Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The MAGA Supreme Court’s Dangerous Decision On Presidential Immunity That Threatens American Democracy
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the Supreme Court conservative majority violating the most basic premise of our constitution with its decision on presidential immunity, and urged members of Congress to join him in exercising checks on the judiciary through legislation. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Above the entrance of the U.S. Supreme Court are these words: “Equal Justice Under Law.” Last week, the conservative Justices put some new writing on those walls, figuratively: “The President of the United States is above the law.”
Instead of “Equal Justice Under Law,” they replaced it with “The President of the United States is above the law.”
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies conspired for weeks to undermine the will of the people and halt the peaceful transfer of power. These efforts culminated in a violent insurrection on January 6th. These are the facts. Many of us in the Senate lived through it. I was within 30 feet of the hooligans who invaded the Capitol.
No free nation can condone a tyrant who abuses his office to try and cling to power. But that is, in effect, what the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has done.
By ruling Donald Trump enjoys broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions as president after the 2020 election, the conservative majority has violated the most basic premise of our constitution that no man is above the law.
Most Americans will see what the court did and think it was grossly political, a shameless attempt to help Donald Trump out. I worry that over time, Americans will increasingly lose trust in what the courts say. They’ve already begun to lose that trust with these right wing MAGA decisions, very few of them founded on any precedent at all. It could be an unraveling of trust in our democratic institutions.
The good news is that the Constitution provides a remedy to the Supreme Court’s terrible decision: Congress has the authority to exercise strong checks on the judiciary through legislation.
We should look into precisely that. One possible avenue: clarifying that Donald Trump’s election-subversion acts do not count as official acts of the presidency.
Such a notion should hardly be controversial, and I am working with my colleagues on legislation to see what kind of proposals would be appropriate.
We were all taught in grade school that there are no kings here in America, but what the conservative Justices have done is placed a crown on the head of Donald Trump. They declared, in effect, the same thing Nixon told David Frost in 1977 when he said, this is what Nixon said, chased out of office for potential criminal acts: “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” That’s going to be the new rule of law in America with these Justices.
What a bone-chilling proposition. If future presidents no longer fear criminal prosecution for their conduct in office, what is going to rein them in? One election every four years? That is cold comfort if a corrupt president can use their office to undermine elections in the first place! It’s catch-22, a very evil one. That’s autocracy 101.
What if future presidents order the DOJ to arrest election workers? What if they escalate their attacks on the press? What if they take bribes in exchange for favors? And what if in each of these instances they claim they were acting in an official capacity? America would be in a state of constitutional pandemonium.
The American people are tired of Justices who think they are beyond accountability. We in Congress should be open to sensible, reasonable solutions to restore the checks and balances that the MAGA court has taken away.
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