President Joe Biden criticized the Supreme Court ruling that former President Donald Trump legal immunity for many of his actions leading up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection, saying there are now “virtually no limits to what a president can do.”
“Any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,” Biden said after returning to the White House on Monday from Camp David, the presidential retreat where he met with his family to discuss his re-election campaign.
He called the ruling “a fundamentally new principle and a dangerous precedent” and vowed not to break the law while in office.
In a controversial 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative justices ruled that Trump enjoys full immunity for presidential actions that were “official” in nature, but not for those that were “private.” The high court sent the case back to a lower court to determine which actions alleged in the lawsuit fall somewhere in between, such as his pressure on state officials to compile fraudulent lists of Electoral College electors in states he lost in the 2020 election.
The ruling makes a trial on Trump’s allegations of election undermining impossible before the November 2024 election.
In a fiery dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority opinion “parodies the principle, fundamental to our Constitution and our system of government, that no one is above the law.”
“The Court effectively creates a lawless zone around the president, disrupting the status quo that has existed since its inception,” she added.
Biden’s remarks at the White House on Monday night come amid intense scrutiny over his political future. The 81-year-old president’s lethargic performance in last week’s debate against Donald Trump in Atlanta set off a wave of soul-searching in the Democratic Party over whether he should stay in the running for re-election or step aside for a younger candidate like Vice President Kamala Harris.
While many leading commentators and newspaper editors have called on Biden to withdraw, elected Democratic officials and members of his family continue to insist he should stay in the race.
Some Democrats have called on Biden to make less scripted public appearances and do press interviews in the coming days to convince the public that he can do the job. The president is expected to attend several public events at the White House this week, including a Medal of Honor ceremony and a Fourth of July barbecue.
In his speech on Monday, Biden warned of what Trump’s return to the White House would mean for American democracy, “knowing that he will have even more courage to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”
“The American people are going to have to do what the courts should be prepared to do but won’t. The American people are going to have to judge Donald Trump’s conduct,” Biden added, referring to the November election. “The American people are going to have to decide whether Trump’s embrace of violence to maintain his power is acceptable.”
