Turley on Supreme Court’s Ruling on Presidential Immunity: ‘This Is Obviously a Win’ for Trump

PERINO: “You know, I’m sure if you’re the Biden White House, you’re paying close attention to this as well. Because in the situation that we find ourselves in, in the utilization of the justices in politics. Let me go to you Jonathan Turley for a reaction to this decision so far.”
TURLEY: “Well, this is along the lines of what many of us anticipated, that the court did not go with absolute immunity on everything, but did say that there’s absolute immunity when it comes to court constitutional powers. We’re still going through the opinion to see if there’s any assistance on where that line is to be drawn. This case is going to have to go back to the district court, which is going to have to try to sort of thread this needle to determine what in the case would not fall under these protections. But this is obviously a win for President Trump in the sense that the special counsel was arguing, as with the lower court, that there was very little immunity here to be concerned with. The — the counsel for the government was assuring the court that they really didn’t have much to be concerned with here in terms of any changes in the status of the case. That’s clearly not what won the day. The court here is saying that we do need lines here drawn to protect presidents. So they have some breathing room. And you have to sort of wonder how the context affected the justices. I mean, if they want to look at the implications of leaving presidents without protection, they just need to look around the country. Even though Manhattan was not a federal case, it was a political prosecution in the view of many of us that was rather raw and open. And so this is a context that must have concentrated the minds of these justices as they did what Justice Gorsuch said and tried to write for the ages to have something not for this case, but for future cases and future presidents.”