Truth, Lies, and the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s July 1 majority opinion in the case of Donald J. Trump v. United States has the one salutary effect of clarifying for us what the real core issue is in the upcoming presidential election.

The Supreme Court ruled that presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts within their “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority and presumptive immunity for all other official acts. The majority opinion further states that lower courts cannot “deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law.”

Yes, you read that right. The Supreme Court has said that the president can be immune from prosecution even if he does something illegal. All Trump must do now is declare every act as an “official” act and he escapes accountability for his criminal behavior. He has already used this Supreme Court decision to file a motion to dismiss the case brought against him by the special prosecutor pertaining to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In addition, the federal judge hearing the special prosecutor’s separate case against him in Florida for mishandling classified documents has already dismissed this case based on arguments by Justice Thomas in his concurring opinion in the July 1, immunity decision.

A wide array of historians and legal scholars have expressed dismay at the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling (Roll Call, July 1, 2024), saying that it “opens the door to dangerous abuses of power and strikes against foundational American principles of accountability under the law.“

Indeed, it does. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about the president having immunity for criminal acts. This decision strikes at the core constitutional principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. It also strikes at the core constitutional principle of separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. This is arguably the worst Supreme Court decision since the 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the court under Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Scott, an African American, had no standing to challenge his forced return to slavery in Missouri even though he and his family had lived for years in Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery was illegal.

The core issue in the presidential campaign unmasked by the Supreme Court’s immunity decision is this: Donald Trump’s promise and plans to wreak vengeance on the American judicial system and all the people he has identified as his political enemies and “persecutors.” This includes his promise to pardon and free the hundreds of people he calls “hostages” and “patriots” who have been convicted of various crimes for their involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol; his promise to arrest and jail all those members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, who served on the special Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol; his call to execute “traitors” like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley for being disloyal to him; his continued threats directed at the judges and jurors hearing the several lawsuits in which he is the defendant; and, most important of all, his continued promotion of the debunked lie that he won the 2020 election and had it “stolen” from him because of “massive fraud.”

These threats and lies have been and remain the core of his candidacy and campaign. His campaign rallies continue to devolve into lengthy incoherent rants against all his enemies. We ignore them at our peril, because the Supreme Court has just given a green light to his past and future lawlessness.

This is not to say that policy differences between the Democrats and Republicans are unimportant. What is important here is that the Republican focus on protecting Trump from accountability has pushed them to deny, dismiss, or downplay his lies, threats, criminality, and the dangers he poses to the survival of American democracy. It has also led them simultaneously to paint a dystopian image of the last four years of the Biden/Harris administration that is completely at variance with the facts. I and other DFA writers have been laying out the facts for you since last September about immigration (see DFA op-eds in the Gettysburg Times of September 2023 and July 2024); climate change (GT, October 2023); foreign policy (GT, January 2024); legislative accomplishments on pandemic recovery, infrastructure, and climate change (GT, January 2024 and February 2024); the economy (GT, March 2024 and April 2024); health care (GT, May 2024); age, competence, and character (GT, May 2024); and Project 2025, Republican plans for a second Trump administration (GT, July 2025).

So, the choice this November comes down to truth or lies. Which will you choose?

Jeff Colvin is a research physicist and co-chair of Gettysburg DFA (www.gettysburgdfa.org). He lives in Gettysburg. This op-ed was first published in the Gettysburg Times on August 8, 2024.