The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday on Donald Trump's bid to secure sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution
Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assasinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?
"That could well be an official act," Trump lawyer John Sauer says
Obviously, why wouldn't he? This is potentially the dumbest argument ever heard in a court room and we're all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility. What a joke.
we’re all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility.
We're all here because more than one of these judges is entertaining its plausibility. Listening to some of the questions coming from a couple of these judges, there is a very real possibility that they actually declare Trump at least partially immune, leading to the lower courts having to re-litigate the issues again (which would delay Trump's trials by years), or outright giving him enough immunity to make his current cases go away.
It's important to note that this would include the state cases. If Trump were to return to office, he could in theory pardon himself and make the federal cases go away but can't do anything about the state ones. If the SC were to rule he's immune, the state courts can't touch him either.
Honestly, I think the judges are just trying to figure out how they can rule narrowly enough to make sure Trump walks away scot-free while also ensuring that Biden and other future presidents don't get the same treatment.
You know as well as I do that we'll sit on that high horse of morality, sniffing our own farts, while we get sniped right the fuck off that horse by a Republican who has no issues whatsoever with abusing that power.
If this is okayed then the next government will presumably be the last. So if that’s not Biden then he is comfortable handing over the torch to whomever wins. That doesn’t seem like a particularly nice choice to have to make.
Biden should just send Seal Team 6 to whatever courthouse Trump's hush money trial is at and tell them to sit on the steps. If anyone asks why they're there, just saying "Waiting for the Supreme Court ruling". Maybe park another team on the Supreme Court steps with a sign that says "Waiting for Clarence Thomas."
Biden would not be committing an illegal act. He'd be ordering the teams to sit on the steps and wait. Further orders would only come after the Supreme Court ruling, so Biden would be covered by the very same Presidential immunity that Trump just fought for.
Unfortunately that's not how Democrats work. For good or for bad they stick to morality (except when it comes to Israel for God knows what reason) and they'll take the "high road" that just so happens to lead off a cliff, but it's the high road so they need to take it even if it means their certain death.
We're a joke, doomed to die for the sake of the moral high ground that we have no right to even assume we have (see previous Isreal comment.)
Edit: but also, from the article, this isn't the actual desire. They already got what they wanted and that was a delay.
While funny to imagine...please let's not. I got a kid to raise, I don't want to raise one in a civil war. I know for sure some of the "SEAL team 6" members wouldn't very much like being turned on government officials, especially if their politics align.
Not some random courthouse. Just the steps of the Supreme Court.
Decisions like this should have immediate consequences for those deciding. If you want to make the President above the law, well, enjoy your stay in Gitmo.
The argument has been that the president can be charged, but only after they're impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. And in the meantime, they're still president. So theoretically they could continue to have House members assassinated until there isn't enough votes to impeach. And theoretically they could also assassinate Senators until there aren't enough votes to convict. And I really don't understand why no one's making that argument to the Court, because that's exactly where the "they can kill anyone who disagrees with me because they're obviously a political rival" argument leads.
And I really don’t understand why no one’s making that argument to the Court
The argument has been made from the beginning. It's the whole "Seal Team 6" argument. They may not be saying it outright, but I think everybody understands that everybody on both sides of the argument knows that the argument would also cover a President ordering the assassination of rivals en masse.
Watching from an outside of the U.S. perspective, it leaves me speechless seeing how staggering the transition was from 'bastion of democracy and the free world' to 'increasingly malfunctioning society with russian-like values'
America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that "Bastion of Democracy and Free World" veneer gets.
We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have "sheriff's gangs" in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they're supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we're functionally at war with, who we can't put on trial because we broke their brains but we can't let go because we're still scared of them.
Don't forget, a lot of the early free trade, free press rhetoric was because the US stood to benefit the most from it. Of course the country with mass printing technology wants everyone to be able to buy their printed propaganda. Do they want to share the technology? Not so much.
The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.
What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.
As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn't help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.
It's a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they're hard to see until you're living with them.
Oh this place hasn't ever been a bastion of democracy. There's so much inequity, vote surprising, gerrymandering, racial oppression, and straight up lying going on that even we have a hard time figuring out how much of our own history is a thick-ass layer of sugar.
If Trump wins the election, he's going to do what he wants regardless of the Court's ruling. Let's stop pretending that "Even when it accomplishes nothing, following the rules to the bitter end is the noble thing to do." Why the fuck does the Captain need to go down with his ship?
The Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Donald Trump’s sweeping claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election, but in a way that is likely to significantly delay his stalled election-interference trial in D.C.
Well before this hearing I had the impression this SC is looking for ways to stack delay on delay without taking too much flak themselves.
It showed in the weird narrow beam wording of their restrictions when they took on this case.
It showed in the extra weeks they took to plan this hearing.
And it is now showing in the questions they ask ...
I will not be surprised if they proclaim "a president has no total immunity, and only immunity in presidential matters, but the lower courts need to figure out if Trump's actions were (for) personal (gain) or presidential."
And with that the ball is dropped and it rolled in a sewage drain where it's hard to reach before the elections are in the rear view mirror.
It even includes another time loop for when it eventually does resurface back on the SC's lap for them to decide if his actions were presidential.
But by that time there will be a "Year one Dictator", proclaiming himself to be America's first great dictator, while ordering his rivals to be imprisoned, indicted and or shot.
And the people will loudly wonder, "Who is there to stop him? Where are the checks and balances?" But loudly will turn into a whimper then a whisper until it is a small voice in an empty room.
If Trump wins the election, the SCOTUS will agree and let Trump do whatever the fuck he wants. If he loses, then SCOTUS will not let the ruling go through. The SCOTUS will conveniently wait until after the election to make a ruling on this.
Plus they are arguing this knowing Biden won’t do that and so if it passed then Trump will have free rein if he wins and he will likely try to exercise that option is my guess.
I'm not sure they can realistically run out that clock. But they can absolutely just ignore a past ruling, if they want. Also, Biden just wouldn't do that. He's a shit, in a lot of ways, but not that kind of shit. Buuut the important point is that this argument is effective, accurate or not. Scare the MAGAts about what Biden, or, say, a future President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez might do. It doesn't have to be a realistic threat, just play into their existing narrative.
“The most powerful person in the world could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Hard to make any disincentive when the ones running for office are in the twilight of their lives. If only there were any choice to the matter.
The right question to ask is whether the president can decide to assassinate a supreme court justice. Then it becomes plenty clear to the supreme court fucks how obviously insane the rationale is.
The main Trump lawyer defense has been to say that the military has it's own rules against executing such an order. But if Trump promises them pardons, those rules wouldn't be enforced, and the whole thing would be "legal".
The pardon power is kinda the root of all evil here, because even if the court finds that Trump isn't immune (which they almost certainly will), that just brings up the next question which is can the president pardon himself? I'm amazed that after the Trump years and his corrupt pardons there's been no effort to limit the pardon power.
The pardon power should be eliminated, and that's been clear since Nixon was pardoned. Sure, just about every president has a feel-good set of pardons, people who were railroaded by bad laws and bad court practices, but those corrections are only a tiny fraction of the outrageous injustices committed by our system, and their existence is used to justify the injustice in the first place - "oh but surely there will be a pardon for people who really need it" - as if depending on a single King-figure at the top to make good decisions, instead of improving systems, was ever a good idea. But in the meantime, just about every president also has a list of political pardons they trade for favors, or use for people who committed crimes on behalf of the president, or the party. Why the fuck does it make any sense at all to say "hey, this person was elected head of the executive branch, they should be able to just shield people from the rule of law", if the rule of law is an important basis of a free democracy? It's weird, when you think about it. End the pardon.
Thats what is most concerning here: not so much the crazy reality that trump’s team is proposing, but the 5 conservative justices that are hand waving it off and are set to send it all back to the lower courts, giving trump the delay he needs.
Because it's an opportunity to slow down prosecutions of Trump that the court's 6-3 Republican majority wants to halt. That and (rampant speculation) I think John Roberts in particular wants to write one of those historical opinions they talk about in law schools, and this is an opportunity to do that given the lack of clarity on presidential powers and immunities.
My gut tells me Trump’s lawyers don’t actually want the president to be immune. They already won by having the Supreme Court take up this absurd case allowing his other trial to be delayed until this issue is resolved. Likely after he’s president.
Lol, that's exactly what the article says. Literally the last three lines summing it all up:
Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land. Rolling Stone reported on Wednesday that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers are bearish on their odds of success — but it’s not all doom and gloom.
“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.
Exactly. No one thinks presidents should be able to commit crimes with impunity. This is a delay tactic and we feel for it hook, line, and sinker. When you have money to pay for lawyers, you can delay justice indefinitely. Sure Trump is on trial for the Stormy Daniels coverup payments right now, but if he serves a single day in prison for it, I will gladly eat my hat.
It's the only argument he can make. If he makes any other argument, his position on complete and total immunity is dead on the spot, as he would be conceding that the President isn't completely and totally immune after all.
Any concession, no matter how ridiculous the example, would invalidate his entire case immediately and he knows it. And if you ever hear him say "He would have to be impeached and convicted first", you'll know that he damn well knows how ridiculous his own arguments sound.
Judge: If President Trump were to run around the White House naked with a rubber glove on his head yelling 'Hi, I'm a squid! Nuke Montana so I can take out my rival octopus and his herd of glitter cows!', would that be an official act he would have immunity under?
Sauer: If it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
Doesn't matter what scenario you put there. Sauer's options are to repeat that line or essentially lose the case.
Sauer: If it's structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
Alright you goddamn fascist enabler, explain how the fuck breaking the law either by stealing nuclear secrets or assassinating political opponents could be "structured as an official act." Explain the exact case law and legal mechanisms that explicitly give the office of the President this authority. And then, while you're exhaling the CO2 that some poor plant is gonna have to clean up, explain how private citizen Donald Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for committing these acts while he wasn't in office.
You know, I'm honestly not sure why everyone's thinking this is part of some plan for the future they have. Fuckhead was already president. Given this guy's track record, it's far more likely that he didn't get to finish covering his ass for something the first time around.
A bold move for the council of the current president's political rival, but alright bet. Pretty sure the lawyer just wants a way to escape the current client while saving face.
Are these people really this fucking stupid? If the sitting president has total immunity and having political rivals killed is an "offical" act, then what's stopping Biden from having Trump executed?
You know. If I was an asshole puppeteer who held trump’s strings….
I’d get myself a new puppet, then make this argument, maybe then do a false flag and have the trump-puppet executed in a manner that looks like Biden had it done….
In another hypothetical, Justice Elena Kagan asked if the president would be immune from prosecution if he sold nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.
In February, D.C.’s Federal Court of Appeals summarily rejected the arguments made by Trump’s attorneys — including that the president would be protected from prosecution even if he had his political opponents assassinated.
The three-judge panel unanimously determined that Trump is not shielded from prosecution for potential crimes committed in office related to the subversion of the 2020 election.
Trump has long been ranting about the matter in his public statements and on social media, effectively making the immunity issue a plank of his presidential campaign.
Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land.
“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.
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The best one is that he argues only the senate/congress can rule he's broken the law, and only while he's president. So in his world he could assassinate someone, leave the presidency and then get away Scott free.