This decision is a first victory for Trump. The US Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, extended, this Monday, the criminal immunity of President Donald Trump while he was in office. At the end of February, the Supreme Court of the United States had decided to take up this question. By a majority of six votes to three, the institution considered that “the president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts” but that he “is entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for his official acts”. On behalf of the majority, the president of the Court, John Roberts, justified this decision by “consistent principles of separation of powers”.
Donald Trump is facing a long-delayed federal trial for allegedly trying to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. With this decision, the Court is sending the case back to the lower court to determine what acts are potentially immune from criminal prosecution. The burden is on the prosecution to show that they are not when they were committed in the exercise of its powers of office.
For US President Joe Biden, this decision by the Supreme Court on Donald Trump’s criminal immunity for his actions as president creates “fundamentally a new principle and a dangerous precedent because the power of the president will no longer be limited by law.” According to the Democratic president, this precedent will “embolden Donald Trump to do what he wants, when he wants” if he wins the presidential election in November.
Other trials postponed until further notice
For his part, the Republican candidate welcomed a “historic decision”, assuring that it invalidated most of the charges in the four criminal proceedings against him. However, Donald Trump is currently doing everything he can to be tried as late as possible, in any case after the presidential election. However, he was already found guilty on May 30 by the New York courts of “aggravated accounting falsification to conceal a conspiracy to pervert the 2016 election”, he will be sentenced on July 11. But this first criminal conviction, unprecedented for a former American president, will in all likelihood be the only one before the vote.
Through numerous appeals, Donald Trump’s lawyers have managed to postpone until further notice the other trials, at the federal level for withholding classified documents after he left the White House and before the courts in the key state of Georgia (southeast) for electoral interference in 2020.
And if he were re-elected in November, he could, once inaugurated in January 2025, order a halt to federal prosecutions against him.
According to legal experts, beyond the case of Donald Trump, this decision “redefines the institution of the presidency” by transforming its holder into “a king above the law in every use of his official power”, wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent joined by her two progressive colleagues. “When the president does it, it means it’s not illegal”, ironically remarks on X John Dean, White House counsel at the time of the Watergate scandal in 1974, citing the line of defense of the then President Richard Nixon. “Confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2024”, he concludes.
