President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the White House on July 1, 2024, following the Supreme Court ruling on the charges against the former president Donald Trump that he tried to undermine the 2020 election. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that presidents have some immunity from prosecution when they act within their “constitutional authority,” but not absolute immunity. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to grant criminal immunity for official acts of a president has fundamentally changed American democracy, President Joe Biden said from the White House on Monday night.
Biden spoke for less than five minutes, saying the 6-3 decision violates the spirit of the country’s founding, which is celebrated nationwide this week on July 4: No one is above the law.
“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Biden said. “Each of us is equal before the law. No one — no one — is above the law, not even the president of the United States.”
The immunity decree, written by Chief Justice John Roberts According to Biden, the judge’s ruling undermines that principle for the court’s conservative majority.
Biden added that the decision would almost certainly mean a jury would not reach a verdict in the criminal case in which former President Donald Trump is accused of conspiring to illegally overturn his 2020 loss before the November election, which Biden called a “disservice to the American people.”
Robert’s Opinion
The ruling ordered a federal court to determine which actions then-President Trump took to overturn the 2020 presidential election were “official” acts of the president. Those actions are entitled to “the presumption of immunity,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts said the ruling protected the power of an office that is itself an entire branch of government and was consistent with the Constitution’s framers’ view that the president has broad powers and responsibilities.
“Acknowledging that reality — and ensuring that the president can exercise those powers by force, as the Founders expected him to do — does not place him above the law,” Roberts wrote. “It preserves the basic structure of the Constitution.”
But Biden called the decision “a dangerous precedent” that would give presidents virtually unlimited power.
“The president’s power will no longer be limited by law, not even by the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said. “The only limits will be imposed by the president himself.”
Biden cited the example of George Washington, who he said limited the powers of the presidency, and pledged to continue to respect “the limits of presidential powers.”
But, he said, the ruling gave future presidents, possibly including Trump, the authority to ignore the law.
January 6th Attack
Biden has said that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted the certification of Biden’s defeat of Trump in the 2020 election. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election results, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack, are the subject of the federal indictment that the former president is fighting by claiming presidential immunity.
“Four years ago, my predecessor sent a violent mob to the United States Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Biden said. “We all saw it firsthand. We saw what happened that day … I think it’s fair to say it’s one of the darkest days in American history. Now the man who sent that mob to the United States Capitol is facing a potential criminal conviction.”
Biden, whose re-election campaign was still reeling Monday from a debate performance against Trump last week that even Democrats described as poor, called on voters to “do what the court should have been willing to do but was unwilling to do” and reject Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, at the ballot box.
The president supported Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s powerful dissent in the case, citing her statement that the majority opinion stoked “fear for our democracy” and also called on voters to have their say.
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