WASHINGTON (AP) — In an unsparing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Supreme Court allowed a president to become a “king above the law” in its ruling that limited the scope of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the election.

She called the decision, which likely ended the prospect of a trial for Trump before the November election, “utterly indefensible.”

“The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding,” she wrote, in a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Sotomayor read her dissent aloud in the courtroom, with a weighty delivery that underscored her criticism of the majority. She strongly pronounced each word, pausing at certain moments and gritting her teeth at others.

“Ironic isn’t it? The man in charge of enforcing laws can now just break them,” Sotomayor said.

Chief Justice John Roberts accused the liberal justices of fearmongering in the 6-3 majority opinion. It found that presidents aren’t above the law but must be entitled to presumptive immunity for official acts so the looming threat of a potential criminal prosecution doesn’t keep them from forcefully exercising the office’s far-reaching powers or create a cycle of prosecutions aimed at political enemies.

While the opinion allows for the possibility of prosecutions for unofficial acts, Sotomayor said it “deprives these prosecutions of any teeth” by excluding any evidence that related to official acts where the president is immune.

“This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the presidency and for our democracy,” she said. She ended by saying, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Trump, for his part, has denied doing anything wrong and has said this prosecution and three others are politically motivated to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

The other justices looked on in silence and largely remained still as Sotomayor spoke, with Justice Samuel Alito shuffling through papers and appearing to study them.

Sotomayor pointed to historical evidence, from the founding fathers to Watergate, that presidents could potentially face prosecution. She took a jab at the conservative majority that has made the nation’s history a guiding principle on issues like guns and abortion. “Interesting, history matters, right?”

Then she looked at the courtroom audience and concluded, “Except here.”

The majority feared that the threat of potential prosecution could constrain a president or create a “cycle of factional strife,” that the founders intended to avoid.

Sotomayor, on the other handed, pointed out that presidents have access to extensive legal advice about their actions and that criminal cases typically face high bars in court to proceed.

“It is a far greater danger if the president feels empowered to violate federal criminal law, buoyed by the knowledge of future immunity,” she said. “I am deeply troubled by the idea … that our nation loses something valuable when the president is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.”

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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this story.

Ukrainian security officials on Monday said a plot to overthrow the federal government in Kyiv had been thwarted as Russia ramps up attacks on the capital city. 

Four Ukrainian civilians were detained over the weekend on suspicion of planning an alleged coup by seizing Parliament and announcing their intent to replace military and civilian leadership, said the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) following an investigation that began in May.

Ukrainian officials have offered few details regarding the plot but said the “activists” were working under the guise of forming a peaceful rally in Kyiv on Sunday.

PENTAGON THREATENS NORTH KOREAN SOLDIERS WILL BE ‘CANNON FODDER’ IF SENT TO AID RUSSIA IN UKRAINE

Despite dissident messages exchanged on social media, the majority of the participants of the event were allegedly unaware of the group’s intent to “force” the public to “choose a temporary government,” claimed Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office in a Telegram post.

It is unclear if the group had any connections with Russian officials, though the SBU noted the scheme “would have played in Russia’s hands.”

U.S. and European intelligence officials have accused Moscow of ramping up its covert campaigns against Kyiv and its international allies in a move to undermine support for Ukraine, reports said earlier this year. 

Rescuers stand in front of a building damaged by a Russian missile on June 30, 2024, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Serhii Korovayny/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

UKRAINE’S ZELENSKYY VISITS TROOPS ON FRONT LINES UNDER PRESSURE FROM RUSSIA’S ONSLAUGHT

Russia has seen recent gains in Ukraine and security officials said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking a new approach when it comes to striking Kyiv. 

“The aggressor is testing new tactics – he is looking for the right time, methods and means,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a post to Telegram. 

The administration pointed to the lack of ballistic and cruise missiles used in the latest strike on the city Sunday, but reminded citizens not to ignore air raid sirens that have plagued the city for more than two years. 

“No air alarm can be ignored,” the administration said in its post. “Rockets are shot down, but the molecules do not disintegrate, and the debris poses a threat to human life.”

Geneva-based UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says ‘appropriate remedy’ would be to release Khan ‘immediately’.

A United Nations human rights working group says former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been arbitrarily imprisoned in violation of international law.

In an opinion issued on Monday, the Geneva-based UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said the “appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Khan immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law”.

“[The] working group concludes that his detention had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office. Thus, from the outset, that prosecution was not grounded in law and was reportedly instrumentalised for a political purpose,” the UN group said, according to a report published on Pakistan’s Dawn news website.

Since his removal as prime minister in April 2022, Khan, 71, has been entangled in more than 200 legal cases and imprisoned since August last year. He calls the cases politically motivated and orchestrated by his political enemies to keep him from power.

Last week, an Islamabad court rejected a plea to suspend the jail terms of Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi, whose marriage was ruled illegal under Islamic law.

In April this year, a Pakistani high court suspended Khan and his wife’s 14-year prison sentences in a corruption case. Khan also had another 10-year sentence for treason overturned this month.

But he remains in Adiala jail, south of the capital Islamabad, over the illegal marriage conviction.

Rana Sanaullah, an adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, last week said “the government will try to keep him locked up for as long as possible”, according to the AFP news agency.

Analysts say Pakistan’s powerful military, which has ruled directly for decades and wields immense power, is likely behind the slew of cases.

Khan was ousted by a parliamentary no-confidence vote after falling out with the top generals who had once backed him.

He then waged an unprecedented campaign against them and accused top army officers of conspiring in an assassination attempt in which he was shot during a political rally in November 2022. The military rejected the allegation.

Khan’s brief arrest in May 2023 sparked nationwide unrest, which in turn prompted a sweeping crackdown against his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and its senior leaders.

PTI candidates were forced to stand as independents in the February general elections, although candidates loyal to PTI still secured more seats than any other party.

However, they were kept from power by a broad coalition of parties considered loyal to the military.

On Friday, Pakistan’s lower house of parliament denounced a United States’ congressional resolution that called for an independent investigation into allegations that Pakistan’s elections this year were rigged.

Though Pakistan’s government expressed anger over the US resolution, Khan’s party hailed it, saying its victory in the election was converted into a defeat by the country’s election commission.