US Supreme Court Grants Trump Partial Immunity

In a long-awaited ruling, the US Supreme Court has granted Donald Trump partial immunity from prosecution for trying to subvert the results of the presidential election by provoking the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. The former president exulted, saying it was a “great victory” for democracy, while President Joe Biden’s election campaign stressed that today’s ruling changes nothing: “Trump is running for president but he was convicted for the same reason he sat by and watched the mob violently attack the Capitol: he thinks he is above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and keep power for himself.”
According to the Court, which has a Republican majority, theimmunity applies to official actions but not to unofficial ones. “A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within his conclusive constitutional authority” and, again, “is entitled, at least, to presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” but “there is no immunity for unofficial acts,” emphasizes the opinion agreed with a vote of 6 to 3, those of the progressive justices.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “under the constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity” from official acts while governing, but that the president “does not enjoy immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything he does is official. The president is not above the law“, he said. Of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three were appointed by Trump during his tenure.
Lower courts, the court ruled, will decide which records are official and which are not, a situation that will delay Trump’s “election subversion” trial in Washington.

The Today’s ruling overturned a federal appeals court ruling in February that the former president should not enjoy immunity for the alleged crime. while still president and attempted to subvert the results of the November 2020 election. In August 2023, a grand jury indicted him on three criminal counts of attempting to overturn the election he lost to Biden in 2020 and inciting the storming of the Capitol in January 2021, when the results were scheduled to be certified.

Trump’s defense asked for a mistrial, arguing that he enjoys immunity because he was president at the time of the events; after the Washington judge and the appeals court rejected this defense, the former president turned to the Supreme Court. Today’s decision therefore represents a victory for the Republican, since will likely allow him to avoid appearing in another court ahead of the November 5 election, where he is running against incumbent President Joe Biden.