WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday in the former president’s case Donald TrumpThe Republican Party’s lawsuit alleging interference in the 2020 election makes it all but certain that the Republican will not stand trial in Washington before the November elections.
In a 6-3 ruling, the justices said former presidents are protected from prosecution for official acts but do not have immunity for unofficial acts. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to determine whether the core aspects of the charges are unofficial versus official and therefore potentially protected from prosecution.
Here’s what you need to know about the ruling and what comes next:
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THE OPINION
In the court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that while “the president is not above the law,” he also “should not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers.” Therefore, Trump is “entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official actions,” Roberts wrote.
The ruling means that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith cannot move forward with the core allegations in the indictment, or at the very least must defend their use in future proceedings before the court.
For example, the justices swept away Smith’s use of allegations that Trump tried to leverage the Justice Department’s investigative power by ordering investigations into claims of voter fraud. It does not matter, the judges said, whether the requested investigations were based on false accusations or on an improper purpose. Ultimately, the court said, “The president cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority.”
The justices said the lower court must “carefully analyze” whether other allegations involve official conduct for which the president would be immune from prosecution.
Among the issues requiring further analysis is Trump’s relentless harassment of then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the electoral votes on January 6, 2021. The justices said it was “ultimately the government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity” in Trump’s interactions. with Pence and sent the question back to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.
THE FALSE VOTER PLAN
The judges also conducted additional fact-finding into one of the more stunning allegations in the indictment — that Trump participated in a scheme orchestrated by allies to recruit fake voters in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden, who would falsely testify that Trump had won those states.
Trump’s team argued that the selection of alternate electors was consistent with Trump’s presidential interest in the integrity and administration of federal elections. As a precedent, they cited an 1876 episode in which President Ulysses Grant sent federal troops to Louisiana and Mississippi to ensure that Republican electors were certified in those two cases.
Smith’s team, by contrast, presented the bogus electoral scheme as a purely private action that did not imply any presidential duty.
The conservative justices in their majority opinion did not answer the question of which side was right. Instead, they said that “determining whose characterization may be correct and with respect to what conduct requires a careful analysis of the extensive and interrelated allegations in the complaint.”
Unlike Trump’s interactions with the Justice Department, the judges said, “This alleged conduct cannot simply be categorized as falling within a specific presidential function. Instead, the necessary analysis is fact-specific, requiring a review of numerous alleged interactions with a wide range of state officials and private individuals.”
PROBATION
This ruling makes it virtually impossible for a trial to take place before voters decide whether to return Trump to the White House.
No preliminary preparations have taken place in the more than six months since Chutkan suspended the case in December so Trump could continue his appeal. Chutkan had indicated that she will likely give the two sides at least three months to prepare for trial once the case returns to her court. That would have opened the door for the case to potentially be tried before the election if the Supreme Court — like the lower courts — had ruled that Trump was not immune from prosecution.
However, the Supreme Court ruling could tie up the case for months in legal wrangling over whether Trump’s conduct was official or unofficial.
THE DISSENTARIES
The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — sharply criticized the majority opinion in scathing dissents. In her minority opinion, Sotomayor expressed “fear for our democracy” and said the ruling wrongly portrays presidents as “a king above the law.”
The justices who dissented from the majority ruling said the majority’s decision makes presidents immune from prosecution for actions such as ordering Navy Seals to assassinate a political rival, orchestrating a military coup to retain power or accepting bribes in exchange for a pardon.
“Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has already been done. The relationship between the president and the people he serves has been irrevocably changed. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” Sotomayor wrote.
In a separate dissent, Jackson said the majority’s ruling “enters new and dangerous territory.”
“Simply put, the Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) can become a law unto himself,” Jackson wrote.
TRUMP’S OTHER MATTERS
Trump was convicted of 34 crimes in May during his hush-money trial in New York and is expected to be sentenced on July 11. Each charge of falsifying company records carries a prison sentence of up to four years, but there is no guarantee Trump will receive that. prison time. Other options include fines or probation.
It seems almost certain that Trump’s two other criminal cases will not go to trial before the election.
An appeals court recently halted Trump’s 2020 Georgia election interference case while it reviewed a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the case. No trial date had been set in that case.
Trump was scheduled to go to trial in May in the other case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, over secret documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon canceled the trial date, saying the case was stalled by legal challenges. She has yet to reschedule.
