The lawsuits didn’t stop President Trump. The arrest didn’t stop him. The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago didn’t stop him. And the assassination attempt certainly didn’t stop him. If anything, it seemed to propel him forward and give him a renewed determination to win.
So now that the Supreme Court of the United States has defied the Biden-Harris Administration’s wishes, affirming the precedent of presidential immunity, their allies in Congress are scrambling to reverse it.
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts conducted while in office. However, the ruling clarifies that this immunity does not extend to unofficial acts. Despite the ambiguity on what constitutes an unofficial act, the ruling could affect the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is introducing legislation set to reverse the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity, calling it the “No Kings Act,” stripping SCOTUS of their jurisdiction on the matter and permanently turning it over to Congress.
The bill, which has over 30 cosponsors, would affirm no president or vice president, former or sitting, would be “entitled to any form of immunity (whether absolute, presumptive, or otherwise) from criminal prosecution for alleged violations of the criminal laws of the United States unless specified by Congress.”
Readers should note the irony in Chuck Schumer of all people driving the “No Kings Act” despite spending nearly half of a century in Washington, enjoying a long list of luxuries and perks associated with his tenure and an estimated net worth upwards of $80 million despite living off of the taxpayer for his entire professional career.
In their July decision, SCOTUS ruled that the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority, entitling him to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all official acts, with no immunity for unofficial acts.
The decision stunned politicians from the left end of the political spectrum and drew dissent from the court’s liberal justices, who warned of threats to democracy as Trump runs for president again.
Ahead of the ruling, Justice Ketanji Brown questioned President Trump’s attorney Jonathon Mitchell on the left-wing immunity position.
“If the potential for criminal liability is off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon, while in office?…We’re having this debate because OLC has said that presidents might be prosecuted — presidents from the beginning of time have understood that that’s a possibility. That might be what has kept this office from turning into the kind of crime center that I’m envisioning. But once we say “no criminal liability Mr. President, you can do whatever you want” I’m worried that we would have a worse problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office”
“I respectfully disagree with that because the regime you’ve described is the regime we’ve operated under for over 234 years.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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It’s DOA. Any change to our Constitution requires a 2/3 vote by both the House and the Senate. The SCOTUS has ruled on the Constitutionality of Presidential Immunity outlined in our Constitution and it will stand. Mike Johnson probably won’t even bring it to a vote but they definitely won’t get a 2/3 majority if it even passes.
Isn’t it amazing the demon rats don’t like any of the Supreme courts rulings so we are going to change the rules. By the way when discussing ethics, that is non existent with some of the congress. We should begin to go after first of all Jamie Raskin for wanting to incite a civil war if the demon rats don’t win and secondly lets begin to check out the history of gift and insider trading with congress. We should call for a complete investigation of former and current congress people and those found to have misused their position should lose everything they own and it should go to the US Treasury. Why don’t we start there.
Basically this bill would and should also be treated as unconstitutional, based on both the precedents and standard governmental logic, long ruled for state and local government top officials (governors …). While seemingly unjust, a president or governor must make decisions (and take actions), signing into effect bills or implementing policies that sometimes unfairly or unjustly harm or destroy businesses or even individual’s lives. Even now there remain protections for (some) policing actions, where harms may result from necessary acts. It is quite clear that new restrictions on police actions does not and will not reduce the harms caused, but rather shift harm to possibly more innocent individuals than those instigating policing actions.
The Constitution has always had and retains the means by which presidential freedom to act indiscriminately is constrained. The list of acts which may result in impeachment is not short. However, the fact that impeachment is rarely even justifiably attempted, implicitly indicates that immunity for presidential official acts is and has been strongly recognized. It should be recognized, even by the progressives supporting this bill, that it would actually apply to ALL presidents, not just to more conservative ones …