U.S. Supreme Court justices grilled a lawyer representing Donald Trump on Thursday about the former president’s assertion of immunity from prosecution for his actions to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Trump lodged an appeal after lower courts dismissed his plea to be shielded from four election-related criminal charges, arguing that he was president when he took the actions that led to the indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The former president, who is the presumptive Republican candidate challenging Democrat President Joe Biden in the upcoming November election, marks the first instance of a former U.S. president facing criminal prosecution.
D. John Sauer, the lawyer advocating for Trump, argued before the justices, “Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it. For 234 years of American history, no president was ever prosecuted for his official acts.”
Sauer further emphasized, “If a president can be charged, put on trial, and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president’s decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed.”
During the proceedings, Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas inquired about the source of this presidential immunity, while Conservative Justice John Roberts posed a hypothetical scenario involving a president accepting a bribe. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned Sauer about the possibility of a president obtaining immunity if they ordered “someone to assassinate” a political rival.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in this case and three other criminal cases he faces, including an ongoing trial on New York state charges linked to hush money paid to a porn star shortly before the 2016 U.S. election, was absent from the Supreme Court arguments as he attended a hearing in the Manhattan courtroom for that case.
Addressing reporters on his way to court in New York, Trump asserted, “A president has to have immunity. … If you don’t have immunity, you’re not going to do anything. You’re just going to become a ceremonial president.”
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which includes three justices appointed by Trump – Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch – has already handed Trump a victory earlier this year. On March 4, the court overturned a judicial decision that had excluded him from Colorado’s ballot under a constitutional provision concerning insurrection, citing his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Not since its landmark Bush v. Gore decision, which resolved the disputed 2000 U.S. election in favor of Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, has the court played such a pivotal role in a presidential race.
