Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday announced that his panel will hold a hearing on the Supreme Court’s controversial 6-3 ruling giving former President Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes related to his official acts as president.
Democratic lawmakers have seethed for weeks over the court’s conservative majority’s ruling in July, which dealt a major setback to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution against Trump for obstructing the certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
On Monday, Durbin announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will take action later this month to highlight what Democrats say could be the far-reaching consequences of the ruling, announcing a hearing date of Sept. 24.
“Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a full committee hearing on the ramifications of the ruling from the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority in the Donald Trump immunity case on September 24,” Durbin announced.
“Congress can’t turn a blind eye to the dangers of the Donald Trump immunity decision by the Supreme Court. We’re going to highlight the blaring dangers of this far-right ruling for the American people,” he said in statement posted on the social media site X.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned the court’s conservatives placed the president of the United States above other Americans in applying criminal laws and created in essence a two-tier justice system.
Brown in a recent interview with CBS “Sunday Morning” said she was “concerned” that the court’s ruling has treated “one individual under one set of circumstances when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same.”
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee blasted the ruling when it came down in July.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) at the time warned that granting Trump immunity for any crimes related to official acts would deprive the American people of knowing whether Trump is guilty of attempting to overturn the last election before voting in November’s presidential election.
“The far-right radicals on the Court have essentially made the President a monarch above the law, the Founding Fathers’ greatest fear,” he said.
