The stacked conservative Supreme Court says presidents have “absolute” immunity for clearly official acts, but no immunity for unofficial acts. However, it seems highly unlikely that former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will go to trial on charges of trying to steal the 2020 election before voters cast ballots in this year’s presidential contest, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.
The 45th president faces four federal felony counts in D.C. for allegedly trying to illegally subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The high court’s 6-3 ruling sends the case back to the lower court to determine when and whether Trump will go to trial.
The most significant result of the court’s long-delayed decision likely ensures that the case against Trump won’t be tried before the election, and then only if he is not reelected.
If he is reelected, Trump could order the Justice Department to drop the charges against him, or he might try to pardon himself in the two pending federal cases.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s decision, joined by his fellow conservatives. Dissenting were the three liberals, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Monday’s decision to send the case back to trial Judge Tanya Chutkan all but guarantees that there will be no Trump trial on the election interference charges for months.
Even before the immunity case, Chutkan indicated that trial preparations would likely take three months. Now, she will also have to decide which of the charges in the Trump indictment should remain and which involve official acts that under the Supreme Court ruling are protected from prosecution.
Chutkan must now determine which, if any of Trump’s actions, were part of his official duties and thus were protected from prosecution.
Even after Judge Chutkan separates the constitutional wheat from the chaff, Trump could seek further delays, as immunity questions are among the very few that may be appealed prior to trial.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision came months after the court agreed to hear the case Feb. 28 and scheduled arguments for two months later. Court critics have noted that the justices could have considered the case as early as in December, when Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith unsuccessfully sought review of the same questions later put forward by Trump.
All of this stands in stark contrast to the way the court has handled other presidential power cases.
In 1974 the justices ruled against President Nixon just 16 days after hearing oral arguments. The vote was 8-0, with Justice William Rehnquist recusing himself because of his close ties to some of the officials accused of wrongdoing in the case.
Earlier this year the court took less than a month to rule unanimously that states could not bar Trump from the ballot.
The presidential ruling capped a term marked by new radical limits on the power of regulatory agencies and by a fresh round of ethics scandals for the justices, whose public approval ratings remain at historic lows.
Monday marked the first time since 2020 that the Supreme Court term has run into July. The court extended the session that year to contend with delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Before that, it had not happened since 1996. July rulings were a regular feature, however, in the 1970s and 1980s, during the tenure of Chief Justice Warren Burger.