Well, following a unprecedented ruling on presidential immunity earlier this
week,
the Supreme Court is now in recess until October.
The SCOTUS decision gives the president the power to avoid
criminal prosecution while in office.
President Joe Biden called the ruling a disservice to our
country.
There are virtually no limits what the president can do.
This is a fundamentally new principle,
and it's a dangerous precedent
because the power of the office will no longer be
constrained by the law,
even including the Supreme Court of the United States.
And Democratic Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez is threatening to file
articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court.
The last time that happened was over 200 years ago.
And joining us this morning to help us sort out
how these rulings we'll shape our country's future is constitutional
law Professor Natalie Gomez Velez.
Professor, good morning, and thank you for joining us.
Thank
you. Good morning. Great to be here.
And 1st, your reaction to that Monday ruling on presidential
immunity,
what are your thoughts on that?
I cannot stress how disastrous that ruling is.
I mean, here we are.
What's tomorrow? Independence Day, right?
What's a fundamental principle that,
you know, prompted us to declare independence?
That we didn't be want to be ruled by a
king,
that we want that no one was above the law.
There is no place in the Constitution that says that
the president or anyone should be immune from criminal responsibility.
This case does that for the first time with no
grounding in the Constitution,
basically declares that a president,
if they're engaged in official acts and then acts kind
of close to official acts or evidence related to official
acts,
is basically immune from prosecution.
It is a sweeping and dangerous decision.
And I think the we're going to rule the day
that the court came down with this decision.
And Professor, you know, in those separations of official and
unofficial acts here,
many are asking, well, what can the president get away
with given that separation?
And you know, that's a great question.
It's not it's not clear right at first.
And you see that the coverage of the case when
it first came out,
you know, that everyone waits for the court to issue
the decision.
And at first you heard people saying,
well,
the court rules that the president has immunity for some
official acts.
But as you read the decision,
it kind of starts by saying it's only official acts.
But as you go through,
there are different categories of acts,
official acts in the core of the constitutional responsibility.
But then it's these other things kind of related to
official acts.
And then it goes even further to say
even if there's a criminal prosecution for non official acts,
for private acts, you can't use as evidence
anything communications with official acts.
And that's what's got in this case even tangled up
in the New York case,
which on first impression you'd say this should have nothing
to do with a purely state case except given what
they've said about the ability to use
communications that are part of the president's official acts.
That's why the New York State case is opening up
to sort of take a look at whether or not
some of the evidence right,
could be used. Now, I don't think it should upend
that case,
but it's going to further delay the sentencing even in
a purely state business fraud,
you know, you know, hush money
case. But it's also going to have implications for the
January 6th case,
you know, for the main case about.
And remember, this was a case of obstruction,
etcetera, where the president, the former president was trying to
overturn the results of a free and fair election in
2020.
It doesn't get more serious than that from a constitutional
perspective.
You kind of already answered the question that I was
going to ask.
So we saw that the,
the, the judge already saying that they're going to delay
the proceedings in the,
the, the New York case,
we're looking at the Washington case,
Atlanta case. So you do think that that could pause
those cases?
It's going to certainly delay them because what the way
that this decision is constructed is it includes not only
so you have to have this determination and and the
judges in those cases, like for example,
this case itself will have to go back to Judge
Chuck in and to 1st to look through and see
which of the counts in the indictment right
touch on official acts in ways that then make it
so that they can't be prosecutable.
Now that said, a number some some won't be like
for example,
the the Supreme Court majority opinion says
the conversations with the attorney general,
that's official acts that can't be charged,
but they got to go through each of the counts
and determine which can proceed and which can't.
Now several, I think will be able to proceed.
So the case is not completely gone,
but it really impairs the ability to hold
president accountable for out. I mean,
this was outrageous behavior. So,
you know, you think about that and then you think
about sort of the other ways in which now without
the threat of criminal responsibility for criminal acts,
if you just code it with this idea that it's
an official act,
we risk having lawless presidents,
right? No guardrails whatsoever. And that's it really about impairing
that that that's all that needs to happen with a
lot of these.
Let's talk about the threat from Congressman,
Congresswoman rather AOC to file articles of impeachment.
How do you think that could play out?
So it's interesting, right, Because one of the real concerns
is you've got a court
majority, super majority, 63 majority.
And, you know, I've always been ones to say,
oh, you know, it's not a political court.
It's really hard to defend this court as not being
a political court,
especially given this ruling and some of the other rulings
that have come down.
The other problem is corruption.
This court has been protecting official corruption,
including,
you know, evidence that justices are engaged in political and
other kinds of activities where they normally other federal judges
would recuse themselves,
right. And so these judges have not done that.
And so then you say,
what's the remedy for judges kind of going rogue
under the Constitution? The remedy is impeachment.
The problem with impeachment is,
as we saw with the two impeachments of the former
president,
is you need the votes both in the House to
bring the articles of impeachment.
And then if you get the votes to go to
to impeach,
then you also need the votes in the Senate to
convict.
So, you know, raising the issue I think is important
to say there's something going wrong here on the court.
A remedy or the only remedy actually in the Constitution
for the judges,
justices and judges, federal judges,
is impeachment. The problem with it is you need to
have
the votes and you know what an election is coming
up.
I mean, people need to understand how important it is
to vote not only for the president,
but also for Congress. And professor,
we have to to leave it right there.
Thank you so much for your insight this morning and
breaking it all down and helping us understand how these
Supreme Court decisions are going to affect us all.
And have a great 4th of July,
too. Thank you. You too.