Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick is leveraging President Biden’s widely panned debate performance to challenge incumbent Sen. Bob Casey as other Democrats face similar criticism about their prior knowledge of the president’s apparent decline.

“No question, he’s prepared to do this job today, and would be, were he re-elected,” Casey is heard saying in a new ad from McCormick’s campaign. The recording is from just a few months prior, in March. 

The ad further highlights the close friendship between Biden and Casey, with footage of Biden calling the Pennsylvania senator “one of my best buddies.” 

CONGRESSIONAL DEMS BLAST RULING ON TRUMP IMMUNITY: ‘EXTREME RIGHT-WING SUPREME COURT’

On screen, the words, “Casey knew about Biden’s condition,” appear. 

The Pennsylvania senator’s campaign did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication. 

The criticism of Casey, specifically, for not coming forward about Biden’s ability or lack thereof ahead of the debate comes as Democrats in races across the country are facing similar scrutiny for not saying something. 

TRUMP ALLIES CELEBRATE BLOW TO ‘SENSELESS LAWFARE’ IN SUPREME COURT IMMUNITY DECISION

“Senate Democrats have spent years propping up Joe Biden despite his obvious mental deficiencies,” said NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou. (Getty Images)

One day following the debate between former President Trump and Biden, which was widely criticized across ideological lines as a poor showing by the latter, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) released an ad showing several sitting Democrats who are up for re-election and those running for open seats defending Biden’s mental acuity. 

BALANCE OF POWER: DEM REP SAYS PEOPLE WILL ‘WANT TO TALK ABOUT’ BIDEN STATUS ON TICKET AFTER DEBATE

Sens. Jon Tester, Jacky Rosen, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Bob Casey (Getty Images)

“Senate Democrats have spent years propping up Joe Biden despite his obvious mental deficiencies, now the world can see he isn’t fit for the job. This disaster is on their hands,” said NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou. 

President Biden is helped up after falling during the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, on June 1, 2023. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Democrats have uniformly brushed off and denied concerns regarding Biden’s age and physical and mental abilities, assuring the media and public that he was up to the challenge of being president for another term. However, after his less than stellar performance on debate night, reports immediately emerged alleging Democratic panic behind closed doors. Even on CNN and MSNBC, hosts and analysts acknowledged Biden’s lackluster debate showing and the panic reportedly following it. 

Lawmakers such as Casey, Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Jon Tester, D-Mont., Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., were already in a difficult position as they tried to balance supporting their party with appealing to a broad group of voters to hold onto their seats. Now, they will certainly face questions about their previous statements of support for the president and their vouching for his mental acuity as fresh questions about Biden’s ability swirl. 

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor powerfully said in her dissent in Trump vs. United States, the Supreme Court on Monday made “a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.” In a 6-3 decision, the six Republican-appointed justices handed a stunning victory to Donald Trump in broadly defining the scope of absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.

Donald Trump was indicted in federal district court in Washington for his role in attempting to undermine the results of the November 2020 presidential election. Trump moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that his actions occurred while he was still in the White House and that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for anything done while in office. Both the federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals rejected this argument, stressing that the core of the rule of law is that no one, not even a president, is above the law.

Although the Supreme Court did not go as far as Trump wanted, its ruling is a clear a victory for him and for future presidents. In an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court said that a president has absolute immunity for his official acts. The court expansively defined this as anything done in carrying out the constitutional powers of the president or in implementing a federal statute. The conservative majority then went further and said, “We conclude that the separation of powers principles explicated in our precedent necessitate at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a president’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” And Roberts said that a court cannot look at a president’s motives.

The breadth of this immunity is stunning. Imagine, to use an example that was raised at the oral arguments, that a president orders the Navy Seals to kill a political rival. Under the court’s approach that would be protected by absolute immunity because it is an action taken by the president carrying out his powers as commander in chief. The court was explicit that the president’s craven political motives are irrelevant.

Or imagine that a president orders the Justice Department to investigate and indict a political rival solely to gain a political advantage. Or imagine, as Trump has already pledged, that if again elected president he would use the Justice Department for retribution and to prosecute his opponents. That, too, would clearly be protected by absolute immunity under the court’s decision. In fact, Roberts wrote: “The President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority. Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” Indeed, the court went so far as to say that Trump’s pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to ignore the results of the electoral college decision had a presumption of absolute immunity.

The court said that private or personal acts of a president, as opposed to official ones, are not protected by absolute immunity from prosecution. The court left open the question of whether there is absolute immunity for Trump’s pressuring state election officials, such as in Georgia, and for his conduct on Jan. 6. The court remanded these questions to the lower courts to decide. But even this is a victory for Trump in that the court did not declare the obvious: These unquestionably were personal and political actions.

It is for this reason that Sotomayor in her dissent says that the justices “in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability.” As she says, it is “an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now.”

In the past, when the court has dealt with issues like this, it has been unanimous and stressed the importance of holding a president accountable and upholding the rule of law. In United States vs. Nixon, in 1974, the court unanimously held that President Nixon could not invoke executive privilege to thwart a criminal investigation. In Clinton vs. Jones, in 1997, the court unanimously ruled that President Clinton had no immunity to protect him from a lawsuit for sexual harassment that occurred when he was governor of Arkansas.

But we live in a very different, far more partisan time. It is impossible to read the decision in Trump vs. United States as other than a court with six Republican justices handing a major victory to the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump. Indeed, the court’s handling of the case, denying review that was requested in January and then not releasing its opinion until July 1, was in itself a victory in ensuring that there is no way that Trump can be tried before the November 2024 presidential election.

Roberts concluded his opinion by rightly saying: “This case poses a question of lasting significance.” Unfortunately, the court gave an answer to that question that undermines the rule of law and creates a serious future threat to our democracy in placing the president largely above the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a contributing writer to Opinion and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Trump, is scheduled to report to a federal prison in Connecticut on Monday to serve a four-month sentence for contempt for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. 

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington had allowed Bannon to stay free for nearly two years while he appealed, but he later revoked his bail and ordered him to report to prison by July 1 after an appeals court panel upheld his contempt of Congress convictions. The Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal to stave off his sentence.

In an emergency motion filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last month, Bannon’s new lawyer, R. Trent McCotter, accused the government of seeking “to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period leading up to the November election, when millions of Americans look to him for information on important campaign issues,” effectively barring him “from serving as a meaningful advisor in the ongoing national campaign.”

“There is also no denying the political realities here. Mr. Bannon is a high-profile political commentator and campaign strategist. He was prosecuted by an administration whose policies are a frequent target of Mr. Bannon’s public statements,” the motion said. 

TRUMP ALLY STEVE BANNON FILES EMERGENCY MOTION SEEKING TO STAY OUT OF PRISON

A jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition with the Jan. 6 House Committee, and a second for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. 

JUDGE ORDERS STEVE BANNON TO REPORT TO PRISON

Former advisor to former President Trump, Steve Bannon, center, and attorney Matthew Evan Corcoran depart the courthouse on June 6, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Defense attorneys have argued the case raises issues that should be examined by the Supreme Court, including Bannon’s previous lawyer’s belief that the subpoena was invalid because Trump had asserted executive privilege. Prosecutors, though, say Bannon had left the White House years before, and Trump had never invoked executive privilege in front of the committee.

Bannon’s surrender deadline is the same day the Supreme Court will release its ruling in a case involving whether Trump is immune from prosecution for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

On Friday, the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of a participant in the Jan. 6 riot who challenged his conviction for a federal “obstruction” crime.

Bannon’s appeal will continue to play out, and Republican House leaders have put their support behind stepping in to assert the Jan. 6 committee was improperly created, effectively trying to deem the subpoena Bannon received to be illegitimate.

Steve Bannon, former advisor to former President Donald Trump, appears in Manhattan Supreme Court to set his trial date on May 25, 2023, in New York City. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)

Another Trump aide, trade adviser Peter Navarro, has also been convicted of contempt of Congress. He reported to prison in March to serve his four-month sentence after the Supreme Court refused his bid to delay the sentence.

Bannon is also facing criminal charges in New York state court alleging he duped donors who gave money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges. That trial has been postponed until at least the end of September.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.