SCOTUS: Trump has 'Absolute Immunity' on Official Acts

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Facts

• The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Monday ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution — sending former Pres. Donald Trump's criminal case related to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election back to the lower court.¹
• Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said the president is 'not above the law,' but the court found former presidents can never be prosecuted for acts related to the core powers of their office, and they can presume immunity for acts related to their official duties.²
• By reversing a lower court's ruling rejecting Trump's claims of immunity, SCOTUS sent special counsel Jack Smith's case accusing Trump of working to undo his 2020 election loss back to a lower court to determine what's left of Smith's indictment.³
• Trump is the first former US president to be prosecuted for a crime and the first convicted of a crime, as he was found guilty of falsifying business records by a New York jury earlier this year.³
• Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, saying the majority opinion invents 'an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity' for the president and it 'makes a mockery' of the constitutional principle that no one is above the law.⁴
• Trump, in a social media post, voiced his pleasure over the ruling when he wrote, 'BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN.'⁵

Sources: ¹Associated Press, ²SCOTUSblog, ³Reuters.com, ⁴NBC and ⁵Al Jazeera.

Narratives

• Pro-Trump narrative, as provided by Townhall. As Trump already knew, the president can't be prosecuted for carrying out acts that are within the executive branch powers granted to him in the Constitution. So now everyone knows this, and the special counsel's case will be dead on arrival at the lower court. Trump did nothing wrong and the special counsel was enlisted to do nothing more than hurt the former president's current campaign.
• Anti-Trump narrative, as provided by Vox. SCOTUS, with its conservative majority powered by three Trump nominees, has now guaranteed that no president — including Trump in a potential second term — will have any legal checks against potential criminal behavior. In effect, SCOTUS granted immunity beyond even what Trump's lawyers argued he had. This could push the US toward dictatorship.

Predictions