In their dissents from the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on presidential immunity, the court\u2019s liberal justices suggested that the majority opinion allows for a slew of alarming scenarios \u2014 including a president ordering a Navy SEAL team to \u2018assassinate\u2019 his political rival or even poisoning one of his own cabinet members.<\/p>\n
The high court on Monday ruled 6-3 that a president has substantial immunity for official acts that occurred during his time in office. It\u2019s a decision that has significant implications for former President Trump, whose prosecution on charges related to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach and alleged 2020 election interference spurred the Supreme Court to hear the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But although the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly stated that the president \u2018is not above the law\u2019 and immunity is only a factor when it involves an \u2018official act\u2019 \u2014 the justices sent the case back to lower courts to determine if the acts at the center of Trump\u2019s case were \u2018official\u2019 \u2014 the ruling raised a series of frightening possibilities, according to the trio of dissenting justices.<\/p>\n
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan wrote in the primary dissent that the court\u2019s majority opinion \u2018makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority\u2019s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,\u2019 Sotomayor wrote. \u2018Orders the Navy\u2019s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.\u2019<\/p>\n
She continued: \u2018Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority\u2019s message today.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sotomayor added that the majority decision has \u2018shifted irrevocably\u2019 the relationship between the president and the American people, being that \u2018in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.\u2019<\/p>\n
Yet another startling scenario is included in a footnote from a separate dissent authored by Jackson.<\/p>\n
Noting that the president\u2019s removal of a cabinet member would constitute an official act, Jackson says that \u2018while the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death.\u2019<\/p>\n
She adds: \u2018Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sotomayor\u2019s conclusion summed up the prevailing tenor of her and Jackson\u2019s writings: \u2018With fear for our democracy, I dissent.\u2019<\/p>\n
Both dissents were taken to task in the court\u2019s majority opinion.<\/p>\n
\u2018As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today\u2026,\u2019 Roberts wrote.<\/p>\n
He added: \u2018Coming up short on reasoning, the dissents repeatedly level variations of the accusation that the Court has rendered the President \u2018above the law.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Adding that the dissents came \u2018up short on reasoning,\u2019 Roberts wrote that the \u2018positions in the end boil down to ignoring the Constitution\u2019s separation of powers and the Court\u2019s precedent and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President \u2018feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sotomayor\u2019s dissent swiftly reverberated throughout social media. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 election, posted on X that she agrees with Sotomayor\u2019s stand against the \u2018MAGA wing\u2019 of the high court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018It will be up to the American people this November to hold Donald Trump accountable,\u2019 Clinton wrote.<\/p>\n\n
In their dissents from the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on presidential immunity, the court\u2019s liberal justices suggested that the majority opinion allows for a slew of alarming scenarios \u2014 including a president ordering a Navy SEAL team to \u2018assassinate\u2019 his political rival or even poisoning one of his own cabinet members. The high court on Monday <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}