WASHINGTON — Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced Thursday that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a September hearing to look at “the immediate legal and policy ramifications” of the Supreme Court’s decision last month that grants Donald Trump full immunity for “official acts” he took as president.
“During this upcoming hearing, we will examine the breadth of future misconduct that may be immunized from prosecution, consider the unprecedented nature of this immunity in American history, and discuss legislative solutions to the dangers of this decision,” Durbin, the committee chairman, said in a statement.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee will not tolerate these justices cherry-picking their way through text and history to impose their own extreme vision of presidential power on the American people,” he said.
Durbin didn’t give a specific date or the names of potential witnesses. But Senate Democrats are clearly eager to do something that flexes the strength of the legislative branch of government in response to the decision by the nation’s highest court. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity is so sweeping and vague that legal experts have said it opens the door for sitting presidents to do whatever they want without any accountability, including something as extreme as assassinating a political rival .
“This dangerous decision immunizes presidents who commit crimes, no matter how serious, as long as they claim their offenses were ‘official acts,’” said Durbin. “The far-right justices responsible for this decision like to claim that they are guided by ‘textualism’ or ‘originalism,’ but the reality is that they’re engaged in judicial activism unmoored from the text of the Constitution and intentions of our framers.”
He added, “Congress cannot turn a blind eye to it.”
"The Senate Judiciary Committee will not tolerate these justices cherry-picking their way through text and history to impose their own extreme vision of presidential power on the American people," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) railed against the Supreme Court’s decision earlier in the day, bringing up Trump’s role in inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of his effort to steal the 2020 election by spreading a lie about widespread voter fraud .
“No free nation can condone a tyrant who abuses his office to try and cling to power,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “But that is, in effect, what the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has done.”
The good news, said the Senate majority leader, is that 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,” he said. “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.”
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