US Supreme Court rules ex-Presidents have absolute immunity for official act, not unofficial acts

Washington: The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a former President is entitled to “absolute” immunity for clearly official acts, but not for unofficial acts. 

The ruling makes it impossible for former President Donald Trump’s trial for his alleged attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election before polling for the 2024 cycle ends in November.

In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the court said the trial court would decide which of the acts in question were official or unofficial and those decisions would be appealable. Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said a President “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts”.

But, he went on to say, the President “enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law”.

Trump had appealed to the court against a lower court order rejecting his claim of absolute immunity from prosecution. A special prosecutor had charged him in August with four counts of conspiring to defraud the US by preventing the Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election and the next President. (IANS)

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