Trump’s Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Just Came Back to Bite Him

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Trump’s Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Just Came Back to Bite Him

The Supreme Court’s decision to expand the definition of presidential immunity may have just caused a hiccup for Donald Trump’s administration.

A federal judge

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Monday that Trump’s FBI must disclose records from its Mar-a-Lago case file, complying with a FOIA request by Business Insider’s Jason Leopold. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell decided that the Supreme Court’s decision—combined with his return to the White House and its executive privileges—has insulated Trump enough from further criminal prosecution to allow the release of documents.

“With the far dampened possibility of any criminal investigation to gather evidence about a president’s conduct and of any public enforcement proceeding against a president, the [Supreme Court’s] decision … has left a FOIA request as a critical tool for the American public to keep apprised of a president’s conduct,” Howell ruled.

Howell also ordered the FBI to provide a timetable of release for files pertaining to Leopold’s request, with a mandatory update required by February 20.

The FBI had used Glomar arguments to retain the privacy of the Mar-a-Lago case files, falling back on its typical refusal to “confirm or deny” a criminal investigation in order to safeguard ongoing investigations. But the decimation of any future case against Trump on the details of the case has completely undermined that argument, according to the judge.

“In these circumstances, defendants’ Glomar arguments crumble with no more weight than dust and just as little persuasiveness,” Howell wrote. “As plaintiff pointedly highlights, as to President Trump, ‘there is a reasonable argument that [he] is immune from prosecution for flushing his own records down the toilet while in office.’”

In a footnote, Howell torched the high court’s decision to grant Trump such sweeping protections, likening their actions to enablers of the fascist regime of Nazi Germany.

“Of course, while the Supreme Court has provided a protective and presumptive immunity cloak for a president’s conduct, that cloak is not so large to extend to those who aid, abet and execute criminal acts on behalf of a criminally immune president,” Howell wrote. “The excuse offered after World War II by enablers of the fascist Nazi regime of ‘just following orders’ has long been rejected in this country’s jurisprudence.”

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