Historians, legal experts express dismay at Trump immunity decision

Historians and legal experts warned Monday that the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity opens the door to dangerous abuses of power and undermines fundamental American principles of accountability before the law.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice and author of several books on the country's legal landscape, said there are reasons to be nervous about prosecuting a former president and that certain standards would make sense.

But the court has issued an instruction manual for presidents who break the law, Waldman said on social media. Make sure you only conspire with other government employees. You will never be held accountable.

Presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss was among those who raised the idea that the decision went against the intent of the country's founders.

The Supreme Court will give future presidents access to far greater and more transparent power than ever before in American history, Beschloss said on social media. The Founding Fathers wanted a president, not a king.

Historian and author Garrett Graff, who wrote a book about Watergate, cited President Richard Nixon's famous quote that if a president does it, it's not illegal and said no one believed it to be true.

The entire history of America shows the opposite. And yet that is exactly what the Supreme Court decided today, Graff wrote. The test of Watergate was that no one is above the law. Today, the Supreme Court has placed one man above the law.

The closely fought 6-3 decision swept away some of the arguments in Washington against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and virtually guaranteed that a trial will not take place before the November election.

Future Presidents

But legal and political figures have expressed concern about the implications of the decision for future presidents, who could use their core constitutional authorities as a shield against criminal liability.

Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor who ran unsuccessfully in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, said the Supreme Court has given presidents greater control over the Justice Department. Indeed, he argued, the decision says that an official act that enjoys immunity includes threatening to fire the attorney general if he or she takes no action.

I can only imagine how this could be misused, Hutchinson tweeted.

Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said the decision gives future presidents carte blanche to abuse the powers of their office for political and personal gain, and lays the groundwork for Donald Trump to have absolute authority in a possible second term.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he will preface every blatantly illegal thing he does by saying, “Official act, it’s an official act.”

Cornell Law School professor Michael C. Dorf said that if he reads the decision correctly, a president can openly accept bribes in exchange for pardons because they are within his exclusive authority. Good to know.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor outlined what she sees as the future ramifications of the decision in a dissenting opinion. The U.S. president is the most powerful person in the country, and perhaps the world, and will now be immune from criminal prosecution when he uses his official powers in any way, she wrote.

Order Navy Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immunized. Stage a military coup to retain power? Immunized. Accept a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immunized. Immunized, immune, immune, Sotomayor wrote.

Exaggerated response?

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in the majority opinion, wrote that Sotomayor’s dissent and that of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson strike a tone of chilling pessimism that is wildly out of proportion to what the Court is actually doing today, and called it fearmongering based on extreme assumptions about a future in which the president would feel empowered to violate federal criminal law.

Roberts predicted disaster if the Court had ruled differently. The dissenters overlook the more likely prospect of a self-cannibalizing executive branch, with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors but unable to exercise his office boldly and courageously for fear of being the next to suffer the consequences, Roberts writes.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, responding to the ruling, said hyperpartisan prosecutors like Jack Smith cannot use the rule of law as a weapon to go after the administration's chief political rival.

We hope the left will stop its attacks on President Trump and stand up for democratic norms, he said.

On Monday, Trump wrote on social media, in all capital letters: “Great victory for our Constitution and our democracy. Proud to be an American!”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the decision makes perfect sense to me because fundamental constitutional authorities should enjoy absolute immunity and other official acts will be determined by a factual analysis.

The Supreme Court’s dissent in this case is absurd on every level, particularly the argument by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson that the decision allows a president to assassinate his opponent, Graham said. Liberal members of the court and the left have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump.

“Scary thing”

Quentin Fulks, President Joe Biden's top deputy campaign manager, said Monday that the Supreme Court's decision scared the crap out of him.

“They just handed Donald Trump the keys to a dictatorship,” Fulks said at a news conference hosted by Biden’s re-election campaign. “The Supreme Court just gave Trump permission to assassinate and imprison whoever he wants to gain power.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a lawyer and member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, described herself as feeling shaken by a sense of helplessness after the high court's decision.

“They’re allowing him to kill somebody,” the Texas Democrat said on the call. “That’s a very real and scary thing to me.”

“I have to focus on the fact that we’ve seen a consolidation of power under Trump in this Supreme Court because, fundamentally, the courts are not separate,” she added. “We used to have checks and balances. I don’t feel that right now.”

Rep. Dan Goldman, also a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, called the Supreme Court adversarial and compromised, saying the decision significantly set back our democracy.

The majority decision allows someone like Donald Trump to conspire with others, while using ostensibly official acts as president, to conspire to overturn an election, Goldman said on the same call.

“This essentially means that if there is a plausible official explanation for any act of a president, that explanation cannot be used to commit a crime, but it also cannot be used as evidence of a crime,” he added. This is a radical view and devastating to our separation of powers and to our fundamental belief and notion that no one is above the law.

A White House official responded to the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity by noting that Biden had said that “no one is above the law.”

“This is a fundamental principle of the United States and how our justice system works,” spokesman Ian Sams said in an email. “We need leaders like President Biden who respect the justice system and don’t destroy it.”

John T. Bennett contributed to this report.

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