Justice Gorsuch defends Supreme Court’s Trump immunity decision as he promotes his new book

CNN —

Justice Neil Gorsuch is defending the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to grant sweeping immunity to former President Donald Trump in a series of interviews, at one point framing the ruling as an extension of precedent.

Gorsuch, who was Trump’s first nominee to the high court, told Fox News in an interview this week that the decision in Trump’s election subversion case was a natural extension of a 1982 precedent that granted former President Richard Nixon and his successors immunity from civil lawsuits for their official actions.

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Though justices rarely grant interviews, they often sit for questions when promoting a book. In Gorsuch’s case, the timing happens to coincide with the end of a contentious term in early July and continuing fallout from the divisive ruling for Trump, which has reenergized calls on the left for structural changes and ethics reform for the Supreme Court.

Gorsuch cited Nixon v. Fitzgerald in the interview, saying the court was concerned at the time that unfettered civil lawsuits would “chill” a president from “exercising the powers” of the presidency.

“He’d be overwhelmed,” Gorsuch told Fox. “All the court did in this case was simply apply that same precedent and idea to the criminal context.”

In the Nixon case, the high court steered clear of questions about criminal immunity for former presidents. In the Trump case, special counsel Jack Smith argued that future presidents were unlikely to face politically motivated prosecutions – a position the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority ultimately found unpersuasive.

In addition to granting Trump and his successors