Chief Justice John Roberts pressured his fellow Supreme Court justices to allow him to play a key role in cases involving Donald Trump, leaked memos reveal.
The conservative judge took the lead in the March case over whether states could remove the former president from their ballots for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Roberts demanded a unanimous decision from the court, according to memos leaked to the New York Times.
He also took up the case involving Justice Samuel Alito’s prosecution of the Jan. 6 rioters after his fellow conservative became embroiled in a dispute over his wife’s flying the Stars and Stripes flag upside down from their home.
Chief Justice John Roberts with Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
The court’s decision on presidential immunity was a blow to judicial efforts to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Roberts told his colleagues they should take up the case after an appeals court ruled that Trump did not enjoy presidential immunity for his alleged role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“As I read it, it simply says that a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted,” he said of the lower court’s ruling.
And he made no secret of what he believed his colleagues should decide.
“I think we’re likely to view the separation of powers analysis differently,” he wrote in a February memo.
Some conservatives wanted to postpone the decision until after the November presidential election, but Roberts demanded an early decision and then insisted on writing the opinion himself.
“In a case like this, focusing on ‘transitory outcomes’ can have profound consequences for the separation of powers and the future of our Republic,” he wrote loftily. “Our perspective must be more clear-sighted.”
The decision was a major blow to judicial attempts to prosecute the former president.
And Roberts failed to secure the unanimity he demanded, prompting a scathing dissent from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who lamented that the ruling had given Trump “all the immunity he sought and more.”
Justice John Roberts presides over a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority
She warned that it protected “treasonous acts,” transformed the president into “a king above the law” and led her to “fear for our democracy.”
In April, Roberts asked Alito to write the opinion when the court was asked to consider whether the Justice Department had overstepped its bounds in its prosecution of the Jan. 6 rioters for obstruction.
But he brought it back and wrote it himself when Alito became embroiled in questions about whether his wife had shown sympathy for the “Stop the Steal” movement by waving a flag upside down.
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