Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a withering dissent to the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling on Monday, writing that U.S. presidents will now be able to assassinate political rivals and accept bribes with impunity while they’re in office.
That’s a dangerous precedent to set, Sotomayor wrote, especially as the increasingly unpredictable Donald Trump seeks a return to the White House.
“The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world,” Sotomayor wrote. “When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution.”
That is exactly as terrifying as it sounds, Sotomayor wrote. She laid out a chilling list of hypotheticals that a president could carry out without legal consequence: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
In her own dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that Monday’s ruling was a dangerous one. She wrote that “the seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted” and “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The conservative majority Supreme Court has lobbed assist after assist to Trump this year. By accepting his immunity case, it effectively bumped his pair of federal criminal trials off the 2024 calendar.
Now, with a possible election win in November, Trump would be equipped with an unprecedented amount of power in what was already the world’s most powerful political position.
Trump celebrated the court’s decision on Monday, posting in all-caps to Truth Social, “Big win for our constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American!”
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