The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Donald Trump's immunity case showed that Chief Justice John Roberts has abandoned his concerns about preserving the court — and has become a reliable partisan of the right-wing, according to a new analysis.
The 69-year-old chief justice is entering his 20th term on the court, which typically had achieved unanimity in recent decades in major tests of presidential power. But Supreme Court sources told CNN that Roberts made no attempt to persuade the three liberal-leaning judges to join the majority in Trump's case.
"He upended constitutional norms, enlarged the institution of the presidency and gave Trump a victory that bolstered his litigating position even beyond the case at hand, for example, in his attempt to reverse the conviction in his Manhattan 'hush money' trial," CNN reported.
"All told, Roberts appears to have reached a turning point. His vision for the high court became more aggressive, and he has perhaps shed the aura of ineffectualness that permeated some public commentary in recent years."
Special counsel Jack Smith had initiallly hoped to persuade the court to take up early review of the Jan. 6 case before an appeals court, which ultimately rejected Trump's immunity claims. But sources told CNN that justices knew they would eventually decide the case, but only after the appellate ruling – although they did not hold oral arguments until late April.
"The justices during the nearly three hours of varied questions in the multi-faceted case on April 25 suggested a certain measure of vindication for Trump on some of his lower court loss, but not without acceptance of some of the arguments from the special counsel," CNN reported.
"In their private session on the case the next day, however, the votes on the core issue lacked any ambiguity and Roberts was ready to write with bold strokes that a former president is entitled to presumptive, if not absolute, immunity for all official acts," the network added. "Further, Roberts’ construction of official acts, as opposed to private ones, was extensive."
Sources familiar with the negotiations told CNN that a 6-3 split was obvious from the beginning, but Roberts felt he could persuade the other justices to look beyond Trump and establish a ruling that would protect future presidents from partisan prosecutions.
However, the court's liberals repeatedly argued the conservative majority had gone beyond the issues Trump's lawyers raised in the case, and Justice Clarence Thomas challenged the legality of the special counsel's appointment, which federal judge Aileen Cannon cited in her decision to toss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
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"Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the bench and arguably the most conservative of the nine, has become more influential over the years, to the point that some commentators have declared him more powerful than Roberts," CNN reported.
Roberts famously switched his vote in 2012 to uphold the Affordable Care Act and sided with the liberal minority in the Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights, but sources close to the court's right-wing justices say they're heartened by his negotiations in the Trump immunity case.
"This year, so very unlike 2022, when Thomas and other conservatives pushed through the Dobbs ruling and Roberts stood alone between embittered factions," CNN reported. "The chief justice chided his colleagues on both sides for displaying 'a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue.'
"This year, he stepped to the right, and he displayed no doubt," the network added.
