President Joe Biden called on Wednesday evening for an amendment to the Constitution that would end presidential immunity for acts while in office.
The comments, which came during his farewell address, come after President-elect Donald Trump faced several lawsuits in recent years and accusations from Democrats of crimes committed during his first term, prompting speculation that the proposed amendment was targeted at him.
“We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president, is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office,” Biden said from the Oval Office.
“The president’s power is not unlimited. It’s not absolute. And it shouldn’t be,” he added.
In his farewell address, Biden calls for:
An end to dark money
18 year term limit on Supreme Court Justices and ethics reform
A ban on stock trading in Congress
Amending the Constitution to say no president is immune from crimes committed in office pic.twitter.com/qXJ6k364iY
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 16, 2025
The Supreme Court ruled last summer in Trump v. United States that presidents have absolute immunity for acts that fall within their core constitutional duties, as well as presumptive immunity for official acts in the broader span of their responsibilities, but no immunity for unofficial acts.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that “like everyone else, the President is subject to prosecution in his unofficial capacity.”
“But unlike anyone else, the President is a branch of government, and the Constitution vests in him sweeping powers and duties,” he added.
Was Biden targeting Trump?
Yes: 100% (7 Votes)
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“Accounting for that reality — and ensuring that the President may exercise those powers forcefully, as the Framers anticipated he would — does not place him above the law; it preserves the basic structure of the Constitution from which that law derives,” the opinion declared.
Justices declined to rule on whether or not presidential immunity applied to alleged actions committed by Trump, remanding that part of the case to a district court.
Biden was among the Democrats who were highly critical of that decision.
“The presidency is the most powerful office in the world,” he said on the day of the ruling, per a transcript from the White House.
“It’s an office that not only tests your judgment, perhaps even more importantly it’s an office that can test your character because you not only face moments where you need the courage to exercise the full power of the presidency, you also face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the office of the presidency,” Biden added.
“With today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed,” he continued. “For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
Biden also claimed that the decision would potentially enable Trump to enter office “more emboldened to do whatever he pleases whenever he wants to do it.”
Despite the suggestion of an amendment from Biden, the odds of altering the nation’s founding documents are typically slim.
An amendment to the Constitution can be proposed with the assent of a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate or by a two-thirds majority of state legislatures to call for a convention.
Then three-fourths of the state legislatures must ratify the amendment, or three-fourths of states must hold conventions to approve the amendment.
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