America's Talking - Biden: Supreme Court Ruling on Presidential Immunity ‘Dangerous Precedent'

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

President Joe Biden Monday night said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the president has "absolute immunity" when acting in his core constitutional duties is "a dangerous precedent" that "undermines the rule of law of this nation." Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that the "president's exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, July 5th. I hope everyone had a fantastic Independence Day holiday. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that American presidents have absolute immunity when acting in their core constitutional duties, a decision that could impact the criminal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, but could also have more wide-reaching implications for all future presidents. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington DCU Bureau Chief for the Center Square.

Casey, why don't you summarize for our listeners what this landmark decision was? Yeah, I mean, this has been long awaited, especially for the Trump campaign. And as you alluded, it has big implications, Dan. I mean, even amazingly go beyond the next, the incredible impact they have. on this next presidential election. And the justices commented on that, that what they were doing could be used for, you know, decades in the future of precedent or how presidents are treated. Of course, Trump has sort of forced this question to the forefront and his opponents have as well by kind of breaking the protocol of Washington, D.C. by prosecuting a former president.

There's been plenty of reason to prosecute those who used to be in the White House in years past, but it's been kind of an understanding that you don't do that, whether that's right or wrong. That's been the understanding. And so they haven't done it. But Trump is Trump. He changes the rules. And people seem to change the rules to go after him as well. And so he has drawn this prosecution.

Of course, he's, you know, the total almost 100 charges across, you know, four states. And they're being ongoing. But Trump's main argument has been, as president, I can't be prosecuted for the decisions I make because if a president is doing decisions and he's worried about is this legal or not, he may not make the decisions that are in the best interest of the country. And also, Trump has argued that if this happens to him, then it's going to start this vicious cycle of every president being prosecuted after he leaves the White House.

And it's going to kind of just corrupt the office in a way. And that's been his argument. And so the Supreme Court considered that. And they ruled more in Trump's favor than not for sure. And what they basically said was that they laid out essentially three kinds of things that a president can do. The first is core constitutional duties and said that when he does these, he has absolute immunity. Right. When he does, they gave the example of appointing ambassadors or something.

Core things that are laid out in the Constitution. And then the next step is official acts as president. These are, you know, this is a much broader category, but it's the kind of things you would imagine that a president needs to do as president in his day-to-day job. And this has what they call presumptive immunity. So it's kind of assumed that he has immunity. And if anyone prosecutes him, they have to not only prove that the president was guilty of something, but that his immunity as president doesn't apply to this specific instance. And the third kind is just. kind of unofficial acts if the president goes to a bar and punches someone, you know,

that's not official act. That's not a core constitutional. He just, you know, he did something. So, you know, this, of course, the natural question is, well, okay, what's an official? What's, you know, core and what's unofficial? And they didn't really get into that too much. So in some ways, it raises more questions than it answers. But for now, it really, it does help Trump a lot because it those charges against him on the

January 6th issue where he, you know, he made a lot. of decisions as president to handle that. He has a pretty, a lot of that presumptive immunity that we're talking about. And even if he doesn't necessarily have that immunity to cover him, he now has a reason to take all of his, in his cases back to court and say, hey, I have immunity, which will either win or at the very least delay them even more, which is a big goal of his right now. Well, that's what I was going to ask about is, do we know the specific impact on these cases, the January 6th case, in Washington, D.C., the classified documents case in his home state of Florida. Or do these still things need to still work themselves out through the court, what this decision

means on those prosecutions? Yeah, I mean, they definitely have an impact, but they also definitely have to work themselves out. I mean, some of the things like what Trump did before he was president, you know, it's not going to help him there. This isn't a get out of jail free card for all presidents. But while in the Oval Office, January 6th in particular, I think he gets a lot of protection. And that case is significantly weakened against him the January 6th case. I think you can make

the argument. And I'm sure he will that the way he handled classified documents was his part of, it was an official act. All presidents have to do this. So he'll at least make the argument and be able to delay his cases. A lot of those cases had their own issues. So even if he can't win, he can delay with delay his cases with this and just start knocking them down one by one, pushing them back. January 6th was his biggest win, though, in this regard. President Biden held a news conference, not really a news conference. He addressed the nation, I guess, because he did not take any questions. Condeming the Supreme Court decision, calling it a dangerous precedent.

Why did Biden respond so force for? Well, you could be cynical and say that, His political opponent just got a pretty big win at the Supreme Court right around the time that he had a pretty disastrous debate. So it's been, what you could call a good week or two for Donald Trump. But you could take it a little more seriously and say that, you know, I mean, there's definitely a slippery slope here and a question of, when does this go too far? And, you know, the U.S. and English common law has a long history, you know, back to the Magna Carta of the king is subject to the law, which was a revolutionary at the time. Even the leader of a nation, even the president is subject to the law, he is not the law, as you might have been the case with the divine right of kings in a more ancient part of history. And so this idea of kings being subject to the law of the lands, not themselves being the law of the land, is kind of a key Western tenet at this point. And so, you know, we touched that with. kind of a fear and trembling, I think. And so that's why there's been so much consternation over this ruling. And I think that's why people have never prosecuted presidents in the past, because

you don't want to have to answer this. There was kind of just an unspoken, yeah, we don't prosecute presidents. I mean, and there was kind of an understanding that as long as you didn't go too far, you know, you had a little bit of a leeway as president, because we don't want to answer this question, but now they've been forced to. And eventually, sadly in history, the links and limits of that immunity will be tested, and whoever's on the courts at that time will have to make that decision. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.