US Supreme Court rules Trump has immunity for official, not private acts

I mean, that's what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he's operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?

I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they've opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there'd be nothing a court in this country could do about it.

Please, someone tell me I'm missing something.

He didn’t want to pack the court so I’m not holding out hope that he’d empty the court either. Obviously assassinating justices would completely fuck the country up, but one could argue that the current justices are slow playing us into a fascist dictatorship.

One justice put that out there during oral arguments, but I've read the majority ruling and it doesn't mention assassinations. The dissenting opinion does mention the question of what acts fall within official duties, including political assassinations.

Honestly, the quickest way out is to officially order the summary executions of the judges who established this new immunity - then pass a second law ordering that SCOTUS must always evenly represent all major parties, one out, one in.

Then get new judges in that will reverse the immunity ruling. That way this sort of problem won't come up again.

Sometimes the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood. This is may be one of those times.

No need to pack the court, just a little housekeeping 💅

That's how you create a martyr. And probably kick off a civil war if he did it openly.

But too bad he won't, he's too much of a chicken and Christian.

They sent it back down to the lower courts because they need to determine if he was acting officially. If he was acting outside of an official constitutional capacity he is criminally responsible. If he was doing his official duties with in the constitution he's alright.

It'll probably end up with him hit with some charges and avoiding others.

Constitutionally defined roles have absolute immunity (e.g., pardons). Other "official acts" are presumed to have immunity, but what acts are official is not well defined and as written can be very expansive. Since the Court gets to decide each one on a case by case basis, it will presumably apply more expansively to fascist allies and more narrowly to opponents. All Trump needs to do is present a flimsy excuse for how he was "protecting the election" or "making a political speech as president". The liberal judges are correctly ringing alarm bells. "Official acts" isn't a guardrail.

As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decisionmaking is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, and n. 19. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts.

And also making it so that you can't actually use a ton of the gathered evidence:

Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.

I think this is the part that's going to fuck up the rest of Trump's trials. Everything is going to suddenly be a private record.

And note that they don't give him his immunity now. They 100% will when it makes it back up to them, but they can do half the ruling now to blow off a little steam and then when they declare insurrection and espionage official acts people will already be resigned to it. Same reason they leaked the Roe ruling. They're worried about riots and being lynched if they give people enough of a focal point to organize.

The courts

Why that's easy. It's the top elected official, of course.

Pretty much everything the president does while in office is official. So the more important question is what is within the president's powers.

The problem with immunity rather than changing the law is that all he has to do is prove that in some circumstance he has that power and that he believes that circumstance existed at the time and he used that authority to do it.

For example, he has the power to order the military to assassinate, so the specifics of whether it was legal to assassinate a certain person can't be questioned in court, only whether he has the power to issue that type of order. Because once it's established that it is within his power and he states that he used his authority as president to issue the order, he is immune to any further prosecution. Also, it doesn't matter if he ordered the CIA to do it and they don't have that legal authority to act inside the US. In that case the president is breaking the law, he just can't be prosecuted for it, only the CIA agents involved could be. It's not presidential authority that is being violated in that case so it's off the table for prosecution regardless of how illegal it is.

The court decides which acts are official. They will declare whatever they want official. "He was doing it in his capacity as president to protect the election. He knew he won, so the votes must just be missing."

Problem is that with this, proving that it fell under one power basically means all other laws, even ones that specifically were meant to restrict that power, are meaningless. What he did could be 100% illegal, but he can't be prosecuted for it, so he can't be removed from office or punished after he leaves office.

If he was making that call as the official president of the United States, speaking in an official capacity, then it doesn't matter if the order he gives is illegal if it was within his power to order the Governor of a state to do anything at all. If it's not in his power for him to give an order to the Governor, then he just has to say it was an official suggestion as the president of the US. There's no restriction that says a president can't suggest that the Governor of a state does something to benefit the president. Doesn't matter that the thing he asked for was illegal because it can't be questioned in court at all to determine its legality.

Now it depends on if the Governor were to actually do it. And if as president Trump decides to order the assassination of that Governor once he refused, that would not be prosecutable. The assassin would be the only one who could be punished for the illegal act.

Immunity from prosecution doesn't mean the thing you're doing isn't legal, it means that no one has the right to punish you for that act. It's still unethical to break the law, but there is no enforceable consequence.

They also included in the ruling that:

"Chief Justice Roberts determines that “official conduct,” which garners presumptive immunity under the Court’s framework, may not be used as evidence of other crimes when prosecuting former presidents."

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-supreme-court-s-presidential-immunity-decision

My understanding, a president having an "official" meeting with his staff regarding commiting a crime that falls outside of his normal presidential duties is no longer admissible as evidence for the criminal act.

And they are all thanks to the fact that trump, not Clinton, got to appoint 3 to justices.

And there are still people who think voting for a third party is a good idea.

So then nothing a President ever does can be considered premeditated. This timeline is fucking insane.

I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.

Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here

When this first dropped, all the news media had kind of cautious titles. It wasn't until after their legal reporters actually read it that they started getting the point.

Read the dissents, they're very clear in this not being only somewhat bad.

“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” Sotomayor wrote.

Only if he replaces them quickly with friends, otherwise they'll decide certain acts aren't "official". This is designed so that the fascist court can whitewash fascist presidents, but opposing presidents still need to worry.

Biden has the chance to do quite possibly the funniest Thing™ in American history.

Step? This is it. We're done. Democracy just ended.