House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, on Monday dismissed Democrats’ concerns about the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, calling their worries about the president’s future crimes “insane.”
“Look, there’s all this exaggeration tonight… and all these fantastical hypotheses that they’ve made up. [that] “Future presidents will be assassins and other criminals,” Johnson said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “It’s insanity.”
“Listen carefully, and remember, the president and vice president are the only offices in our constitutional system that are elected by the people. No one elected to those offices would engage in insane, criminal activity like this,” Johnson added.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 in an ideological line that the president has absolute immunity for acts that are within the core responsibilities of his office, but “has at least a constructive immunity” for all other acts of official conduct.
Democrats criticized the ruling, arguing it would embolden future presidents to break the law with impunity, including former President Donald Trump, who is back in the White House.
Some lawmakers joined the three liberal justices who dissented from Monday’s ruling, listing a range of possible situations and crimes for which the president would now be immune from liability.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, stating that the Supreme Court’s decision granting immunity to Trump for official conduct was “[s] Immunity for the President from criminal liability.”
“When a president exercises public power in any way, the majority’s reasoning makes him immune from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote. “Ordered Navy SEAL Unit 6 to assassinate a political opponent? Immunity. Plotted a military coup to stay in power? Immunity. Accepted bribes in exchange for a pardon? Immunity. Immunity, immunity, immunity.”
Johnson disputed that argument, saying the majority opinion follows “common sense” and the Constitution.
“A president needs to be able to make difficult decisions every hour, every day, without having to worry about being hounded by corrupt prosecutors in the future,” Johnson said. “That means a president cannot do his job with that sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and that’s exactly what the Supreme Court did today.”
Johnson was among several Republicans who hailed the Supreme Court’s decision, which dealt a blow to special counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted President Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as a victory against the “weaponization” of government.
The Speaker argued the decision should have been 9-0 and accused the liberal justices of “going along with this farce”.
The ruling is likely to delay President Trump’s federal election subversion trial, which has been sent back to a lower court to reconsider whether his actions on January 6, 2021, merit special protection from criminal prosecution.
