Supreme Court grants some immunity for "official acts" in case stemming from Trump's Jan. 6 case

The Supreme Court of the United States granted some immunity this Monday to former President Donald Trump who has been accused by the Special Counsel of inciting the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol as a means of overturn the 2020 presidential elections.

The Court ruled that the president’s “official” acts as president are protected, but not “unofficial” acts. The New York Times said the ruling was “a blockbuster decision in the heat of the 2024 campaign that vastly expanded presidential power.

“A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive constitutional authority" and also "is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” the Court opined, but added that “there is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The opinion, which was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts had five concurrences from all conservative justices, and three dissents from those justices appointed by Democratic presidents.

In his majority opinion, Roberts opined that “under the constitutional structure of separate powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity” from official acts while governing, but that the president “does not enjoy immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything he does is official.”

“The president is not above the law,” Roberts wrote. Of the six conservative judges of the Supreme Court, three were appointed by Trump during his term.

The Supreme Court also determined that lower courts would have to determine which acts are official and which are not, a situation that could delay the Special Counsel’s trial against Trump in Washington D.C.

The ruling supersedes a February decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals decision that ruled Trump did not have immunity for certain decisions he made while still president regarding his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A grand jury charged Trump in August with three criminal charges as part of an attempt to reverse or subvert the 2020 presidential elections, which prosecutors allege incited the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots.  

Trump's defense requested a mistrial, alleging that he enjoys immunity because he was president when the events occurred.

However, both Tanya Chutkan, the U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia overseeing the Special Counsel’s Jan. 6 case against Trump, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia Circuit denied these petitions, prompting the former president to file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Monday's decision has largely been viewed as a victory Trump since it could help him delay another court appearance before the Nov. 5 presidential election against Joe Biden.

Liberal judges wrote rejecting opinions, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said the ruling “breaks new and dangerous ground” by granting immunity “only to the most powerful official” in the government.

The ruling comes three days after another victory for Trump at the high court, which decided last Friday that charging the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers with obstruction of justice was inappropriate and that the Justice Department overstepped its bounds.

That January 6, several thousand people, most of them supporters of the former president, marched to the U.S. Capitol and an estimated 800 broke into the federal government comples while Biden's electoral victory was being certified.

As a result, there were hundreds of people were detained, injuries were sustained, and one woman, a Trump supported was shot by a U.S. Capitol police officer in self-defense.

Trump already had to spend several weeks this year in a court in New York to face criminal charges in Manhattan that charged him with falsification of business records related to a payment he made to buy the silence of adult entertainment actress Stormy Daniels.

His conviction made him the first former American president in history to be found guilty of a criminal offense.

The Supreme Court's decision could have consequences for other cases that Trump faces in Georgia for his attempts to invalidate the election results in the state, and in Florida for illegally storing classified material in his Mar-a-Lago mansion after leaving the presidency.