Joe Biden says Supreme Court ruling on Donald Trump immunity sets dangerous precedent
Joe Biden warns ‘there are no limits to what a president can do’ after the ruling on presidential immunity, and says Donald Trump will exploit the decision if elected in November.
President Joe Biden has slammed the Supreme Court’s decision to exempt the president from criminal prosecution in a way that severely undermines pending charges against Donald Trump as setting “a dangerous precedent”.
In his first public remarks to the nation since his much-criticised performance in last week’s presidential debate, the embattled leader criticised the Supreme Court for doing a “terrible disservice to the nation,” and urged voters to “dissent” be jettisoning Mr Trump at the ballot box.
“Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide they want to entrust the presidency once again to Donald Trump.”
The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges he sought to subvert the 2020 election, ruling 6-3 Monday Tuesday AEST) that former presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their acts while in office.
The president “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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, joined in whole or part by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
“Big win for our Constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American!” Trump, using all capital letters, wrote on his social-media platform after the decision.
The court threw out parts of the prosecution’s case against Trump, including on his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to advance his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and submit slates of false electors to replace those President Biden won.
The ideologically divided decision which saw the three Democrat-appointed justices dissent, didn’t kill the prosecution entirely, with the chief justice saying a president “enjoys no immunity for unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official.”
Speaking from the White House in short, prepared remarks the president said no-one should be above the law “not even the president of the United States”
“This nation is founded on the principle that there are no kings in America.- each of us is equal before the law,” Mr Biden said, refusing to answer questions from reporters about his future following a woeful debate performance last week.
“Today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
The court added so many new conditions for federal prosecutors that it could be virtually impossible to hold a trial before Election Day – if ever.
The chief justice’s opinion erected new hurdles for the prosecution that may be difficult to clear. For example, the court said that, when attempting to distinguish Trump’s official acts from unofficial ones, judges couldn’t inquire into Trump’s motives.
The president said he “concurred” with Sonia Sotomayor, one of the dissenting three justices, who wrote in her judgement that she feared for democracy itself, conceding the verdict made it “highly, highly unlikely” the federal charges against his predecessor would proceed before the election.
The court previously has handed Trump victories in two separate cases stemming from his followers’ January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, where they sought to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
“This This decision today continues the [supreme] court’s attack on wide range of long established legal principles, from voting rights and civil rights, to women’s right to choose, and today’s decision undermines the rule of law,” the president said
The president said that “for all practical purposes today’s decision means there are virtually no limits on what the president can do”, an interpretation that divides legal scholars.
The Biden campaign said Monday’s decision “doesn’t change the facts, so let’s be very clear about what happened on Jan. 6: Donald Trump snapped after he lost the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overthrow the results.” Trump “thinks he’s above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and hold onto power for himself,” the statement said.
Trump has been indicted in four different cases, two at the federal level by special counsel Jack Smith. The case before the high court involved perhaps the most serious charges: allegations by Smith that Trump participated in an illegal scheme whose aim was to deny Biden the victory he won on Election Day 2020.
Should Trump prevail in November, upon return to the White House he could order the federal charges against him withdrawn or attempt to pardon himself for past crimes, ending both the Washington case and separate charges Smith filed in Florida alleging Trump illegally took national-security documents from the White House when leaving office in 2021 and refused to turn them over when requested by federal officials. State proceedings against Trump could also freeze, based on the constitutional supremacy of federal law over those enforced by the states.
with Dow Jones
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