The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity. He’s using it as a blank check.

President Donald Trump has expounded an extraordinary vision of his authority over the past month, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision last year granting him immunity from criminal prosecution, as a blank check in his broader drive for power.

President Donald Trump has expounded an extraordinary vision of his authority over the past month, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision last year granting him immunity from criminal prosecution as a blank check in his broader drive for power. Trump’s personal lawyers and his Justice Department have wielded the case in several major filings, including over the ban on TikTok and in new Supreme Court arguments to justify the president’s firing of an official who runs an independent agency. The latter case, centered on Trump’s February 7 removal of the head of a watchdog agency, will mark the first Supreme Court test of Trump’s second-term agenda. Justice Department lawyers opened their filing on Sunday with an ambitious reference to Trump v. US as they argued neither Congress nor federal judges may interfere with Trump’s power to get rid of appointees of a former president. “This case involves an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers,” DOJ wrote as it appealed a lower court order that would let Hampton Dellinger remain at the helm of the independent agency that protects whistleblowers. “As this Court observed just last Term, ‘Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions on subjects within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority’ — including ‘the President’s unrestricted power of removal with respect to executive officers of the United States whom (the President) has appointed,’” the Justice Department added.