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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Sen. Mike Lee celebrated Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, while some Utah Democrats criticized the ruling as a threat to democracy.
The court ruling found that former President Donald Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions taken within his constitutional powers as president, but it also sent key questions from the case down to a lower court to be resolved.
"Today's decision by the Supreme Court is a big win for constitutional separation of powers and a huge loss for those who want to weaponize the federal government against their political opponents," Lee said in a post on social media platform X.
In a lengthy thread posted to his personal account on X, Lee said he doesn't believe the ruling puts the executive above the law — "not by a mile." He went on to argue that "presidential immunity is an indispensable component" of the separation of powers in the U.S. government and said: "Without the executive branch functioning properly, our entire constitutional system of government would be impaired."
"I get it — libs hate Trump," he added. "But libs' hatred of Trump doesn't entitle them to Supreme Court rulings against him."
Lee said those "libs" tried to influence the outcome of the ruling by calling on Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from the case. Alito recently came under fire after it was reported that his wife flew a flag associated with the "Stop the Steal" movement in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, and Thomas' wife exchanged text messages with a top Trump aide urging efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The case in question before the court involved Trump's alleged involvement in attempts to overturn that election.
"Libs did this not because they ever had a good argument to trigger the recusal of Justices Alito and Thomas," Lee said, referring to calls for recusal, "but because they knew their own arguments in the immunity case weren't good and were especially unlikely to persuade either of those justices. ... Now that they've lost this case and are losing their minds over the fact that they're going to lose elections in record numbers this fall — including and especially the presidential election — libs are turning back to the shameful strategy of de-legitimizing the Court."
"SCOTUS stood up for the Constitution today, setting the precedent that politically motivated lawfare has no place in the United States," Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, said in a statement Monday, using a term Republicans have applied to the indictments of Trump, insinuating the scores of charges are politically motivated. "I applaud today's decision and stand with President Trump against the Democrats' unprecedented weaponization of our justice system."
Democrats — across the country and in Utah — reacted harshly to the decision, saying it could have stark consequences for the accountability of those in office.
"If Donald Trump is allowed back into the Oval Office, he will use today's ruling to establish the strongman dictatorship that he promised to create on 'day one' of his presidency," Utah Democratic Party chairwoman Diane Lewis said.
She was referring to an interview Trump did with Fox News host Sean Hannity, in which the former president said he wouldn't be a dictator "except on day one."
"With this ruling, an increasingly unhinged Trump could do whatever he wants as president, up to and including the assassination of political rivals," Lewis continued, casting the 2024 presidential election as a "contest between democracy and authoritarianism."
Rep. Angela Romero, the top Democrat in the Utah House of Representatives, offered a similarly bleak assessment of the decision, calling it "jarring and a true threat to our democracy."
"Every American should be terrified of the implications of this Supreme Court ruling," she added.
