no jurisdiction over her, but under Trumpism there are no laws, just opportunities.The people I talked to and saw on social media were stunned, horrified, uncertain of what we do next. When the agency that is supposed to be the final authority on the rule of law becomes lawless, what do you do? There is much we can do, and much of it will be new kinds of campaigns with new goals, because we are in unprecedented territory.While a lot of elected officials seemed immobilized by this much-anticipated legal ruling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the representative, vowed to introduce legislation to impeach some supreme court justices – she didn’t say which ones, but it seems likely that Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas top her list. The Politicus newsletter notes that the senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, “has been one of the few members of Congress who has consistently sounded the alarm about Supreme Court corruption for years, and he isn’t letting the Senate’s limitations stop him from planning a massive investigation” of the supreme court.Of course this has been brewing for a long time. Before these decisions were handed down, journalists were reporting on the Alito household flying apparently pro-insurrection flags in open defiance of norms of judicial neutrality and on more illicit gifts Thomas had taken. Thomas’s wife was an eager participant in the January 6 coup attempt and all the back-room machinations around it; he and Alito were obliged by all norms and ethical principles to recuse themselves from Thursday’s decision, aptly titled Trump v United States, but of course did not.That was just part of the supreme court majority’s rampage this summer. As Nation legal correspondent Elie Mystal wrote a few days before, of the ruling that is devastating for environmental protection and science-based policy: “In the biggest judicial power grab since 1803, the Supreme Court today overruled Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 case that instructed the judiciary to defer to the president and the president’s experts in executive agencies when determining how best to enforce laws passed by Congress. In so doing, the court gave itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state and its regulatory agencies. The US Constitution, flawed though it is, has already answered the question of who gets to decide how to enforce our laws. The Constitution says, quite clearly, that Congress passes laws and the president enforces them. The Supreme Court, constitutionally speaking, has no role.” Until now.Then came Monday’s bigger judicial power grab, because as another legal pundit, Asha Rangappa pointed out, in saying official presidential acts were above the law, the court “has made itself the ultimate umpire of what is ‘official’ or ‘not official,’ thereby giving itself power to determine which prosecutions are warranted and which aren’t. Basically, they’ve made themselves, not POTUS, the kings here.” Mystal tweeted, “I mean, at a core level, listening to us lawyers is of no more use here. We are beyond ‘law.’ We are beyond principles we studied or researched” while sharing her fellow law journalist Dahlia Lithwick’s declaration, “As an official representative of the legal commentariat I want to suggest that tonight’s a good news cycle to talk to the fascism and authoritarianism experts. This is their inning now…”We do have fascism and authoritarianism experts, who are often also scholars of civil society resistance and the ways dictatorial regimes can be resisted and toppled. And we do know that this is a time when civil society participation will be crucial. First of all to make sure a Democrat takes the White House in November; from that victory much can be restored. If Trump wins, the pieces of the coup will cohere into not the end of democracy in America but at least its kidnapping and torture by its enemies.There are remedies within the legislative process and the rule of law to some of this. But we will only get them with massive public participation. Civil society must press the case that this court is fatally illegitimate and Roberts, Alito and Thomas must resign. And we must press our legislators to act. Other countries have survived worse, and most of the countries to the south of the US have been through revolutions, coups, dictatorships and other dramas in the past century, as well as successful non-violent resistance and democratic triumphs.One thing is clear after this epochal supreme court decision: the fate of the country is in the hands of its people. Or rather two things are clear: the rightwing pursuit of increasingly outrageous minority rule is because they are increasingly a minority; the will of the people and the majority of votes are not on their side when it comes to everything from reproductive rights to climate action. Which is why they have to suppress votes, gerrymander districts, try to steal elections and now torch the constitution. In one way, this demonstrates their strength. In another, their weakness. It’s up to us to make that weakness matter more than that strength.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      Trump seeks to set aside hush-money verdict hours after immunity ruling

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked the New York judge who presided over his hush-money trial to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing, scheduled for later this month.The letter to Judge Juan M Merchan cited the US supreme court’s ruling earlier Monday and asked the judge to delay the former president’s sentencing while he weighs the high court’s decision and how it could influence the New York case, according to the letter obtained by the Associated Press.The lawyers argue that the supreme court’s decision confirmed a position the defense raised earlier in the case that prosecutors should have been precluded from introducing some evidence they said constituted official presidential acts, according to the letter.In prior court filings, Trump contended he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. His lawyers did not raise that as a defense in the hush-money case, but they argued that some evidence – including Trump’s social media posts about former lawyer Michael Cohen – comes from his time as president and should have been excluded from the trial because of immunity protections.The supreme court on Monday ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, extending the delay in the Washington criminal case against Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.Trump was convicted in New York of 34 counts of falsifying business records, arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush-money payment just before the 2016 presidential election.Merchan instituted a policy in the run-up to the trial requiring both sides to send him a one-page letter summarizing their arguments before making longer court filings. He said he did that to better manage the docket, so he was not inundated with voluminous paperwork. More

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      Was Donald Trump, as president, a king? The US supreme court thinks so | Moira Donegan

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      Is the president a king? The US supreme court thinks so. On Monday, in its very last ruling of the term, the chief justice, John Roberts, writing for the court’s six conservatives, held in Trump v United States that Donald Trump has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all acts that can be interpreted as part of the official course of his “core” duties, and “presumptive” immunity for all other official acts.The move dramatically extends executive authority, insulates past and future presidents from prosecution for illegal or even treasonous actions they carry out while in office and renders the former president largely criminally immune for his role in the January 6 insurrection.The court said that Trump cannot be charged for some of his “official” actions in the lead-up to the insurrection, including his attempts to pressure Mike Pence and his efforts to weaponize the justice department to force some states to reverse their election results. Much of Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump has thereby been voided.What remains of the January 6 prosecution will now be remanded to a lower court, which will be tasked with determining what charges, if any, can proceed against Trump under the court’s new, unprecedented vision of executive immunity. That trial, if it ever happens, will not take place until long after this November’s elections, and will now likely not be able to address most of Trump’s efforts to assist in either the judicial or violent coup attempts.Richard Nixon’s status as a criminal and crook was once summarized by recounting his ominous declaration: “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” The court has now taken that vulgar absurdity and made it law.It is difficult to overstate the blow this decision will have to the integrity of our democratic system of government, or the depth of its insult to the principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law. In a ruling issued on stark partisan lines, the court’s conservatives elevated the president to a position that no person can hold in a republic: one with a sweeping entitlement to commit criminal acts for the sake of his own vulgar self-interest, without any fear of criminal legal repercussions. Criminal law no longer applies to the president; so long as he occupies the office, he exists in a permanent state of The Purge-like immunity, the ordinary rules of social and civic life suspended for him, able to use the trappings of power to flatter his vanity, reward his friends and punish his enemies as it suits him.This is one of the most consequential and frightening supreme court decisions of our lives. On the verge of an election in which Trump may well be restored to presidential power, the court has officially declared that he cannot be held accountable for abuses of that power in a criminal court.In its holding, the court’s majority made a flimsy distinction between the immunity they are granting to presidents for “core powers” and “official” acts – terms whose precise meanings they don’t define – and the criminal liability that Trump and other presidents still have for “unofficial” acts. But these distinctions are likely to collapse if any prosecutor, be it Smith or someone else, actually attempts to use them. That’s because the scope of the presidential office and its powers are so broad that its “core” powers are difficult to tell from its extraneous ones, and “official” and “unofficial” acts by the president are likely to prove ambiguous.The court also declares, needlessly, that conduct undertaken in the pursuit of “official” powers cannot be used in prosecutions of “unofficial” acts – another protection for presidential conduct that will hamstringing future prosecutions. The president, meanwhile, also retains the pardon power – meaning that he is entitled not only to commit crimes, but to secure impunity for his accomplices.In practice, Trump – and any subsequent president, should we ever get to have one – is now unaccountable to either legislative checks or criminal law. It is a development that has radically changed the nature of the office. The president is now less like a democratically accountable official than like a little emperor, endowed by the court with an all-encompassing right to wield power as he sees fit, much like the way that divine right used to bless the actions of kings. There is virtually nothing that he is not allowed to do.Preposterously, as if to mock the American public and their historical aspirations to freedom, the court claims that this new state of affairs was mandated by the framers – the very people who broke with their country and fought a war specifically so as to free themselves from this kind of unaccountable executive power.In her dissent, the justice Sonia Sotomayor listed some of the things that the president can now do without consequence, according to the majority. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” she writes. “Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Take a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune … The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a kind above the law.”Sotomayor’s dissent is among the most alarmed and mournful pieces of legal writing I have ever read. She concludes it: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”There will be people who try to tell you that this ruling is not so bad. They will decry the “bed-wetting caucus”, or smugly declare themselves above “hysteria”. They will point to the majority’s evident concessions, to the president’s supposed liability for “unofficial” conduct – as if these false and pretextual possibility of accountability is anything like the real thing. It isn’t; don’t believe them. This decision is a seismic revision of the constitutional order, issued by a court packed with extremist Republicans who are anticipating a Trump victory in November.They know, as well as we do, that Trump aspires to usher in an era of corruption and autocracy. Today’s decision is an invitation for him to do just that.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Democrats warn of ‘dangerous precedent’ set by Trump ruling; Republican House speaker calls decision ‘common sense’ – as it happened

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      Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, has warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      No one, including the twice-impeached former president, should be above the law. The constitution is sacredly obligatory upon all. That’s what makes America special.
      The supreme court ruled on Monday that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, a major victory for Donald Trump that guts the 2020 election subversion case against him and any prospect of a trial before November.Here’s a recap of what happened today:
      In a 6-3 decision, the court found that presidents were protected from prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of his office, but could face charges for unofficial conduct.
      Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said a former president is entitled to “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority”.
      Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion, warned that a consequence of the ruling is that “the President is now a king above the law”. The decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law”, she added.
      Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and many Republicans.
      But Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy. “This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision was “an assault on American democracy”, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The supreme court’s decision to confer broad immunity to former presidents is likely to eviscerate numerous parts of the criminal prosecution against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, to apply a three-part test to decide which actions were protected – but Chief Justice John Roberts pre-emptively made clear that some were definitively out.On some of the closer calls, Roberts also gave suggestions on behalf of the majority conservative opinion, which could bear on Chutkan when she eventually weighs each allegation line by line and decides whether it can be introduced in any future trial.Most crucially for special counsel Jack Smith, his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official and struck from the case, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.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 came in five categories: Trump pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud, Trump pressing his vice-president to return him to the White House, Trump trying to obstruct Congress from certifying the election, Trump giving a speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors .Roberts undercut at least three of the five alleged categories in the opinion.Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, was also inspired by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in today’s immunity ruling.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Mary Trump posted to X, quoting Sotomayor, accompanied by a link selling T-shirts inspired by the justice’s dissent.The supreme court has wrapped up its 2023-2024 term, issuing a string of blockbuster decisions with enormous implications for American democracy, individual and civil rights, and the basic functioning of the federal government.Once again, the conservative supermajority, with half its justices appointed by Donald Trump, was in the driver’s seat – strengthening the power of the presidency in its immunity ruling for Trump, and overturning precedent in a dramatic blow to the administrative state.There were crumbs of comfort for liberals, including a gun rights ruling related to domestic violence and a unanimous decision upholding access to a key abortion pill, but what the US public increasingly sees as an activist court majority continues in full swing.Read our full report on the supreme court’s biggest cases this term.Hillary Clinton, responding to the supreme court’s immunity ruling, said it will be up to the American people to hold Donald Trump accountable in the November election.Posting to X, Clinton said she agreed with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion, in which she said that she had “fear for our democracy”.Former attorney general Eric Holder was also highly critical of the supreme court ruling, warning that American democracy has been “gravely wounded” as a result.Posting to X, Holder described the decision as “absurd and dangerous”.New York congressman Jerrold Nadler, a ranking member of the House judiciary committee, has described the supreme court’s immunity decision as “revolutionary”.The ruling is “far cry from the democracy envisioned by our founding fathers”, Nadler said in a statement.
      Once again, Donald Trump’s extremist rightwing court has come to his rescue, dramatically expanding the power of the presidency and removing any fear of prosecution for criminal acts committed using official power. If elected to a second term, this decision has set the stage for an unchecked dictatorship by the former president, who has already made clear his intentions to weaponize the presidency to seek revenge on his political opponents.
      Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, said it was “disgraceful” that justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito “brazenly” refused to recuse themselves from the Trump immunity case.The supreme court’s decision “threatens the rule of law”, Durbin wrote in a series of posts on X responding to the ruling.In May, Alito declined to recuse himself from cases related to Donald Trump and his 2020 election defeat following reports that flags used to support the “Stop the Steal” movement had been displayed at his homes.Calls for Thomas to recuse himself from the immunity case were also ignored, after critics cited past efforts by the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, to reverse the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor.Nancy Pelosi said the supreme court has “gone rogue” with today’s immunity ruling, saying it was “violating the foundational American principle that no one is above the law”.Posting to X, the former House speaker said:
      The former president’s claim of total presidential immunity is an insult to the vision of our founders, who declared independence from a King.
      House Republicans on Monday filed a lawsuit against the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, for the audio recording of Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel in his classified documents case, asking the courts to enforce their subpoena and reject the White House’s effort to withhold the materials from Congress, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit filed by the House judiciary committee marks Republicans’ latest broadside against the justice department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign. The legal action comes weeks after the White House blocked Garland from releasing the audio recording to Congress by asserting executive privilege.Republicans in the House responded by voting to make Garland the third attorney general in US history to be held in contempt of Congress. But the justice department refused to take up the contempt referral, citing the agency’s “longstanding position and uniform practice” to not prosecute officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.The lawsuit states that House speaker Mike Johnson made a “last-ditch effort” last week to Garland to resolve the issue without taking legal action but the attorney general referred the Republicans to the White House, which rebuffed the “effort to find a solution to this impasse”.Garland has defended the justice department, saying officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to the committees about special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation, including a transcript of Biden’s interview with him.Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, said on Monday she would use a new role as chair of the US-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) to step up her husband’s struggle against Russian president Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.The New York-based HRF said in a statement on Monday it had appointed Navalnaya to succeed former world chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov as chair of the non-profit rights group, which provides humanitarian aid to Ukraine and runs campaigns against authoritarian leaders around the world.Navalnaya, who is located outside Russia and had two children with Navalny, accused Putin of having her husband murdered. The Kremlin denied the allegation.Navalnaya said after her husband’s death that she wanted to continue his work and has since met world leaders and suggested sanctions she believes would hasten the end of the current political system in Russia.Navalnaya, 47, said in the HRF statement:
      As someone who has personally witnessed the threat dictatorships pose to our loved ones and the world at large, I am deeply honored to take on the role of chair of the Human Rights Foundation.
      Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden sued conservative news outlet Fox News on Monday for publishing nude photos and videos of him in a fictionalized “mock trial” show focused on his foreign business dealings, Reuters reports.Hunter Biden alleges Fox violated New York state’s so-called revenge porn law, which makes it illegal to publish intimate images of a person without their consent. He is also suing for unjust enrichment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Fox aired The Trial of Hunter Biden: A Mock Trial for the American People on its Fox Nation streaming platform in October 2022 but later took it down under threat of a lawsuit by Biden’s attorneys.Fox News said in a statement:
      This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit.
      It only removed the program out of an abundance of caution, it said.Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The series depicted a fictional trial of Hunter Biden on illegal foreign lobbying and bribery charges, crimes he has never been indicted for.Americans are digesting the monumental supreme court decision this morning that’s dominating the news. And Trump sidekick Steve Bannon has reported to a prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month term for contempt of Congress. There’s no shortage of US politics happenings, so stay tuned.Here’s where things stand:
      Some prominent Democrats in the House have blasted the US supreme court ruling that US presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for “official” acts taken while in office. Progressive caucus chair and Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called it “another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court” while New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision is “an assault on American democracy”.
      And Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding that “the framers of the constitution … did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity”.
      But Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, welcomed the immunity decision. He said it was a victory for Donald Trump “and all future presidents” and, on the principle, added that the court “clearly stated that presidents are entitled to immunity for their official acts. This decision is based on the obviously unique power and position of the presidency, and comports with the constitution and common sense.”
      Donald Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The three liberal justices on the US supreme court, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all dissented from the majority opinion granting US presidents immunity for “official acts” while in office. Sotomayor wrote the dissent, saying: “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
      Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform shortly after the court issued its decision on his immunity case, writing: “Big win for our constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American.”
      The US supreme court ruled that US presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from prosecution for “official acts”. The court held that a former president – in this case Donald Trump – has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers. The decision fell along party lines, with six conservative justices ruling against three liberal ones. But the court also ruled that former presidents are not entitled to immunity from prosecution for actions taken in a private capacity. It’s now down to interpretation which acts are which.
      Pramila Jayapal, the Democratic representative for Washington, has described the supreme court’s immunity ruling as a “bad decision”.Posting on X, she wrote:
      This is another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court that strips protections for people and empowers conservative special interests. More

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      Immunity ruling likely to gut parts of criminal prosecution against Trump

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      The US supreme court’s decision on Monday to confer broad immunity to former presidents is likely to eviscerate numerous parts of the criminal prosecution against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan to apply a three-part test to decide which actions were protected – but Chief Justice John Roberts pre-emptively made clear that some were definitively out.On some of the closer calls, Roberts also gave suggestions on behalf of the majority conservative opinion, which could bear on Chutkan when she eventually weighs each allegation line by line and decides whether it can be introduced in any future trial.Most crucially for the special counsel, Jack Smith, his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official and struck from the case, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.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 came in five categories: Trump pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud, Trump pressing his vice-president to return him to the White House, Trump trying to obstruct Congress from certifying the election, Trump giving a speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors .Roberts undercut at least three of the five alleged categories in the opinion.Trump’s interactions with justice department officials, including his threats to fire the then attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and the then acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, were absolutely immune because overseeing the department was a core function, Roberts found.As for Trump’s interactions with Pence, including pressuring him to reject electoral votes for Joe Biden in Congress on January 6, were presumptively immune because presidential discussions about vice-presidential responsibility were part of the job.The remaining allegations, about Trump’s other attempts to obstruct Congress’s certification, Trump’s speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building, and his efforts to organize fake slates of electors in part by spreading false claims, were left up to Chutkan.View image in fullscreenBut even then, Roberts weighed in on a key conspiracy charge against Trump: obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.In the first footnote in the majority opinion, Roberts instructed Chutkan to apply the supreme court’s determination in a previous, related ruling about the applicability of the obstruction statute when prosecuting January 6-related crimes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ruling in Fischer v United States, handed down last week, held that the obstruction statute could only be used to prosecute crimes that impaired the integrity or the availability of documents.The footnote appeared to be a clear warning to Chutkan that she could not use Trump calling up Republican members of Congress on January 6 and pressuring them to continue delaying the certification of the election results after the Capitol riot temporarily halted proceedings.After all is said and done, prosecutors may be left with only Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors – which is in many ways a circumstantial case about the extent of his personal knowledge – Trump’s speech on January 6, and some private conversations.The biggest blow to prosecutors may be the inability to present any of the official acts at trial, but the reasoning for it was not revolutionary.In many ways, the new rule set by the supreme court that precluded evidence cannot be brought at trial, mirrored how federal courts apply other privilege protections, such as the so-called speech and debate clause that makes acts by members of Congress done in an official capacity immune from prosecution.Under the speech and debate clause, protected communications do not come into contextual evidence because they are litigated out during the criminal investigation stage on a line-by-line basis. They are never even presented to a grand jury when it considers indicting a defendant. More

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      Sotomayor says immunity ruling makes a president ‘king above the law’

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      In a stark dissent from the conservative-majority US supreme court’s opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was a “mockery” that makes a president a “king above the law”.The court ruled Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for “official acts” he took while president, setting up tests for which of the federal criminal charges over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election are considered official and sending the case back to a lower court to decide.“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”Sotomayor, writing in a scathing tone, said the court would effectively allow presidents to commit clear crimes without punishment, an expansion of presidential powers that puts democracy at risk. She and fellow liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lay out hypothetical ways the court’s ruling could create crises in the US.“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote.“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.“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.“Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”Until now, presidents have operated under the assumption that their actions were not immune from criminal prosecution if they used their office, and the trappings of their office, to commit crimes, she writes. But going forward, presidents won’t be so concerned.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she concluded.Jackson wrote a separate dissent, though noted that she “agree[s] with every word of her powerful dissent,” and wanted to lay out the “theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States”.The ruling changes the balance of power among the three branches of government and gets rid of the ability to deter presidents from abusing their power, “to the detriment of us all”, Jackson wrote. The “practical consequences” of the majority decision “are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government”.In a footnote in her dissent, Jackson games out the “oddity” of deciding whether a president is immune from prosecution based on the character of a president’s powers.“While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death,” Jackson wrote. “Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, claims it hems in presidential immunity in some ways, Sotomayor takes that idea to task. The majority opinion is an “embrace of the most far-reaching view of Presidential immunity on offer”. No one has claimed that purely private acts would be immune from prosecution, she writes, making their exclusion an “unremarkable proposition”.The court effectively expanded what is considered an official act in a way that will capture events beyond a presidential’s core duties and ensnare unofficial acts, she claims. And a prohibition on bringing up these official acts during a prosecution of unofficial acts “deprives these prosecutions of any teeth”.She lays out an example: “For instance, the majority struggles with classifying whether a President’s speech is in his capacity as President (official act) or as a candidate (unofficial act). Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.”The majority wrote that immunity is necessary because it allows the nation’s top elected official to execute his duties “fearlessly and fairly” and take “bold and unhesitating action” without the threat of looming prosecution. But, Sotomayor hits back, it’s more dangerous for a president to feel empowered to break the law.“I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.”The testy dissent was replete with digs at the conservative-dominated court, which, aided by justices Trump appointed when he was in office, now counts just three liberal justices and has moved the country further to the right in recent years as a result.Sotomayor directs readers to “feel free to skip over those pages of the majority’s opinion” about one area in the conservatives’ arguments. She said the majority “invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law”. The conservatives relied on “little more than its own misguided wisdom”, she wrote. She added that “it seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient.”“In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them,” she wrote. More