If you're listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Campadiche and we are doing a super

turn-around bonus episode on the Supreme Court's decision today, July 1st, in the case of Trump v United States.

The court ruled along, as we so often say, ideological lines.

It was a six to three decision that granted former President Donald Trump and any

president some degree of immunity and we'll get to that level of immunity a

little bit later. The opinion is long it was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, with concurring opinions by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Amy Coenney Barrett, and dissenting opinions by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Katai Brown Jackson.

I'm really quickly just going to read the most relevant paragraph from Chief Justice Roberts's opinion here,

quote, under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential

power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive

constitutional authority and he is entitled to at least presumptive

immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.

There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

To explain all of this today, I am speaking with Dr. Claire Wofford. She is an

Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of Charleston. Dr Wofford,

thank you so much for being on Civics 101. Welcome. Thank you, happy to be here. That's great because we don't usually do it this way. We usually record things in advance. So we're on a strange fast journey together, you and I.

Well, I look forward to making as much sense of it as we can so first off can you give us like a quick fast recap of how we got here like what is the case or the cases

about which the court was weighing presidential immunity?

Right, so President Trump has had multiple cases

proceeding in various courts.

This case centered around the prosecution of

Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith for actions that he took related to the

2020 election.

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