With an expected ruling, the American Supreme Court has granted Donald Trump partial immunity for the trial in which he is accused of trying to subvert the results of the presidential elections by provoking the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. former president celebrated by saying that it was a “great victory” for democracy, while President Joe Biden’s election campaign underlined that today’s sentence changes nothing: “Trump is running for president but was convicted for the same reason he sat by and watched as the mob violently attacked the Capitol: He thinks he is above the law and is willing to do anything to gain and keep power for himself.”
Immunity only as regards constitutional powers
The US Supreme Court has granted partial presidential immunity to Donald Trump in the trial for the attack on the Capitol, but only for official acts, i.e. actions taken within his constitutional powers. In this case the immunity is absolute. The tycoon is also accused of the secret Mar-a-Lago cards and the attempt to overturn the vote in Georgia. In fact, according to the US Supreme Court, Trump is not entitled to immunity for actions taken in his private capacity. This will allow the process to continue but with further slowdowns because a distinction will have to be made between official documents and private documents.
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Today’s ruling cancels previous ruling no to immunity
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “under the constitutional separate-powers structure, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity” from official acts while governing, but that the president “has no immunity for his unofficial acts and not everything he does is official, he is not above the law,” he said. Of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three were appointed by Trump during his term. Lower courts, the Court ruled, will determine which acts are official and which are not, a situation that will delay Trump’s “election subversion” trial in Washington. Today’s ruling overturned that of a federal appeals court which in February had ruled that the former president should not enjoy immunity for the alleged crime committed while he was still president and attempted to subvert the results of the November elections 2020. In August 2023 a grand jury indicted him on three criminal charges for attempting to reverse the election he lost to Biden in 2020 and for inciting the storming of the Capitol in January 2021, which occurred when the results were scheduled to be certified . Trump’s defense requested the 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, as it will probably allow him to avoid appearing before another court before the November 5 elections, where he is running against outgoing President Joe Biden.
