Trump immunity decision divides US Senate panel

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators sharply polarized Tuesday as they debated whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision effectively crowns the president a “king” or is consistent with the history of his tenure.

at the first congressional hearing Court decision in Julymembers of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee debated and questioned witnesses on the historic 6-3 incident point of view The bill gives the president criminal immunity for core constitutional duties and presumptive immunity for “peripheral” actions. The court ruled that individual conduct was not immune.

Dick Durbin, chairman of the Illinois committee, lamented that the high court now “makes it almost impossible for courts to hold a fugitive president accountable.”

“It will be up to the American people and Congress to insist, because, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, ‘the president is now king above the law,'” the Democratic senator expressed in his opening statement.

Ranking Republican Lindsey Graham dismisses Democratic-led hearing “Aiming to continue the attack on the pitch.”

“This hearing is about continuing to delegitimize a court you don’t like. We’ll see how that continues over time.

a controversial decision

The Supreme Court issued its immunity decision amid the rollercoaster ride of the 2024 presidential campaign — just a month after former President Donald Trump was elected convicted He committed 34 felonies in New York, and this was the only one of his four criminal cases to go to trial.

Trump, who is Caught in a close competition In the 2024 presidential election polls, he joined Vice President Kamala Harris in taking presidential immunity claims to the Supreme Court and appointed three conservative justices during his term. At the time, he was leading President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race in late July.

Trump argued that he cannot be charged with federal fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The Supreme Court sent the election subversion case back to the trial court to decide which charges remain true under the immunity decision.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith released a superseding indictment Soon after, all four felony charges were retained but all supporting charges were omitted that Trump allegedly pressured the Justice Department to intimidate state officials to rig the 2020 election results.

Graham downplayed Smith’s case and now fired The federal case accuses Trump of improperly storing and refusing to return classified information after leaving office, calling it “politically motivated legal garbage.”

Graham also criticized Georgia’s 2020 election interference case against Trump and New York’s conviction of Trump for falsifying business records related to hush-money payments to porn stars before the 2016 election.

License abuse?

Three witnesses invited to testify before the Democratic-led panel warned that the immunity decision could have sweeping consequences for American democracy and accused the court of abandoning longstanding protections for executive power.

Providing protection from criminal exposure “essentially allows the president to abuse his power with impunity,” said Philip Allen Lacovara, a former deputy attorney general and former legal counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor.

Lacovara testified that the court “did not rely on any historical convention supporting criminal immunity.” “In fact, in practice it’s exactly the opposite.

“I know from my own experience with the Watergate scandal that President Nixon was the subject of an active criminal investigation for his cover-up.”

Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law School, agreed with the court that the president should be protected by his constitutional powers, including pardons and vetoes.

But, she said, she was concerned that the court’s opinion “broadly defined core constitutional powers well beyond those recognized powers.”

“Most believe the former president has absolute immunity from alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.

“The indictment alleges that these actions included using the Department of Justice to persuade certain states to replace legitimate electors with fraudulent Trump slates of electors,” said McCord, who served at the Justice Department in the Obama and Trump administrations.

McCord also questioned how criminal immunity would guide future presidential interactions with other government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the CIA.

“If the president does not care about adhering to the rule of law, the reforms enacted by Congress in the wake of past abuses will be ineffective,” she said.

Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, alerted the committee to Nixon’s investigation of Jewish members of the administration, as reflected in audio recordings of conversations he has preserved.

“As we assess the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the additional guardrails of the presidency, I suggest that we consider some of the events of 1971 and some of the other well-documented presidential abuses of power,” former founding director Naftali said. Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

Immunize if necessary

Witnesses invited by the Republican minority on the panel dismissed concerns about presidential immunity as overblown.

“Since the Court issued this opinion, numerous public statements and comments have grossly mischaracterized the opinion’s position and its scope,” said Jennifer Muscott, director of the Separation of Powers Institute and associate professor of law at The Catholic University of America.

“Some of these exaggerated statements have appeared in some of the testimony prepared for the committee today,” she continued.

Republicans reiterated that the president’s criminal immunity could seal a “Pandora’s box” of political retaliation against the previous administration through the courts.

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, ranking member of the committee’s Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Actions and Federal Rights Subcommittee, argued that once Biden leaves office, district attorneys in Republican-controlled jurisdictions may be in trouble for returning from Afghanistan. Prosecute Biden for withdrawing troops.

“Can you imagine a situation where, after President Biden is out of office, an ambitious district attorney could bring charges against the president, former President Biden, of criminal negligence resulting in the death of an American?” he asked.

Michael Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general who served under former President George W. Bush, said the court’s ruling was “narrow in scope and consistent with precedent and constitutional principles.”

“I think if one examines the historical record of controversial presidential conduct, it’s dangerous to subject the president to the constant threat of prosecution for official conduct — particularly, but not exclusively, conduct that affects national security, such as the border or Drug Enforcement.

He cited former President Barack Obama’s drone killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. American example.

“More pointedly, I doubt many people believe that our country would be better off if Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, Clinton or Obama were prosecuted or imprisoned for controversial decisions they made while in office,” Mukasey said. Get better.

Is a lack of courtroom ethics to blame?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights, blamed the courts for a lack of enforceable ethics rules and “creepy right-wing billionaires” influencing judges. Decide.

The court has Shocked Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas did not disclose gifts and luxury trips from Republican donors. The judges were not affected in any way and the donors denied any wrongdoing.

“Trump’s judges invented presidential immunity and then didn’t even exclude treason,” the Rhode Island Democrat said. “The first ever reference to a president being free to commit crime came from this court, just as we had the first ever criminal presidential candidate.”