Justice Sotomayor: The Supreme Court has made Trump 'a king above the law'

The Supreme Court just gave convicted felon Donald Trump everything he wanted. In a 6-3 decision issued Monday, the court’s six conservative justices granted him sweeping immunity from key elements of the federal Jan. 6 case against him, all wrapped up in a flimsy conceit that the lower courts need to take it back to reconsider precisely what conduct he can be prosecuted for. More than that, however, the six conservatives just upended democracy. It’s a five-alarm fire, Justice Sonia Sotomayor essentially says, in what Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern calls “one of the most terrified and terrifying pieces of judicial writing I've ever encountered.” “Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark,” Sotomayor writes in her dissent. “The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding.” When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s 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.  Let 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’s message today. “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Sotomayor writes. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” The President is king and the Supreme Court majority his unconstitutional enablers, Sotomayor notes later in her dissent, writing that this “expansive vision of Presidential immunity … was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.” In this specific case, the court leaves it to the lower courts to determine which of Trump’s potential criminal acts are official (which he would be immune from) and unofficial acts (which he could be prosecuted for). This gives an “arbitrary and irrational” distinction between official and "unofficial" acts, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackons writes in her dissent. That leaves just a “chance that this Court might someday determine that the criminal conduct in question was an ‘unofficial’ act, or that the Government will somehow rebut the presumption of immunity that applies to a President’s official acts.” The ruling also leaves Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the federal Jan. 6 prosecution, with scraps. It “knocked out some of the central allegations that special counsel Jack Smith leveled against Trump, including claims that he attempted to weaponize his Justice Department to concoct or amplify false claims of voter fraud,” Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney write. It’s going to be up to Chutkan to determine what are “official” and “unofficial” acts on the part of Trump, in a process that all but guarantees Trump stays out of court until well after the election. Campaign Action