Trump world is giddy over the Supreme Court immunity decision

Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, Donald Trump and his allies declared victory.

The Supreme Court’s highly anticipated ruling — which stated that the former president’s official acts are immune from prosecution, leaving the door open for lower courts to decide what constitutes an official or unofficial act — represented a major political and legal win for the former president.

The decision is likely to further delay the Washington criminal case against Trump that he tried to subvert the 2020 election results, one of his biggest obstacles in the lead-up to the November election.

Trump, on social media, posted that the high court’s ruling giving him broad immunity was a “big win” and should end all legal cases against him. Longtime adviser Stephen Miller said it was “another setback” for Democrats, while Speaker Mike Johnson said it was a win “for former President Trump and all future presidents.”

And Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a prospective Trump running mate, called it a “massive win, not just for Trump but the rule of law.”

The decision comes just days after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which is likely to further solidify Trump’s polling lead, and represents yet another break for the former president in recent days.

“I am not sure anyone recently has had a better run of luck in a presidential campaign than Donald Trump. He’s gotten major fundraising infusions, his opponent imploded in a debate and other than the upcoming sentencing he will not see the inside of a courtroom again before Election Day,” said former George W. Bush adviser Scott Jennings, referring to Trump’s scheduled July 11 sentencing in the New York hush money trial.

“The problem for [Democrats] is that it’s a total nosedive and they don’t know how to pull out of it,” he added.

The Trump campaign used the ruling to fill its campaign coffers, something it has done with previous court cases and legal developments, including after a judge held him in contempt during his criminal hush money trial. The fundraising appeals have been a financial boon to Trump, helping him narrow the cash shortfall he was confronting in the race.

There are major political ramifications for the high court’s decision. It is now highly unlikely the former president will be tried in court before the November election over his plan to overturn the 2020 results. And if Trump wins, then he could potentially dismiss the case.

“I think if their plan was to keep President Trump tied up in trial after trial in courtrooms across America and thereby keep him off the campaign trail, that plan has now failed,” said Trump attorney Will Scharf.

Mike Davis, a Trump ally and the founder of the Article III Project, said the ruling “means that Jack Smith’s DC Jan. 6 case is toast.”

For weeks, Trump’s legal team had remained “cautiously optimistic” about the results of the case based on how the justices had been thinking. On Monday morning, Trump’s appellate team, based in Missouri, kept refreshing their browsers until the Supreme Court’s ruling appeared online, according to a person familiar, and then scrambled to read through the opinion and respond quickly.

Biden has argued that Trump would use a second term to enact revenge on his political enemies, and his campaign used the ruling to warn that it would potentially give Trump dictatorial powers if elected.

Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, said in a conference call with reporters shortly after the ruling came down that he was “scared as shit and I think Americans are scared and should be scared of whatDonald Trump will do, because he has been telling us for months.”

“They just handed Donald Trump the keys to a dictatorship,” Fulks said. “The Supreme Court just gave Trump a permission slip to assassinate and jail whoever he wants to gain power.”

Trump communications director Steven Cheung trolled the Biden campaign by crashing the conference call, writing on X: “This Biden campaign call is the saddest thing I’ve ever listened to. They have given up.”

Democrats responded to the ruling with a sense of urgency and alarm. Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, quoted Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion that stated she feared for our democracy and wrote on X, “simply frightening. May God have mercy on this nation.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X, “This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.) wrote in a statement, “The former president’s claim of total presidential immunity is an insult to the vision of our founders, who declared independence from a King.”

The Trump team’s decision to bring the immunity argument was part of a broader effort to delay legal proceedings. It also has leveled a series of appeals and motions in other criminal indictments he is facing, each of which have been significantly postponed.

But the ruling also left open the scope of Trump’s immunity from acts he did in office but are outside his authority granted under the Constitution. Some of those questions will be answered by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the former president’s criminal trial over allegations that he engaged in fraud to stay in power.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court delivered a win to Trump when they unanimously ruled that states have no authority to remove the former president from the 2024 presidential ballot, after a series of states challenged Trump’s eligibility to be on the ballot after Jan. 6, citing a provision from the 14th Amendment barring someone from holding office after engaging in an insurrection.