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Supreme Court Hands Trump ‘Huge Victory’ in Immunity Case

  • Michael Foust Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
  • Updated Jul 01, 2024
Supreme Court Hands Trump ‘Huge Victory’ in Immunity Case

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a potentially significant victory to Donald Trump, ruling in a landmark decision that a U.S. president has “absolute immunity” for constitutional powers and “some immunity” for official actions. The 6-3 ruling stopped short of what Trump’s attorneys had requested, although legal observers labeled it a major win for the former President. 

The ruling could have a direct impact on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump on criminal counts arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. capitol. The indictment alleges that Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election by spreading knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the counting and certification of results.

Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center wrote that the high court had “delivered former president Donald Trump a huge victory and special counsel Jack Smith a crushing defeat.”

“I think that the only sensible option for Smith now is to abandon his prosecution,” Whelan wrote on National Review’s website. Whelan noted that he had been highly critical of Trump’s post-election conduct. “It would likely be at least two years before any prosecution would go to trial, and it’s far from clear what pieces of his case Smith would be able to try to assemble. And, of course, if Trump is elected in November, he will dismiss the prosecution.”

Constitution law professor Jonathan Turley labeled it a “major victory” for Trump, while Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “win” for Trump and future presidents. Trump, on social media, labeled it a “big win.” But Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell cautioned that Trump did not win and that Smith will “argue Trump’s actions were not ‘official acts.’” Swalwell acknowledged, though, that the “criminal case doesn’t get tried before the election.”

The high court took the case to consider the following question: Does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office? However, the court’s answer to that question is not easily summarized. 

The majority ruled that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their constitutional authority and presumptive immunity from prosecution for all their official acts. The court ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts. 

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and was joined by the court’s conservative bloc. 

“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office,” Roberts wrote. “At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead, whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient.”

The Supreme Court returned the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The question now becomes: What distinguishes an official action from an unofficial action?  

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official,” Roberts wrote in conclusion. “The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President, therefore, may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a dissent that was joined by the court’s two other liberal justices, warning that the majority opinion gives former President Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”

“Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent,” she wrote. “... 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.”

Roberts said the majority opinion was not as far-reaching as Sotomayor contends.  

“As for the dissents,” Roberts wrote, “they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today -- conclude that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine ‘in the first instance’ whether and to what extent Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity.”

Trump “asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one we have recognized,” Roberts wrote.  

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Pool

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.