At the CNN presidential debate on Thursday, CNN's Jake Tapper asked former President Donald Trump about his role in the January sixth attack on the US Capitol in 2021.

What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions and inaction on January sixth and worry that you'll do it again?

Well, I don't think too many believe that. And let me tell you about January sixth. On January sixth, we had a great border.

Nobody comes through. Trump repeatedly he had to immediately sidestepped the question. He deflected about accepting the election results in November before finally saying he would if it's a, quote, fair and legal and good election.

The only person in this stage is a convicted felon is the man I'm looking at right now. The fact that The matter is, what he's telling you is simply not true.

President Biden made the point there. Trump has already been convicted of 34 felony counts, but there are multiple criminal cases still in motion. One of them directly related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Well, on Friday, the Supreme Court handed down a major ruling dealing with the aftermath of the January sixth riot at the Capitol. But this one wasn't about presidential immunity. My guest today is CNN's Supreme Court reporter, John Fritze. We're going to break down why we're still waiting for that decision and look at another ruling that is sending shockwaves through the entire federal government. From CNN, This is One Thing. I'm David Reind. So you're literally in the Supreme Court right now. Correct.

I'm in the building.

He's in the building. John, We've reached the end of June, but the court hasn't finished its work yet. What's up with that?

Everything has been slow this term. Cases that we thought would come pretty quickly have taken weeks and sometimes months. Certainly the one that everybody is paying attention to is the Trump immunity case, and that one in particular, I think a lot of folks were hoping that would come quickly and resolve this issue. And now it appears that that case is not going to come until the very last day of the term. We have a sense of that because the chief always announces on the penultimate day when the next and final day is, and he said that would be Monday. So we've got some additional cases outstanding, but that's the biggie, and that means we are almost We're all certain to get that decision on Monday.

Right. Remind me about this immunity case because it's about special counsel Jack Smith's election-related charges against Trump. But what are the other possible outcomes here?

That's right. Donald Trump came into court looking for very broad immunity covering all sorts of actions. It didn't seem clear to me, based on the arguments, at least, that he was going to get that. But I do think there's a good chance he gets something. There's a lot of debate about official action versus private conduct. The court seemed pretty clear in argument that there was some thought that maybe official action should have some immunity. That gets to this point you're arguing about, well, it's not just about Trump. Several of the justices, I think, are thinking about the longer term impacts about this, about future precedents. Presidents do have immunity from civil litigation based on an earlier Supreme Court decision and based on the same idea, which is that you don't really want a former president to be hit with a bunch of lawsuits, maybe some of them politically motivated. That was that case.

This is what Trump has been arguing out on the campaign trail. Presidents won't be able to do anything or send troops into war, that thing.

That's exactly right. That's his argument.

This isn't just me. This is all present. They have to be given immunity. Otherwise, they're going to be unable to act. Anything they do, if it goes wrong, even if it goes right.

Then he points to all these other presidents that he claims have things that are prosecutable. I think that's debatable.

Otherwise, take a look at Harry Truman. He wouldn't have done, if you think, Hiroshima. Not exactly a nice act, but it did end the Second World War Probably. Nagasaki, he wouldn't be doing that. He said, I don't want to do that because my opponents will indict me.

What I do think, though, is that private conduct. It seemed to me, based on argument, that a lot of the justices were not going there, not buying that. So I think the real thing to watch for in this opinion is how the court settles that issue, official conduct versus private, and then what standard it sets for determining that, right? Because it's not always clear what's official and what's private. And so I think that's the key thing to look out for. I want to go to Wolf Plitzer now with some breaking news. Major breaking news coming from the US Supreme Court right now. There's been a decision on a very, very important and sensitive issue.

Well, so tell me about this other case that we did get today as we speak on Friday as it relates to January sixth riot. It's like, does this relate to Trump at all?

There was a lot of speculation and talk heading into this case that it could relate to Trump. Two of Trump's charges involve this same statute, this same Prohibition that's an issue in the J6 case. However, the Justice Department made very clear, a special counsel made very clear early on in briefing that even if the case turned out the way that it did that they would continue to pursue the charges against Trump. That's because Trump didn't barrel his way into the Capitol himself. He's being charged under these charges for a different reason, which is this idea of tampering with evidence, in this case, tampering with the certification of electoral votes. That's a a different thing than the folks that we saw charging into the building. Certainly, the special counsel thinks that these charges will still hold against Trump, even with this outcome.

Let's talk about some of the other decisions we've seen in the last few days, non-Trump division, because there was this big one involving federal regulations, right? It seems super wonky to me. I'm not the court watcher you are, but people that do follow this closely are like, This is enormous. So why?

Yeah, It's enormous because laws are not always clear. Laws are often unclear. Historically, since this decision in Chevron, a case from several decades ago, agencies had some flexibility to determine how to interpret that vagueness in a statute. It comes up quite a bit in the environment, in workplace regulations, and food inspections, all sorts of things it comes up in where agencies have to make these determinations. They're allowed to do that under this thing called Chevron Doctrine, which basically says that if the statute is vague or unclear, then agencies can make a a reasonable interpretation of what Congress intended. This has long been a target for the conservative legal movement, and it got killed today. I think what that means is that you're going to see potentially a lot of follow on litigation challenging all sorts of regulations. Again, dealing with the environment is often the first target, but all sorts of regulations across the federal government.

Is the fear that now that this doctrine has been killed, that agencies will be like, unless Congress literally says we can do X, Y, and Z, then we're just going to sit back and not do it. Is that the possible end game here?

Yeah, I think so. And by the way, I think that's already been happening. This decision is one of many the past several terms where this Conservatives Supreme Court has limited the power of agencies to regulate. They've done it in all sorts. I remember the Biden student loan case, right? For instance, there's been a bunch where this court has said, Look, if the law is not clear, you can't do it. An agency can't do the regulation. And so this is one in a long line, but I think you're right. The upshot is that agencies on both Republican and Democratic administrations are going to be far more hesitant to push the regulatory envelope in light of this decision.

Obviously, a blow to the Biden administration. But we did get some other cases this term, where the Biden administration came out on top somewhat surprisingly. How do you look at some of those decisions?

Yeah, No, I mean, the one that is the most immediate was the, well, two abortion cases we've had that have been decided on very narrow grounds, very technical grounds. Most recently, a per curium decision, an unsigned decision from the Corp dealing with emergency abortions in Idaho. The Corp had looked at this for several months and did a judicial version of throwing up its hands and said, We're not going to decide this right now. We shouldn't have agreed to decide it in the first place. And what it did in that case was that it lifted the prohibition that it had put in place, which the upshot of that is it bars Idaho from enforcing its very strict ban on abortions. It's a victory for Biden in a sense. But it also, abortion rights groups are very clear to point out that, hey, this is a really temporary reprieve. There's already a case pending on the same issue on the Supreme Court's dog.

It's going to be back there before long.

I mean, in a blink of an eye, it's going to be back. In a year that's not an election year, maybe the justices feel more empowered to decide. I think there's a lot of weariness about that decision among abortion rights groups. Is that a win for Biden? Yes, technically, but maybe not a long term one.

Interesting. John, my last question is, is the Supreme Court okay? Because that Idaho abortion decision actually was inadvertently posted online early before they officially released it. We saw that Dobbs leak two years ago. We've seen reporting from ProPublica about how Clarence Thomas took all these fancy trips paid for by wealthy donors that he didn't fully disclose. You have these stories about Justice Alito and his wife and all their flags flying at their house. What is happening with this institution that is supposed to be above it all and have its stuff together?

Yeah, well, it's certainly not above it all this term. It's a tough time for the Supreme Court. Certainly, all those things you mentioned Approval ratings are traumatically low. There's a lot of anger, particularly on the left, about the Roe decision two years ago. You're right. This inadvertent opinion posting was remarkable. I I haven't seen that a thing before. It's very different, I think, than the leak a few years ago in the Dobbs case. That was an intentional thing. This appears to be inadvertent. Who knows why it happened or what's happening with it. It is the case that we've got a lot of big opinions coming here at the end. There's a lot of attention on it. A lot of stuff's crunched in. Maybe accidents can happen. I don't know. But you're right. The court is in a very much a defensive posture right now and has been for the in this couple of terms.

Yeah, very defensive. We'll see what happens on Monday with this immunity case and any others they issue. John Fertzee there at the court. Really appreciate it.

Hey, thank you so much.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paulo Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our Senior Producer is Fez Jamil. Our Supervising Producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Ligtai is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manessari, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lenny Steinhart, James André, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.