Historic Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed her disapproval over her conservative colleagues’ decision to grant broad immunity to Donald Trump and other presidents for official acts.
Lamenting the decision, Justice Jackson defined their ruling as "essentially protecting one individual under one set of circumstances when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same”.
“I mean that was my view of what the court determined,” Jackson told CBS reporter Norah O'Donnell in a pre-recorded conversation that aired on CBS Sunday Morning.
Then she added: “I was concerned.”
Justice Jackson's comments to O'Donnell echo her written dissent from the ruling: “The court … declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself.”
Justice Jackson joined her fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in voting against the immunity ruling, which was handed down even as Trump is facing multiple criminal charges stemming from the MAGA effort to illegally overturn his defeat in the 2020 election against Joe Biden.
O’Donnell asked Jackson whether she was “prepared” in the unlikely event that the Supreme Court is tasked with deciding the outcome of November’s White House race between Trump and Kamala Harris. Jackson replied with what seemed like a forced attempt at staying light: “As prepared as anyone can be.”
Justice Jackson added: “I mean, I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process … and so the supreme court has to be prepared to respond if that should be necessary.”