Senators hotly debate SCOTUS immunity ruling in contentious hearing: 'Dangerous decision'

25 September 2024

Many critics of former President Donald Trump's critics have been warning that the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial 6-3 immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States makes the possibility of a second Trump presidency even more dangerous. One of those critics, Michael Cohen — Trump's former personal attorney and fixer — has even said that the decision makes his plan to seek political asylum in another country if Trump wins all the more urgent.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee debated the ramifications of Trump v. the United States during a hearing on Tuesday, September 24. Democrats, according to The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch, were vehement in their criticism — while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) defended the ruling.

The hearing was named "When the President Does It, That Means It's Not Illegal: The Supreme Court's Unprecedented Immunity Decision" — a name that Graham took exception to.

Graham, a former Trump critic turned ally, told his colleagues, "The hearing title.… is suggesting that the Court somehow has unleashed upon the American people an evil force. I don't buy that one bit. I think the Court is dealing with a case before it in a rational way."

But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) views the immunity decision as a recipe for authoritarian abuses.

Durbin told fellow Senate Judiciary members, "What does all this mean? It means that any sitting president may hide behind their office for protection from prosecution for even the most egregious forms of wrongdoing. It means effectively condoning Richard Nixon's claim that quote, 'When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.'"

The Illinois Democrat continued, "In fact, most of the conduct at the heart of Nixon's Watergate scandal, the obstruction of justice, wiretapping, cover-up and the misuse of government agencies could be described as official actions that would be presumptively immune under this court decision."

One of the witnesses who testified during the hearing, former Deputy Solicitor General Philip Allen Lacovara, slammed the decision as "profoundly wrong."

Lacovara told Senate Judiciary members, "This is a dangerous decision, not simply an erroneous one. It essentially licenses the president to abuse his power and to get away with it."

Read The Hill's full report at this link.

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