I’ve now read the decision in Trump v. United States, admittedly not deeply but superficially enough to grasp the main points. Therefore, I feel safe saying that the decision on presidential immunity is entirely appropriate and consistent with the Constitution, precedence, and logic. I can also say that the dissents are a joy if you like reading things that are unhinged, paranoid, and poorly reasoned, even within the four corners of their ideological and mental universes.

In August 2023, Jack Smith got a D.C. jury to indict Trump for conspiring to defraud the U.S. because Trump suspected that there had been major chicanery in the November 2020 election. That alleged “conspiracy to defraud” took the form of asking the quisling AG Bill Barr to investigate election fraud (something Barr failed to do), urging state legislatures and election officials to change electoral votes derived from fraud, organizing alternate slates of electors, trying to convince Pence that his duties did not include certifying a manifestly questionable election before questions were answered, claiming that the election had resulted from fraud, and telling his supporters to let Congress know that they believed the election was tainted by fraud.

Image: United States Supreme Court justices. Public domain.

In other words, Trump’s fraud was that he accused the Democrats of fraud. It mattered not that he was doing the same thing Democrats had done in the past when they lost to Bush or Trump himself. What mattered was that Trump did it, and Merrick Garland and his minions needed to shut Trump down when it appeared that he intended to run again.

Trump’s defense was that the acts alleged were official acts in his capacity as a constitutional president, making him immune from criminal prosecution. According to Trump, he acted entirely within his legitimate powers to ensure that the election was properly conducted and that fraudulent activity ended. These actions, he said, were within the “outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”—that is, they were actions that are properly subsidiary to and part of the necessary powers to allow a president to function.

Roberts wrote the opinion in which he was joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, and sort of by Barrett. Meanwhile, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented. In the opinion, Roberts reaffirmed that presidential immunity is real for acts that are explicitly stated in the Constitution and that implicitly exist as a subset of those official powers. Only unofficial acts are prosecutable. Some of what Trump did was clearly official and untouchable, wrote Roberts, while the record was too undeveloped to determine whether other acts were official.

The bottom line about the various actions is ably summed up in the SCOTUS Blog:

In conducting the official/unofficial inquiry, Roberts added, courts cannot consider the president’s motives, nor can they designate an act as unofficial simply because it allegedly violates the law.

Turning to some of the specific allegations against Trump, the majority ruled that Trump cannot be prosecuted for his alleged efforts to “leverage the Justice Department’s power and authority to convince certain States to replace their legitimate electors with Trump’s fraudulent slates of electors.”

With regard to the allegation that Trump attempted to pressure his former vice president, Mike Pence, in his role as president of the senate, to reject the states’ electoral votes or send them back to state legislatures, the court deemed Trump “presumptively immune” from prosecution on the theory that the president and vice president are acting officially when they discuss their official responsibilities. On the other hand, Roberts observed, the vice president’s role as president of the senate is not an executive branch role. The court therefore left it for the district court to decide whether prosecuting Trump for this conduct would intrude on the power and operation of the executive branch.

The court did the same for the allegations in the indictment regarding Trump’s interactions with private individuals and state officials, attempting to convince them to change electoral votes in his favor, as well as Trump’s tweets leading up to the Jan. 6 attacks and his speech on the Ellipse that day. Making this determination, Roberts wrote, will require “a close analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations.”

The analysis is mostly a win for Trump and a slap to Judge Chutkan, the anti-Trump fanatic who gagged his First Amendment rights and clearly lusts to imprison him. It also had three useful gems along the way.

First, the decision reaffirms that when the president has power, it’s plenary power and cannot be infringed upon by the judicial or congressional branches. This matters for two reasons. The first is that, when it comes to Jack Smith’s attack on Trump’s possessing formerly classified documents, Congress, the bureaucrats who work for the executive, and the courts lack the power to override a president’s national security decisions—including Trump’s decision via acts, not words, that the documents he took out of the White House were declassified. That should kill the Florida case. The second is that, Trump has plenary power over the military, so he can remedy the DEI and LGBTQ+ madness that’s destroying its efficacy.

Second, in footnote 1, Roberts reminds us that, under the recently decided Fischer v. United States, the Court held that, under clear rules of statutory interpretation, 18 U.S.C. §1512 applies to investigations and not to congressional acts. Although Roberts doesn’t say so, the implication is clear that, to the extent the DOJ accused Trump of violating §1512, that charge (although not at issue in the decision) must be dropped.

Third, the decision reaffirms the president’s power to fire those who work for him. It’s to be hoped that, once he regains control of the executive branch, Trump takes that seriously. I would argue that government unions, which have no constitutional authority, cannot block that plenary authority.

Although the Court was very delicate and careful, the case is really not complicated. Presidents have enumerated and implied powers, and political opponents cannot criminally attack them for exercising those powers. End of story.

The best part of the decision is the introductory sentence to Roberts’ attack on the loopy leftist ladies’ dissent:

As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today—conclude that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine “in the first instance” whether and to what extent Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity.

That is not an exaggeration. Sotomayor sounds hysterical as she rants about the decision making “a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.” Apparently, she missed that bit during the debate when Joe Biden announced that he had “changed the law” regarding immigration, a gross and tyrannical violation of the separation of powers, which gives Congress sole authority to make and alter laws.

Sotomayor’s dissent is also a typical piece of leftist garbage because, rather than looking at the legal principles (as the decision does) and leaving it to the lower courts to look at the facts, she recites chapter and verse of the CNN and MSNBC narrative about the election’s purity and Trump’s subsequent maddened attack. According to Sotomayor and her harpies, Trump is guilty without a trial. With guilt pre-proven from the media’s allegations, presidential immunity works backward from there. This is Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen in action: “Sentence first, verdict afterwards,” with no evidence required in between.

I cannot summarize both Jackson’s and Sotomayor’s dissents here. They’re long and unhinged. Sotomayor even harks back to that trope about using Navy SEALS to assassinate a political rival. That is not an official act if it’s done for personal advancement. However, it would be an official act if the political rival were an agent of an enemy power. Facts matter, but not to dummies. The worst thing about reading the dissents is knowing how much power these gals have. They are dullards led by emotion.

In sum, Trump v. United States is an unexceptional opinion that guides the lower court. It’s nice, though, that the law favors Trump. And Sotomayor is a moron.