Supreme Court

Huffington Post -  Legal experts said Monday that yes, as horrific and authoritarian as that sounds, the 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority means that President Joe Biden could theoretically order that Trump be killed and be immune from criminal prosecution. “Presumptively, he has the power to assassinate a rival,” John Dean, who was White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon, told HuffPost on a call with the Defend Democracy Project, a group that advocates for free and fair elections. Making matters worse, said Dean, is that the court ruled that “official acts” by a president can’t be used as evidence of criminal conduct for “unofficial acts.” So in a hypothetical scenario involving Biden ordering people to kill Trump, his actual giving of the order would be potentially unavailable for evidence, he said. The former White House counsel, who called the Supreme Court’s decision “radical,” said the conservative majority also just raised questions about immunity for people who carry out a president’s “official” but criminal activities. 

New Republic - The Justice Department will no longer be an independent authority on the law, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity case Monday. Instead, it will be an arm to be leveraged by the Oval Office, with open communication enabled between the federal law enforcement agency and the presidency for all future investigations. Chief Justice John Roberts slipped the allowance into his majority opinion, as the justices ruled 6–3 in Trump’s favor along ideological lines. In a quiet sentence, Roberts argued that the fresh take on the executive branch relationship would help the president carry out his constitutional duties.“The president may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’” Roberts wrote. 

AP News -  [A] survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 7 in 10 Americans think the high court’s justices are more influenced by ideology, while only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government by being fair and impartial.

Roll Call -  Historians and legal experts warned Monday that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling opens the door to dangerous abuses of power and strikes against foundational American principles of accountability under the law. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice and author of several books about the country’s legal landscape, said there are reasons to be nervous when it comes to the prosecution of a former president and some standards would make sense. “Here, though, the Court has issued an instruction manual for lawbreaking presidents,” Waldman said on social media. “Make sure you conspire only with other government employees. You’ll never be held to account.”

Presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss was among those who referred to the idea that the decision cut against the intent of the nation’s founders. “Thanks to Supreme Court today, Presidents in future will have access to far more unaccountable power than they ever have had in American history,” Beschloss posted on social media. “Founders wanted a President, not a King.”

Historian and author Garrett Graff, who wrote a book on Watergate, brought up the infamous quote from President Richard Nixon — that if a president does it, that means it’s not illegal — and said nobody had believed it was true. “All of American history argues the opposite. And yet that’s exactly what the Supreme Court agreed today,” Graff wrote. “The entire test of Watergate was no one is above the law. Today, the Supreme Court made one man above the law.