Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a new plan to ensure Donald Trump spends the rest of his days in prison. Amid the battle over Joe Biden’s senility among Democrats, Schumer moved to a different topic, pledging to legislatively declare Trump’s actions surrounding January 6th as “unofficial.”
That comes after the Supreme Court delivered a mixed opinion on the matter in late June, stating that “official” acts are indeed subject to presidential immunity while “unofficial” acts are not. That set up a long legal battle whereby the special counsel prosecuting Trump must litigate each action to determine what category they fall under.
SEE: Supreme Court Rules on Presidential Immunity
Naturally, Democrats were not pleased because the development all but ensured the former president would not go to trial before Election Day. With the other cases against Trump facing similar delays, their desired knock-out blow had been thwarted.
Schumer believes he has a plan to get around that and expedite matters. Taking the Senate floor on Monday, the majority leader announced that he wants to reclassify all of Trump’s actions leading up to January 6th as “unofficial” acts, bypassing the lengthy court battles that have been set up.
Schumer announces on Senate floor that he will work on legislation to classify former President Trump’s actions leading to the Jan. 6 attack on Congress as “unofficial” acts, so they do not qualify for immunity under recent SCOTUS ruling.
— Alex Bolton (@alexanderbolton) July 8, 2024
I have no idea what constitutional power Schumer believes he has that would allow such a gambit to even begin to pass muster. Separation of powers exists, and the legislature has never been able to dictate what qualifies as an official act of the presidency. If it could, then there would be no actual official acts because any hostile Congress could arbitrarily decide on a whim to reverse any such qualification.
If presidential immunity exists, and the Supreme Court says it does (at least on some level), then it logically can’t be overridden by the legislature. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be “immunity.” If a president has supposedly committed a violation worthy of punishment, there is already a remedy for that. It’s called impeachment, and Schumer and company have already failed in their pursuit of that regarding January 6th.
Besides, the Republican-led House would never go along with any legislation reclassifying Trump’s actions so the gambit is dead in the water anyway. It’s nothing but a talking point to try to keep January 6th in the news. It will likely fail given the majority of the American public has made it clear they simply no longer care. They want real solutions to real problems, not endless pursuits of political opponents based on events that happened four years ago.
In the end, all of this will have to go through the courts, and that won’t happen quickly. Barring a miracle, it certainly won’t happen before November. Schumer’s attempted shortcut is transparent and will fail.
