Supreme Court's immunity decision could have implications for the Justice Department
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In a landmark decision this week, the Supreme Court granted presidents sweeping immunity from prosecution. The conservative justices detailed one area where presidents enjoy a lot of power - their conversations with leaders at the Justice Department. NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has been reporting on the implications of that decision, and she's here to talk more about them. Hey, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK. So what exactly did the Supreme Court say about a president and the Department of Justice?
JOHNSON: This all came up because part of the indictment against Donald Trump deals with his contacts at the Justice Department. Trump allegedly pushed justice leaders to do sham investigations of bogus voter fraud and then threatened to replace the acting attorney general with a crony if he didn't get with the program. The Supreme Court said all of that is core activity of a president squarely within a president's powers and, as a result, that president is completely immune, completely out of bounds for prosecutors. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that presidents can discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with top DOJ officials, and that could have some big implications.
CHANG: Exactly. So how specifically do you think this would change the way the Justice Department operates now?
JOHNSON: A lot. Attorney General Merrick Garland's first job as a lawyer was helping write policies for DOJ after the Watergate scandal. He wrote things like guaranteeing independence from the White House and law enforcement investigations and restricting communications between the White House and many people inside the Justice Department. Here's Merrick Garland talking on January 7, 2021, a day after the storming of the Capitol.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MERRICK GARLAND: Those policies became part of the DNA of every career lawyer and agent. If confirmed, my mission as attorney general will be to reaffirm those policies as the principles upon which the department operates.
JOHNSON: So Merrick Garland views these ideas as essential to the DOJ mission and fundamental to his own career.
CHANG: Yeah.
JOHNSON: But now, a Supreme Court majority has driven a truck through them. And what's more, under the new lines the Supreme Court has drawn, the president during Watergate, Richard Nixon, might not ever have been prosecuted at all.
CHANG: Which is remarkable, like, how differently history might have unfolded. You know, we hear Garland there speaking about principles, about standards, but what does this mean for the way prosecutors work just day to day?
JOHNSON: It would be a huge shift. Here's Philip Lacovara, a former Watergate prosecutor and Justice Department lawyer, talking about what this might mean.
PHILIP LACOVARA: That the president can order his political enemies prosecuted, and the Justice Department must obey those decisions, and the courts are not entitled to examine that partisan motivation.
JOHNSON: And this is not really a hypothetical. Former President Trump has actually pledged to engage in retribution if he's elected. Trump says he wants to use the Justice Department to go after people who worked at the FBI and in the Biden White House. He's also called out members of the House January 6 Committee who investigated him. Now, the conservative Supreme Court majority has given Trump a lot of leeway to press these investigations of his opponents and to drop cases against his allies if he wins the election. The dissenters on the court basically called this a law-free zone around the president.
CHANG: Well, how did the majority explain their reasoning?
JOHNSON: The conservatives on the court are a lot more worried about prosecutors using the justice system to go after future presidents than they are about presidents misusing their sweeping power. Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor, wrote, it's too early to say how this is going to play out in the years ahead, in part because we don't know if Trump will win and carry out all these revenge fantasies. And another former Republican justice official told me, just because a president can do something like lean on the Justice Department under the Constitution, it doesn't mean that he should.
CHANG: That is NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Thank you so much, Carrie.
JOHNSON: My pleasure.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.