Supreme Court Sends Trump Case Back Lower Court, Awards Former President Restitution

 The Supreme Court on Friday returned a criminal case against former president Donald Trump to a lower court, and ordered the United States government to make restitution to Trump for his trouble.

The High Court sent the case against Trump back to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, instructing it to handle the case in light of the Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. The Court also ordered the government to reimburse Trump $3,232.80 for legal costs.

The D.C. Court of Appeals, in turn, handed the case back down to Judge Tanya Chutkan “for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion.“

Chutkan had rejected the former president’s claim of immunity, saying Trump’s “four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

But the Supreme Court ruled last month that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for acts taken as part of his official duties.

“The President is not above the law,” the ruling said. “But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.”

The D.C. court will decide whether Trump’s actions involving the 2020 election fall under that category—judgements that could then make their way back up to the Supreme Court. None of that is likely to occur before November’s election.

 

The Supreme Court ruled that without immunity, presidents could be subjected to unending litigation. It cited precedent that “allegations of malice should not suffice to subject government officials either to the costs of trial or to the burdens of broad-reaching discovery.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week filed a bill that said that no current or former president would be “entitled to any form of immunity (whether absolute, presumptive, or otherwise) from criminal prosecution for alleged violations of the criminal laws of the United States unless specified by Congress.” 

If the precedent of prosecuting Trump had stood, and the Supreme Court had not intervened, President Joe Biden and future presidents would almost certainly be prosecuted for various acts. 

Schumer’s bill attempts to move jurisdiction for haggling over the legislation from the Supreme Court to local courts in D.C., where about 93 percent of residents vote for Democrats.