Supreme Court Immunity Decision: What It Means for Trump's Business

The Supreme Court on Monday granted former President Donald Trump significant legal protection from lawsuits for actions taken during his tenure in the Oval Office.

In a decision split along ideological lines, the justices held that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts but remain susceptible to charges for unofficial conduct, a decision that has profound implications for Trump's ongoing criminal cases, particularly those stemming from his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said that a president cannot be sued for exercising his core constitutional powers and is entitled, at a minimum, to presumptive immunity from prosecution for all of his official acts. In doing so, the Supreme Court left it to the lower court to consider what conduct is protected and immune from prosecution.

Read more: Supreme Court rules Trump, former presidents have some immunity for official acts

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a fiery dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, criticized the majority's position, saying it elevates the president above the law and undermines accountability.

While the case is a landmark ruling on the powers of the U.S. presidency, it will have immediate implications for Trump, the first former president in history to be indicted. The Supreme Court case focused on charges brought by the Justice Department over Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but he also faces two other criminal cases in Florida and Georgia, and has already been convicted in one in New York.

Here's what to know about the next steps in Trump's election interference case and how the ruling could affect all the charges he faces.

The Jack Smith Election Interference Case

Rather than dismiss the federal election interference case, the Supreme Court sent some elements of the indictment back to a lower court to consider what conduct is protected and immune from prosecution.

The Supreme Court has provided specific guidance on the conduct at issue in the case, which was brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Roberts wrote for the conservative majority that Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for his alleged conduct related to conversations with Justice Department officials about launching investigations into election fraud and potentially fraudulent voter rolls. But the Supreme Court has not provided answers about other conduct alleged in Smith’s indictment, writing that further proceedings at the lower court level are needed to determine whether Trump can be prosecuted for his alleged attempt to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College vote, and for his interactions with state officials, private citizens and voters about election fraud and the violence of January 6.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case and was appointed by former President Barack Obama, will be tasked with sifting through the allegations in the indictment to separate Trump’s official actions as president from his private actions as a presidential candidate. Those actions include conversations Trump had with people outside the federal government, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rejected Trump’s push to find enough votes to overturn the 2020 vote in the state.

Norm Eisen, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a former adviser to the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, says we could see an evidentiary hearing, or mini-trial, this summer or fall that would allow Chutkan to hear testimony from witnesses and receive other relevant evidence.

Sending these questions back to a lower court can only ensure that the trial in this case will be delayed until voters decide in November whether to return Trump to the White House. And if Trump wins the election and returns to the White House, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges against him.

Other cases

Trump has claimed that the Supreme Court's decision should end his four criminal cases, and his lawyers will likely use the ruling to argue that the cases should be dismissed because they involve official conduct that Trump undertook as president.

Legal experts are skeptical of that claim. Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the ruling likely won’t affect Trump’s recent criminal conviction in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal before the 2016 presidential election because the ruling doesn’t grant former presidents immunity for personal conduct. “I don’t see paying a porn star and falsifying business records as anything other than a personal capacity,” she said. Trump faces sentencing in the case on July 11, and he has already vowed to appeal.

Read more: What happens now that Trump has been convicted? Your questions answered

The Supreme Court’s decision could impact Trump’s election interference trial in Georgia, led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has charged Trump and 14 of his allies in a racketeering indictment for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The indictment claims that Trump pressured state officials to falsify vote counts and organized a fake list of pro-Trump electors. Trump’s lawyers have argued presidential immunity in the case, though Judge Scott McAfee has yet to rule and an appeals court recently put the case on hold while it considers Willis’s involvement. (Any ruling by McAfee on presidential immunity would likely be appealed.)

The indictment in that case alleges that Trump engaged in conversations with people outside the federal government, including Raffensperger, conduct that Smiths also charged. Because the Supreme Court’s ruling allows the federal district court overseeing Smith’s case to determine whether that and other similar conduct cited in the indictment qualifies as official or unofficial, the decision could also impact the Georgia proceedings.

It’s less clear whether the Supreme Court’s decision will affect the federal prosecution of Trump in Florida for allegedly retaining classified documents after he left the White House and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, Finkelstein says. Trump has argued that the charges in that case should also be dismissed on the grounds that he is entitled to full presidential immunity. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has yet to rule on that charge, but the special prosecutor team is likely to argue that the conduct described in the indictment — the illegal retention of classified information — occurred after Trump left office and therefore does not qualify for immunity, Finkelstein says.

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