WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) – The Supreme Court has ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

But rather than apply their 6-3 ruling on its merits Monday, the justices have ordered lower courts to determine precisely on how to apply the decision to former president Donald Trump over federal charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

As a practical detail, this adds further delays to the litigation brought by special counsel Jack Smith. and limits the chances that the president could be tried before the November election.

The decision on Trump vs. United States was the last one issued Monday, on what many expected to be the Supreme Court’s final day of its term.

With this ruling, the case goes back to a lower federal court in Washington D.C.

This case involves whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Basically: it involves how a case will proceed before U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The Supreme Court directed the lower court judge to assess whether core aspects of the indictment are official acts and therefore shielded from immunity or are not official acts and therefore potentially subject to prosecution. Those include, among other things, Trump’s hectoring of Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the electoral votes — a core feature of the four-count indictment.

Earlier in this legal fight, Chutkan said nothing in the Constitution nor American history justifies cloaking former presidents with immunity from prosecution for actions they took while in office.

“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan, an appointee of President Barak Obama, wrote in her ruling.

The current nine-member court includes three conservative justices appointed by Trump, along with two other conservative justices who were on the bench before he took office.

Last Case Heard This Year

 

The Supreme Court justices held arguments on this case on April 25.

It was the last case of the year to present arguments before the justices; and there was criticism over how long the court took to deliberate.

The court usually is in recess from late June until early October; and a flurry of case rulings was issued last week.

Related Obstruction Charge Ruling

 

The matter of whether obstruction charges was a step too far in response the Jan. 6 attack was heard separately, and involved potentially hundreds of defendants where that was one of the pending or settled charges.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling last week that made it more difficult to use the charge of obstructing an official proceeding in those cases, including against Trump.

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