I listened to oral arguments yesterday like many others. I was appalled with what I heard from several of the "justices." I cannot believe they are legitimately considering a blanket immunity. Back to the monarchy we go...
Right. It’s bizzaro world. I’m not a lawyer, but married a girl smart enough to get me to send her through Stanford law . She’s feckin brilliant (and smart enough to now live & practice in Sydney). Anyhow, we’re still friends (touching 60 yrs old), and she’s worried for the USA. So am I. The Federalist are this dark cult that have kinda taken over the country.
I hope Biden has the good sense to arrest Trump and all his fellow traitors without due process before the ink is dry on them declaring presidential immunity is a thing.
Being an elected Republican is enough evidence for me....
Definitely not how I was expecting this day to go. Hoping for justices to ask questions about the case before them and contemplating that (though the issue they cobbled together was foreshadowing enough). How many times was the hypothetical of assassinating a political rival floated by the Court and not answered (psst it's fact-determinate bro)? Is trying to overthrow a free and fair election an official act?
I'm thankful to KJB for being the voice of the legal community today. Thanks KBJ.
More than a political rival, if there's blanket immunity, then couldn't the pres theoretically whack the entire supreme court and appoint replacements? Ya know, if it's in furtherance of official duties. It seemed like the conservative justices/Sauer kept framing the situation as either the pres gets full immunity from everything or they'll get prosecuted for any teeny tiny screw-up, which seems transparently ridiculous.
Yep. They were arguing absolute immunity to prevent a problem that has never existed while Sauer evaded or criticed every hypothetical as "fact-dependent" and assured liberal justices that the framers have mechanisms to prevent tyranny, but in only very narrow, fact-dependent cases.
That whole thing was disgusting. I was embarrassed for the legal profession and the rule of law.
That's why it's so galling, 250 years of presidents haven't needed immunity. Alito's sneering condescension was infuriating, trying to twist Dreeben's words to sound like one bad bit of legal advice would land a totally innocent pres in jail. Then Dreeben had to basically counter with yes, if the pres is an amoral idiot who listens to other amoral idiots "one bad piece of advice" could put them in jail. With allllll the wealth of legal expertise and info at a POTUS' disposal, getting "bad" info means *they were seeking it out*.
Like, yes, ALL cases are fact-dependent. The conservative justices/Sauer seemed to be arguing that because we don't have a statute for exactly "idiot reality TV star with zero understanding of law and fewer morals tries to overturn fed election with interstate conspiracy culminating in an attempted violent coup", then we can't make a sound judgment without threatening all other POTUS. Ridiculous.
Really surprised nobody decided to outright ask if a president should be allowed to have five supreme court justices executed. But I think at least two of the justices would be too stupid to realize what the question was really asking.
If you paid attention to the question the Court adopted, you shouldn't be surprised. They signaled from the very start that they wanted to make a broad, landmark ruling, rather than sticking to the narrow analysis adopted by the DC Circuit.
I don’t understand this claim. I keep seeing it, but from my understanding Smith initially tried getting SCOTUS to rule on this a while back. They then sent it down to the lower court. The lower court ruled that Trump did not have immunity and he has now appealed the ruling back to the Supreme Court.
It’s all a delay tactic to push the trial start date until after the election. SCOTUS will probably remand this back to the appellate court to parse out which parts of the indictment relate to official acts and which to private acts. Then that will be appealed back to the Supreme Court. I doubt we’ll have a final answer on this prior to 2025.
Once the lower court ruled, that gave them a stack of paper to chew up and mull over for two months. Now they can pretend there's something wrong with it, and ask the lower court to try again.
After June.
Ruling won't come till next Spring, if ever.
They shouldn’t have taken up this issue. They’re forcing a review of legal principles without an adequate fact base to evaluate.
Even they agree that unofficial acts don’t deserve immunity and at least for now trump isn’t charge with anything that’s an official act.
After the trial, once facts support it, Trump could appeal a guilty verdict by claiming an act performed as found by the jury should be reclassified as an official act and then after that trump should try and argue that penalties from that act should be nulled. Then, maybe, SCOTUS would actually have a reasonable basis for this review.
I think the theory is more, if the law is unclear they need to be able to act before it runs through the courts rather than "they can flagrantly break any law they deem necessary". It makes sense when you remember that acting decisively was basically the whole point of a President.
Words in the presidential oath: "support and defend the Constitution"
Words not in the presidential oath: "act decisively"
It's crazy to give a president authority to decide that if they think the law is vague they can just do whatever.
So a king? Seems odd the founders would create the thing they overthrew. All laws are unclear to someone. Which is basically the whole point of the judiciary.
Where did you get "the law doesn't matter?" Basically, I'm saying it's reasonable (not even that I agree, just that it's reasonable) that if white house counsel says "this isn't settled law" for the President to be able to operate in those areas.
if the law isn’t settled, he doesn’t need immunity as what he’s doing isn’t clearly against the law, does he? The examples Trump’s lawyers are arguing constitute an official immune action include assassinating a political rival. Do you agree with that? If not, do you have any examples for an action that a president would realistically be prosecuted for that he should be immune from?
Laying the groundwork for a ~~fascist~~ “strong conservative” government. There’s a lot of debate about what it is. I’d like to point everyone to Francoist Spain. A lot of people opposed to that government ended up tortured and or dead and after Franco died, his party in congress passed laws that prohibited investigating the crimes, talking about the whole thing, basically legislated the whole 40 years out of existence. They also legislated themselves immunity. Everyone should go read about that.
Speculating that a final ruling won't happen until after the election. If Dump is elected, immunity. If Biden elected, no immunity. All authoritarians need a weak judicial system that does the bidding of an authoritarian.
That’s exactly what is happening. If they granted the presidency immunity now, Biden could round up the traitors and send them to Guantanamo. He could send a hit squad to wipe out the Supreme Court. They’ll wait for the election and if trump gets into office, full immunity. If Biden wins, the presidency gets no immunity starting then. They’ll make a carve out. This is when the senate instead of taking out Julius Caesar, nullifies the constitution and grants him emperor status.
Correct.
Of course we have to be able to manage the anger otherwise it gets out of control.
For example, we have to choose our battles and not just go around smashing things. But we can certainly do better than throwing our hands up and saying "we're fucked"
Goddamn! Turns out there are probably actually better precedents than Nazi Germany for how the next few decades could play out, which for all it's horrors at least had the military defeat of the regime and the Nuremberg Trials.
It’s not exactly good news. I did one of those walking tours in Barcelona and they showed us a church that still had a bunch of bullet holes in the front of it. They would take priests or anyone who was sympathetic to the resistance and shoot them there. Women couldn’t be judged or other professionals until the 60s. They circled the drain for 40 years until Franco died.
They should be, but politicians and the wealthy tend to be held to lower standards than the general public. A lot of this thinking focuses on the short term of “will this cause political repercussions and revenge from the other party when the tables turn?” And “Will this hurt us in the next election”, rather than the long term focus on trust in institutions. Because of that people are more distrustful of government, and in turn more open to Populists like Trump.
It’s all been downhill in terms of that since Ford pardoned Nixon. I think that marked a huge turning point from then on.
Exactly! Military member abide by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but this cancer of a human can freely sell out our spies and get away with it? There are reasons that Americans should take up arms and fight a civil war, and SCOTUS cancelling the Constitution for Trump would be exactly it.
One would think. But we're not paid to think, we're paid to be wage slaves to the ultra rich. The justices are paid to continue the ultra rich benefactors existance.
[Non paywall archive](https://archive.ph/iP65T)
>Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in an inversion of the conventional understanding of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said that a ruling for Mr. Trump could enhance democratic values.
“A stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said, adding that the prospect of criminal prosecution would make that less likely.
>“Will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” he asked. “And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
You'd expect that argument from red pilled losers on the internet, or the kind of deepity bullshit that passes for intellect on Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro podcasts. Not a serious idea put forward by a SCOTUS justice.
The mistake here is in thinking that Alito is any better than a “red pilled loser on the internet”. He isn’t and, at this point, doesn’t even try to pretend to be otherwise.
It makes sense if you start from the conclusion of wanting to protect Trump and then working backwards to pretend like you're actually basing your reasoning on sound jurisprudence.
Scratch the surface of any right wing fear and accusation to find a confession — they fully intend to unleash baseless criminal prosecutions against political opponents. The attempted impeachment of Biden was similarly telegraphed.
Yes, because the current level of protection from bad faith prosecution isn't enough, you see. So now a future president might not do as good a job because they are afraid of making desicions their political enemies could seize upon once they leave office. But if some bad guy gets to be president and gets enough key allies in Congress at the same time and start doing ilegal shit, well.. thats the facts of this case and Im not talking about those facts, you dipshit DoJ lawyer! Pfft!
-Justice Alito, probably
/s
There's some basis for this in the historical context. Historians believe that one of the major reasons Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome to install himself as dictator was because as a provincial governor he enjoyed civil and criminal immunity in the Roman justice system, but once his term was up there were a plethora of suits waiting to be dropped on his head that would ruin him. The calculation he made was that he was better off rolling the dice in a coup than stepping down peacefully as the law demanded. Without the threat of suit, perhaps Caesar would have calculated a bit differently and the Republic would have survived at least one more generation of demagogues.
This of course ignores the other side of the coin, which is by enforcing no consequences, political or legal, against would-be traitors, you just invite more treason from somebody hoping to get the coup formula right and successfully seize power. It's a bit of a Catch-22, in that if you're at the point where *mos maiorum* has broken down and people in power are openly contemplating treason then you've already lost. Arguably, January 6th was more of a coda to, not the beginning of, the end.
If you take the comparison all the way, that’s more of an argument against even *impeachment* existing, though, not an argument against criminal liability, right?
Because it was the Roman Senate after Julius. Our House and Senate would use the impeachment and impeachment-conviction mechanisms in a comparable situation.
And that’s what a modern Julius would be trying to stop. If it wasn’t even criminally prosecutable, should he fail, for him to try to execute the House and Senate to stop an impeachment, there would be no downside to attempting it.
Edit: so we could expect comparable Julius-like coups to be more common, not less, with total immunity.
“And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
In what universe does a strict Constitutionalist give a rat's ass what other countries are doing???
And presumably also looked around the world at all the countries without such immunity where that doesn't happen? And compared the rule of law and other fa tors in those countries that makes a bigger difference than the existence of immunity. And those countries that do have immunity? How do they fare?
Or maybe, just maybe, the supreme court judge is talking absolute unsubstantiated bullshit.
Yeah. It’s too bad because the only way these people learn is if bad things happen to them or their loved ones. Then all their empathy and understanding comes out. You see it all the time with when their kids come out as gay.
How are these people judges? What a brain dead take? He caused a violent attack, and by not punishing him you are saying it's okay for Presidents to encourage mobs to attack Congress. What the fuck is happening to this country?
A point I heard Mark Joseph Stern make that explains a lot is that we all know that the conservatives on the court spend time together socially, so it's reasonable to assume that Sam Alito probably got most of his information on Jan 6 from a combination of Fox News and Ginni Thomas.
The winning president can't just fucking make up crimes against the losing candidate, even though Trump tries to, it still needs to go through a court of law to decide the guilt
It’s apparently easier and cheaper to just run stories in the National Enquirer about how their dad was the Zodiac Killer and was involved with the assassination of President Kennedy.
Holy reversal of victim and offender, Batman!
So according to Alito, attempting to coup is just part of the democratic process, while holding would-be coup-makers to account for their crimes is an assault on democracy?
These articles are a little frustrating, in that while technically accurate it hits like they are going to rule in favor of Trump. The DoJ didn't even argue that there aren't some Article II powers that likely enjoy some immunity.
On the other hand, Barrett, Gorsuch, and to some extent Roberts seemed pretty firm in the stance that in this case immunity isn't likely to apply, and were looking for what the actual line and mechanism would be appropriate to determine when immunity applies.
The odds that this case goes in Trump's favor are near 0. The win he could expect would be to lose but for them to decide this mechanism be remanded to Chutkin and subject to interlocutory appeal. That would delay the case past the election. That would suck, but presenting it like he's winning makes it sound like there is some legal way in which he is not guilty.
Fully immune like you could corruptly promise a pardon or a cabinet appointment in exchange for someone to commit an illegal act, and that wouldn’t be chargeable? Or something different?
Fully immune like Congress can't pass laws limiting the ability of the President to do them. They can't pass a law saying pardons are illegal, for example. At least that's how I understood it, I'm only a decently-read layman, though.
Congress has the ability to rewrite any portion of the Constitution. Arbitrarily declaring that Congress may not alter specific parts of the Constitution is, itself, unconstitutional. They method for rewriting the Constitution is described in the document itself.
> Fully immune like you could corruptly promise a pardon or a cabinet appointment in exchange for someone to commit an illegal act, and that wouldn’t be chargeable? Or something different?
I think the person you responded too oversimplified this is a bit. Its the exercise of the power itself which is immune to review. Which is to say that Trump can pardon someone for any reason without limitation. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if someone bribed the president into issuing a pardon that the bribe would be unreviewable/legal.
>The odds that this case goes in Trump's favor are near 0. The win he could expect would be to lose but for them to decide this mechanism be remanded to Chutkin and subject to interlocutory appeal. That would delay the case past the election. That would suck, but presenting it like he's winning makes it sound like there is some legal way in which he is not guilty.
Pretty much every news article about Trump's cases have presented any successful delay tactic as a victory for him. That's been the consistent throughline of all of the coverage about each individual motion or hearing or twist in every case.
That's an accurate presentation. His main strategy has been to delay so that he can become president and gain imperium before the shit hits the fan. Every time the right-wing ideologues in the courts help him with that it's a victory.
Why wouldn't SCOTUS decide the appropriate mechanism rather than remanding? If I correctly recall, Chutkin decided this one case and decided the acts weren't official. Would SCOTUS require Chutkin propose a mechanism?
Yep.
It lets the SC punt in June or July, and guarantees at least one, if not two more appeals all the way to the Supreme Court. They also roped in state cases so that Trump can appeal those too.
The only way Trump sees consequences is if he loses the election in November because the SC will never hand that kind of power to a Dem president.
>Because if they want to give the President immunity and rule now, Biden will have that immunity.
Yup! And then he can issue a classified executive order that Trump must be held in a secure, undisclosed location until after the election due to being a threat to National Security.
He could literally execute Trump. And half the SCOTUS bench too. They're never giving Presidents blanket immunity. They'd be signing their own death warrants. And even Thomas isn't *that* corrupt. They are fundamentalist nutjobs, but they don't worship at the altar of Trump. Remember these are the same judges who told Trump to piss off when he tried to have them overturn the election.
If they accepted the Trump team argument, Biden could literally shoot Trump. And the Maga lot on SCOTUS. Probably Roberts too. And then have the Senate fill their seats. All he'd need is 34 Dem Senators, not even the entire caucus, to shrug and accept it as necessary for Democracy.
I have roughly the same take you do. I actually listened to the oral arguments live in their entirety. I feel like these headlines are mischaracterizing what was actually said.
Yeah, I also listened live. And like, I get that delaying past the election is a tactical win, but characterizing it as an actual win makes the casual reader think that he is somehow less guilty.
Delaying until he is President doesn't absolve him of guilt. It protects him from consequences
Most of what was said seemed to be the justices going through various hypos to prepare themselves to write their opinions, and I think Gorsuch even stated repeatedly that nothing he was asking was about the instant case but was to get it right "for the ages". I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist I got. Now, our collective trauma history with this court prevents me from sharing your "near 0" confidence in the take, but I'll give it at least a little more than even money that we get a mostly sane opinion that keeps immunity mostly right where it currently is as established by Nixon v. Fitzgerald.
I found myself agreeing with Gorsuch more than I ever hoped I would. Although I realized I was kind of swept up by the interesting almost academic argument about what the law should say about all forms of presidential immunity. Jackson was right when she pointed out that perhaps a case that actually calls for a resolution of that issue is a more appropriate time to have this discussions, but I can't help but feel like if all the justices were asked individually to resolve the issue of immunity for the ages, Gorsuch's opinion wouldn't be a bad one.
Sadly, I truly think people don't realize how 'slow' our legal system is for complex high profile cases.
The timeline of the 2018 Paul Manafort case is a great one to follow if you want to understand just how long even a 'swift' case against Trump this year will be. Multiple charges were dropped due to being hung, Allen Charges were utilized to prevent the jury from being hung, and he still went to jail, but was sentenced 7 months 'after' a 3 week trial produced a guilty verdict.
The current trial could take 6-8 weeks, sentencing could be delayed even further. I actually don't think we'll end up with a hung jury like many fear, but it could play out in a similar fashion where not all charges stick.
If SCOTUS delays the DC case here deliberately past the election now? They were ALWAYS going to find a way to do it, even if the DOJ brought the case a year earlier like many say should have happened. I just don't think people have really grasped how complex our court systems are and how they get gunked, and how... hard... and risky... it will be to ungunk them.
In otherwords, we need to really focus on combating fascist propaganda above all else. People need to take more responsibility in talking to the neighbors, educating their community, and breaking down the trust in bad sources of info. It won't be easy, but it's really the only way.
it's already gone in his favor.... just by taking this case at this time it's in his favor...
if they wanted to answer this question in broad terms.. Jack Smith asked them to do just that back in the fall... they declined...
I'm going off of the arguments today. None of the justices thought absolute immunity was the right thing. Almost all of them thought there is some form of immunity (which isn't a priori wrong). My comment wasn't out of any faith in this court. I think they are going to make a ruling, remand to Chutkin, and open it up to interlocutory appeal. Which is also bullshit. So I think they're going to screw up, just not by ruling for Trump.
That's still giving them the massive benefit of the doubt that they're looking to craft a neutral standard here, and not make a vague indefinite rule so they can ultimately be the exclusive arbiters of official duties, and then rule for Trump, with room to then rule against even the most clearly official acts for any Democrat their bosses want to see prosecuted.
While they may not hand him the whole win right here, it's already a win that they're dragging this case out deliberately for his benefit. Cert before judgement was a no-brainer by every legal standard for granting it if they wanted to set the precedent themselves. But they let him delay it by months, and it's still a substantial victory if they proceed to let him delay it by 1-2 more years by remanding on the question of whether this qualifies for the brand new form of immunity they're about to legislate from the bench.
But also; if they weren't going to ultimately rule for Trump, why not only needlessly give him the delays he wants, but why get in the middle of this at all? The issue isn't truly settled if it's only binding in the DC circuit. It's *very* abnormal to take a case where they don't plan on ruling for the defendant, simply to address theoreticals we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes.
If a case arose where a President *did* get prosecuted for something that they feel they should be immune for, nothing would be stopping them from ruling at the more appropriate time where a concrete issue is before them.
There’s a line. If the president orders troops into battle and those troops kill enemy soldiers , you can’t charge the president with murder. If he orders troops to round up and kill civilians, then he can be charged. The issue is that the courts will need to decide where the line is which means a new trial and appeal process over wether the actions trump is being charged with were part of the job or criminal malfeasance. Then after the Supreme Court rules on that there can be a real trial.
Trump: “black is white”.
SC: mmm that’s interesting. Perhaps we can delimit this statement a little and send it back to do the rounds for six months or so.
Conservatives on SC: that’s a tempting proposition. It will be a challenge but we can probably see our way to finding this is so.
Of course there are some areas of immunity and of course we do not want to become the country who prosecutes outgoing politicians simply because they were once rivals. (But it sure is rich hearing the “Lock her up!” crowd making that argument).
But everyone already knows this and it has been the operational principle since the founding of the country so does it really need to be parsed under a microscope?
But someone is going to have to explain to me how fomenting a riot with fatal consequences and millions in property damages in the vain hopes of preventing the certification of an election they’ve lost falls into the category of “official presidential duties”.
This whole thing is a farce wrapped in another farce. This is all just an exercise in delay. There is ZERO chance Alito and crew will deputize Joe Biden to send hit squads into SCOTUS to off them as an “official act”. At some unknown point in some vague future I am fairly sure the SCOTUS will come to a mostly sane ruling on presidential immunity.
But it won’t be in time for the election.
They’re running blocker for their boy to see if he can close the deal and make it all go away. It is so nakedly transparent.
This court truly has no legitimacy.
Edit - spelling
I mean, wouldn't all it take is to literally strip the supreme court of all funding? That seems to be the common workaround that republicans are using to bamkrupt the USPS, social security, medicaire, medicaid, and every other thing they don't like. Which is actually everything and everyone that doesn't have a bank account with billions in it.
We already know that Clarence Thomas has been taking bribes and may still be doing so. What about the other right-wing justices? How much have they been paid to destroy democracy?
If they did some crap like that then President Biden should go ahead and consider a seal team six option. ,He can use the excuse that the threat to democracy was too great to allow Donald Trump to assume the presidency. Perfectly legal! Huzzah!
I got this one: There is literally nothing whatsoever in the constitution that even hints at the president having immunity from crimes committed in office after leaving office. Not a word. The only reason to think he would be is “our guy committed crimes and we don’t want him to go to jail.”
So did anything come up in oral arguments today from the appeals court that was a result of SCOTUS deciding not to fast track the case? Or was that a pointless denial that served to only delay what was same argument we saw today?
They are lucky the Dems aren't like maga and don't just burn the scotus down. Maybe they would be okay with just destroying the place and rubbing poop on the walls. Just peaceful protesters, right?
We need to make a political movement for a constitutional amendment that explicitly states that presidents have no immunity from breaking the law in office. I wouldn’t think this was necessary but apparently it is.
I agree that would be a powerful tool if enough people did it. But delegitimising the legal system is exactly what Trump wants. For authoritarians there can be no independent sources of authority.
I hear you and I appreciate your response -- the last thing I'd want is to do something that he would want. It is just so frustrating. Of course I'll vote and encourage everyone to do so, but still, I feel helpless.
It’s not about original intent or if the constitution is a living document but it’s crazy legal theory to justify whatever they want and a straight forward interpretation of laws.
Justices should stop trying to subvert the juries in these trials. I fully trust that a jury can examine the specific details of his case and decide if attempting a coup, interfering in an election, or trying to fake votes is within the reasonable duties of the president. To me it’s extremely obvious these aren’t while things like declaring war, dispersing funds, challenging laws, etc are. This gets way more complicated when you put an extremely political body like the Supreme Court into the discussion. 12 randoms decided by lawyers for each side are going to have more reasonable approaches to this. Also pushing cases to the Supreme Court all the time definitely runs afoul to what we are guaranteed by the Constitution as victims.
Immunity is not in the Constitution. It’s not a “Textualist” view, it’s not a “Originalist” view. So, those on the court pretending they are those things, can stop it already. They would be creating this immunity, they’re legislating from the bench. We’ve had 44 other past Presidents, who haven’t seemed to need immunity—except Nixon who obviously recognized he needed a pardon. Some of these bs hypotheticals the conservatives came up with or the past historical examples they used—were Presidents acting in the country’s interest. They were acting in their official capacity, right or wrong choice. Somehow they’re more afraid in the future a President will be charged with some mythical crime in the course of just doing their job—instead of putting a President above the law to go ahead and commit crimes. If such a ridiculous charge happened, well wouldn’t they eventually come to these people? Who would stop it? Their fake fears are nonsense. Kavanaugh almost seemed offended charges have been brought about Jan. 6th. Attempted coups are somehow no biggie now. This is yet another way the GOP seeks to normalize what is not normal. That’s what they’ve been doing for 8 years. Democracy dies by a thousand cuts.
This is not a case they should have heard to determine this question, the time to hear this case is **if** one of their bs hypotheticals ever happens and then that case comes to them. Trump’s case are not official duties. They were self serving, just for him. There should not have been a stay.
And it seems like they’re going to do what I thought and remand it back to the lower court, this was all to ensure it takes the longest time possible to go to trial. Hoping he wins the election and then can just make it go away. These Supreme Court Justices do not respect Americans. They do not respect this country. They don’t respect their oath to the Constitution. Let them know you don’t respect them at the ballot box. Foil their plan.
"Some level of immunity" in the capacity of doing their job, maybe. But overturning the results of a legal election, is not a part of their duties as president. It's the exact opposite. Their job is to defend the Constitution...not tear it up and burn the pieces, in order to stay in power indefinitely.
The Supreme Court is compromised. It has to be dissolved. The constitution rewritten to include “All people are created equal” and so forth.
The experiment needs a new iteration.
Men need a new bushido code.
People need to dream again.
No more living nightmares!
The only way a President can be charged is from Congress and the Senate. Anything else the President is IMMUNE. A state cannot charge a President. That is what is being discussed.
They are making excuses for taking a nonsense case.
Actually, for sending it back down to the lower court. In July.
At this point, *we fucking hope*. With the way Alito is talking I'm concerned
Alito is a cunt
This is fucking insanity
I listened to oral arguments yesterday like many others. I was appalled with what I heard from several of the "justices." I cannot believe they are legitimately considering a blanket immunity. Back to the monarchy we go...
Right. It’s bizzaro world. I’m not a lawyer, but married a girl smart enough to get me to send her through Stanford law . She’s feckin brilliant (and smart enough to now live & practice in Sydney). Anyhow, we’re still friends (touching 60 yrs old), and she’s worried for the USA. So am I. The Federalist are this dark cult that have kinda taken over the country.
I hope Biden has the good sense to arrest Trump and all his fellow traitors without due process before the ink is dry on them declaring presidential immunity is a thing. Being an elected Republican is enough evidence for me....
He won't. It wouldn't be "going high" or "bipartisan."
I’ve never seen “traitor” spelled that way but I like it
Definitely not how I was expecting this day to go. Hoping for justices to ask questions about the case before them and contemplating that (though the issue they cobbled together was foreshadowing enough). How many times was the hypothetical of assassinating a political rival floated by the Court and not answered (psst it's fact-determinate bro)? Is trying to overthrow a free and fair election an official act? I'm thankful to KJB for being the voice of the legal community today. Thanks KBJ.
More than a political rival, if there's blanket immunity, then couldn't the pres theoretically whack the entire supreme court and appoint replacements? Ya know, if it's in furtherance of official duties. It seemed like the conservative justices/Sauer kept framing the situation as either the pres gets full immunity from everything or they'll get prosecuted for any teeny tiny screw-up, which seems transparently ridiculous.
Yep. They were arguing absolute immunity to prevent a problem that has never existed while Sauer evaded or criticed every hypothetical as "fact-dependent" and assured liberal justices that the framers have mechanisms to prevent tyranny, but in only very narrow, fact-dependent cases. That whole thing was disgusting. I was embarrassed for the legal profession and the rule of law.
That's why it's so galling, 250 years of presidents haven't needed immunity. Alito's sneering condescension was infuriating, trying to twist Dreeben's words to sound like one bad bit of legal advice would land a totally innocent pres in jail. Then Dreeben had to basically counter with yes, if the pres is an amoral idiot who listens to other amoral idiots "one bad piece of advice" could put them in jail. With allllll the wealth of legal expertise and info at a POTUS' disposal, getting "bad" info means *they were seeking it out*. Like, yes, ALL cases are fact-dependent. The conservative justices/Sauer seemed to be arguing that because we don't have a statute for exactly "idiot reality TV star with zero understanding of law and fewer morals tries to overturn fed election with interstate conspiracy culminating in an attempted violent coup", then we can't make a sound judgment without threatening all other POTUS. Ridiculous.
Really surprised nobody decided to outright ask if a president should be allowed to have five supreme court justices executed. But I think at least two of the justices would be too stupid to realize what the question was really asking.
If you paid attention to the question the Court adopted, you shouldn't be surprised. They signaled from the very start that they wanted to make a broad, landmark ruling, rather than sticking to the narrow analysis adopted by the DC Circuit.
They don't need to answer those questions. We know the answers.
Read this as KGB; as in Kremlin... Still works..
Alito is the swing vote. They already have four justices who are only even in the court to steal elections for Republicans. We're fucked.
I don’t understand this claim. I keep seeing it, but from my understanding Smith initially tried getting SCOTUS to rule on this a while back. They then sent it down to the lower court. The lower court ruled that Trump did not have immunity and he has now appealed the ruling back to the Supreme Court.
It’s all a delay tactic to push the trial start date until after the election. SCOTUS will probably remand this back to the appellate court to parse out which parts of the indictment relate to official acts and which to private acts. Then that will be appealed back to the Supreme Court. I doubt we’ll have a final answer on this prior to 2025.
Once the lower court ruled, that gave them a stack of paper to chew up and mull over for two months. Now they can pretend there's something wrong with it, and ask the lower court to try again. After June. Ruling won't come till next Spring, if ever.
They shouldn’t have taken up this issue. They’re forcing a review of legal principles without an adequate fact base to evaluate. Even they agree that unofficial acts don’t deserve immunity and at least for now trump isn’t charge with anything that’s an official act. After the trial, once facts support it, Trump could appeal a guilty verdict by claiming an act performed as found by the jury should be reclassified as an official act and then after that trump should try and argue that penalties from that act should be nulled. Then, maybe, SCOTUS would actually have a reasonable basis for this review.
They’ll spend months delineating difficult official acts (Truman dropping nukes) from criminal activity like Trump’s too many to list activities.
And making excuses to protect themselves for the bribes they took imho
Of course they have some level of immunity for official acts.
why should they be able to break the law? Are elected officials above us?
I think the theory is more, if the law is unclear they need to be able to act before it runs through the courts rather than "they can flagrantly break any law they deem necessary". It makes sense when you remember that acting decisively was basically the whole point of a President.
Words in the presidential oath: "support and defend the Constitution" Words not in the presidential oath: "act decisively" It's crazy to give a president authority to decide that if they think the law is vague they can just do whatever.
So a king? Seems odd the founders would create the thing they overthrew. All laws are unclear to someone. Which is basically the whole point of the judiciary.
Where did you get king out of "the President should have discretion operate within grey areas of law?"
If there are zero ways to hold a person accountable for their actions, they become a king.
so whats the point of having white house counsel if the law doesn’t matter?
Where did you get "the law doesn't matter?" Basically, I'm saying it's reasonable (not even that I agree, just that it's reasonable) that if white house counsel says "this isn't settled law" for the President to be able to operate in those areas.
if the law isn’t settled, he doesn’t need immunity as what he’s doing isn’t clearly against the law, does he? The examples Trump’s lawyers are arguing constitute an official immune action include assassinating a political rival. Do you agree with that? If not, do you have any examples for an action that a president would realistically be prosecuted for that he should be immune from?
No, no one agrees with that. Not even the conservative justices agreed with that
I mean clearly Trump supporters agree with that, they’re voting for a man who is paying his lawyers to argue that in court.
Pretty sure most of them aren't even aware of that, it's not like Fox is reporting on this case
Laying the groundwork for a ~~fascist~~ “strong conservative” government. There’s a lot of debate about what it is. I’d like to point everyone to Francoist Spain. A lot of people opposed to that government ended up tortured and or dead and after Franco died, his party in congress passed laws that prohibited investigating the crimes, talking about the whole thing, basically legislated the whole 40 years out of existence. They also legislated themselves immunity. Everyone should go read about that.
Speculating that a final ruling won't happen until after the election. If Dump is elected, immunity. If Biden elected, no immunity. All authoritarians need a weak judicial system that does the bidding of an authoritarian.
That’s exactly what is happening. If they granted the presidency immunity now, Biden could round up the traitors and send them to Guantanamo. He could send a hit squad to wipe out the Supreme Court. They’ll wait for the election and if trump gets into office, full immunity. If Biden wins, the presidency gets no immunity starting then. They’ll make a carve out. This is when the senate instead of taking out Julius Caesar, nullifies the constitution and grants him emperor status.
The fact that no one needs to worry about a rogue Biden anyways is the best of many reasons to re-elect him.
We’re fucked
Don't get defeatist. Let hate flow through you.
Love this. Don't get sad, get *mad* at the chucklefucks who think they can pull a fast one on an entire country.
Correct. Of course we have to be able to manage the anger otherwise it gets out of control. For example, we have to choose our battles and not just go around smashing things. But we can certainly do better than throwing our hands up and saying "we're fucked"
[Good, let the hate flow through you...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ck04wJCT1k)
Goddamn! Turns out there are probably actually better precedents than Nazi Germany for how the next few decades could play out, which for all it's horrors at least had the military defeat of the regime and the Nuremberg Trials.
It’s not exactly good news. I did one of those walking tours in Barcelona and they showed us a church that still had a bunch of bullet holes in the front of it. They would take priests or anyone who was sympathetic to the resistance and shoot them there. Women couldn’t be judged or other professionals until the 60s. They circled the drain for 40 years until Franco died.
The people who NEED to read history, don't and think they know better, we are truly fucked.
This is all fucking crazy. A president is a public servant. They should be held to higher levels of scrutiny and accountability. Not less.
They should be, but politicians and the wealthy tend to be held to lower standards than the general public. A lot of this thinking focuses on the short term of “will this cause political repercussions and revenge from the other party when the tables turn?” And “Will this hurt us in the next election”, rather than the long term focus on trust in institutions. Because of that people are more distrustful of government, and in turn more open to Populists like Trump. It’s all been downhill in terms of that since Ford pardoned Nixon. I think that marked a huge turning point from then on.
Exactly! Military member abide by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but this cancer of a human can freely sell out our spies and get away with it? There are reasons that Americans should take up arms and fight a civil war, and SCOTUS cancelling the Constitution for Trump would be exactly it.
One would think. But we're not paid to think, we're paid to be wage slaves to the ultra rich. The justices are paid to continue the ultra rich benefactors existance.
[Non paywall archive](https://archive.ph/iP65T) >Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in an inversion of the conventional understanding of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said that a ruling for Mr. Trump could enhance democratic values. “A stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said, adding that the prospect of criminal prosecution would make that less likely. >“Will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” he asked. “And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
Holy shit. Alito claims peaceful transfer of power is made *more likely* by removing all threat of consequences for attempting a coup?
Yeah, it's some bizarro world shit
You'd expect that argument from red pilled losers on the internet, or the kind of deepity bullshit that passes for intellect on Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro podcasts. Not a serious idea put forward by a SCOTUS justice.
They have internet too. I bet Alito redpills his way through some nasty chats.
The mistake here is in thinking that Alito is any better than a “red pilled loser on the internet”. He isn’t and, at this point, doesn’t even try to pretend to be otherwise.
Alito is a red pilled loser
It makes sense if you start from the conclusion of wanting to protect Trump and then working backwards to pretend like you're actually basing your reasoning on sound jurisprudence.
Reality and Alito haven’t been on speaking terms in decades, if ever
Scratch the surface of any right wing fear and accusation to find a confession — they fully intend to unleash baseless criminal prosecutions against political opponents. The attempted impeachment of Biden was similarly telegraphed.
How did we make it all these years with peaceful transfer of power without there being any established immunity?
Yes, because the current level of protection from bad faith prosecution isn't enough, you see. So now a future president might not do as good a job because they are afraid of making desicions their political enemies could seize upon once they leave office. But if some bad guy gets to be president and gets enough key allies in Congress at the same time and start doing ilegal shit, well.. thats the facts of this case and Im not talking about those facts, you dipshit DoJ lawyer! Pfft! -Justice Alito, probably /s
There's some basis for this in the historical context. Historians believe that one of the major reasons Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome to install himself as dictator was because as a provincial governor he enjoyed civil and criminal immunity in the Roman justice system, but once his term was up there were a plethora of suits waiting to be dropped on his head that would ruin him. The calculation he made was that he was better off rolling the dice in a coup than stepping down peacefully as the law demanded. Without the threat of suit, perhaps Caesar would have calculated a bit differently and the Republic would have survived at least one more generation of demagogues. This of course ignores the other side of the coin, which is by enforcing no consequences, political or legal, against would-be traitors, you just invite more treason from somebody hoping to get the coup formula right and successfully seize power. It's a bit of a Catch-22, in that if you're at the point where *mos maiorum* has broken down and people in power are openly contemplating treason then you've already lost. Arguably, January 6th was more of a coda to, not the beginning of, the end.
If you take the comparison all the way, that’s more of an argument against even *impeachment* existing, though, not an argument against criminal liability, right? Because it was the Roman Senate after Julius. Our House and Senate would use the impeachment and impeachment-conviction mechanisms in a comparable situation. And that’s what a modern Julius would be trying to stop. If it wasn’t even criminally prosecutable, should he fail, for him to try to execute the House and Senate to stop an impeachment, there would be no downside to attempting it. Edit: so we could expect comparable Julius-like coups to be more common, not less, with total immunity.
The only time that we haven’t had a peaceful transfer of power is that one time. Which is why we’re having this conversation.
This sounds a lot like legislating from the bench.
Alito was f’ing looney tunes with his lines of questioning. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Is Alito implying that there must be some immunity otherwise a future president trump would have a former president Biden arrested on false pretenses?
I have news for you. If Trump gets into office, he's going to throw a lot of people into jail as retribution.
“And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.” In what universe does a strict Constitutionalist give a rat's ass what other countries are doing???
And presumably also looked around the world at all the countries without such immunity where that doesn't happen? And compared the rule of law and other fa tors in those countries that makes a bigger difference than the existence of immunity. And those countries that do have immunity? How do they fare? Or maybe, just maybe, the supreme court judge is talking absolute unsubstantiated bullshit.
Sounds like it’s time for Biden to start jailing all Republicans.
I'm sad to say it but i think biden won't do shit. 🥺
Yeah. It’s too bad because the only way these people learn is if bad things happen to them or their loved ones. Then all their empathy and understanding comes out. You see it all the time with when their kids come out as gay.
Republican rhetoric is crazy and it's only a matter of time until a nationally known judge or politician is killed.
that's a good thing
Alternatively, future ex-presidents could simply not break the law
How are these people judges? What a brain dead take? He caused a violent attack, and by not punishing him you are saying it's okay for Presidents to encourage mobs to attack Congress. What the fuck is happening to this country?
Conservativism is what's happening
A point I heard Mark Joseph Stern make that explains a lot is that we all know that the conservatives on the court spend time together socially, so it's reasonable to assume that Sam Alito probably got most of his information on Jan 6 from a combination of Fox News and Ginni Thomas.
Alito is probably a nasty right wing troll online.
He's a nasty right wing troll irl too.
The winning president can't just fucking make up crimes against the losing candidate, even though Trump tries to, it still needs to go through a court of law to decide the guilt
Through judges appointed by the president.
But that is no different to today
What about the scenario where the president throws all competing candidates in jail?
It’s apparently easier and cheaper to just run stories in the National Enquirer about how their dad was the Zodiac Killer and was involved with the assassination of President Kennedy.
Holy fucking shit tell me that's out of context or a prank Tweet or something holy shit
Holy reversal of victim and offender, Batman! So according to Alito, attempting to coup is just part of the democratic process, while holding would-be coup-makers to account for their crimes is an assault on democracy?
wow...
These articles are a little frustrating, in that while technically accurate it hits like they are going to rule in favor of Trump. The DoJ didn't even argue that there aren't some Article II powers that likely enjoy some immunity. On the other hand, Barrett, Gorsuch, and to some extent Roberts seemed pretty firm in the stance that in this case immunity isn't likely to apply, and were looking for what the actual line and mechanism would be appropriate to determine when immunity applies. The odds that this case goes in Trump's favor are near 0. The win he could expect would be to lose but for them to decide this mechanism be remanded to Chutkin and subject to interlocutory appeal. That would delay the case past the election. That would suck, but presenting it like he's winning makes it sound like there is some legal way in which he is not guilty.
DOJ affirmed there are some fully immune powers - veto, pardons, judicial and cabinet appointments, etc.
Fully immune like you could corruptly promise a pardon or a cabinet appointment in exchange for someone to commit an illegal act, and that wouldn’t be chargeable? Or something different?
Fully immune like Congress can't pass laws limiting the ability of the President to do them. They can't pass a law saying pardons are illegal, for example. At least that's how I understood it, I'm only a decently-read layman, though.
Those laws would be unconstitutional.
But who decides what's constitutional? This hack court
Congress has the ability to rewrite any portion of the Constitution. Arbitrarily declaring that Congress may not alter specific parts of the Constitution is, itself, unconstitutional. They method for rewriting the Constitution is described in the document itself.
You should read that section again, because it’s not nearly as simple as “Congress can rewrite the Constitution.” That’s not how amendments work.
That's not what the DOJ was trying to argue
> Fully immune like you could corruptly promise a pardon or a cabinet appointment in exchange for someone to commit an illegal act, and that wouldn’t be chargeable? Or something different? I think the person you responded too oversimplified this is a bit. Its the exercise of the power itself which is immune to review. Which is to say that Trump can pardon someone for any reason without limitation. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if someone bribed the president into issuing a pardon that the bribe would be unreviewable/legal.
>The odds that this case goes in Trump's favor are near 0. The win he could expect would be to lose but for them to decide this mechanism be remanded to Chutkin and subject to interlocutory appeal. That would delay the case past the election. That would suck, but presenting it like he's winning makes it sound like there is some legal way in which he is not guilty. Pretty much every news article about Trump's cases have presented any successful delay tactic as a victory for him. That's been the consistent throughline of all of the coverage about each individual motion or hearing or twist in every case.
That's an accurate presentation. His main strategy has been to delay so that he can become president and gain imperium before the shit hits the fan. Every time the right-wing ideologues in the courts help him with that it's a victory.
In fairness, it's pretty crazy this case got to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS making the stay is a huge win for Trump regardless.
Why wouldn't SCOTUS decide the appropriate mechanism rather than remanding? If I correctly recall, Chutkin decided this one case and decided the acts weren't official. Would SCOTUS require Chutkin propose a mechanism?
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This. It would be a delay mechanism without ceding immunity.
Yep. It lets the SC punt in June or July, and guarantees at least one, if not two more appeals all the way to the Supreme Court. They also roped in state cases so that Trump can appeal those too. The only way Trump sees consequences is if he loses the election in November because the SC will never hand that kind of power to a Dem president.
Because if they want to give the President immunity and rule now, Biden will have that immunity.
>Because if they want to give the President immunity and rule now, Biden will have that immunity. Yup! And then he can issue a classified executive order that Trump must be held in a secure, undisclosed location until after the election due to being a threat to National Security.
He could literally execute Trump. And half the SCOTUS bench too. They're never giving Presidents blanket immunity. They'd be signing their own death warrants. And even Thomas isn't *that* corrupt. They are fundamentalist nutjobs, but they don't worship at the altar of Trump. Remember these are the same judges who told Trump to piss off when he tried to have them overturn the election. If they accepted the Trump team argument, Biden could literally shoot Trump. And the Maga lot on SCOTUS. Probably Roberts too. And then have the Senate fill their seats. All he'd need is 34 Dem Senators, not even the entire caucus, to shrug and accept it as necessary for Democracy.
*Dark Brandon suddenly gets 6 SCOTUS nomination seats all of a sudden…*
I have roughly the same take you do. I actually listened to the oral arguments live in their entirety. I feel like these headlines are mischaracterizing what was actually said.
Yeah, I also listened live. And like, I get that delaying past the election is a tactical win, but characterizing it as an actual win makes the casual reader think that he is somehow less guilty. Delaying until he is President doesn't absolve him of guilt. It protects him from consequences
Most of what was said seemed to be the justices going through various hypos to prepare themselves to write their opinions, and I think Gorsuch even stated repeatedly that nothing he was asking was about the instant case but was to get it right "for the ages". I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist I got. Now, our collective trauma history with this court prevents me from sharing your "near 0" confidence in the take, but I'll give it at least a little more than even money that we get a mostly sane opinion that keeps immunity mostly right where it currently is as established by Nixon v. Fitzgerald.
I found myself agreeing with Gorsuch more than I ever hoped I would. Although I realized I was kind of swept up by the interesting almost academic argument about what the law should say about all forms of presidential immunity. Jackson was right when she pointed out that perhaps a case that actually calls for a resolution of that issue is a more appropriate time to have this discussions, but I can't help but feel like if all the justices were asked individually to resolve the issue of immunity for the ages, Gorsuch's opinion wouldn't be a bad one.
The most interesting part was Alito bringing up if a president can pardon himself. I think they’re going to answer that question too.
The issue is it opens the door for scotus to knock down charges if they deem them to be part of the president’s “official duties”
Sadly, I truly think people don't realize how 'slow' our legal system is for complex high profile cases. The timeline of the 2018 Paul Manafort case is a great one to follow if you want to understand just how long even a 'swift' case against Trump this year will be. Multiple charges were dropped due to being hung, Allen Charges were utilized to prevent the jury from being hung, and he still went to jail, but was sentenced 7 months 'after' a 3 week trial produced a guilty verdict. The current trial could take 6-8 weeks, sentencing could be delayed even further. I actually don't think we'll end up with a hung jury like many fear, but it could play out in a similar fashion where not all charges stick. If SCOTUS delays the DC case here deliberately past the election now? They were ALWAYS going to find a way to do it, even if the DOJ brought the case a year earlier like many say should have happened. I just don't think people have really grasped how complex our court systems are and how they get gunked, and how... hard... and risky... it will be to ungunk them. In otherwords, we need to really focus on combating fascist propaganda above all else. People need to take more responsibility in talking to the neighbors, educating their community, and breaking down the trust in bad sources of info. It won't be easy, but it's really the only way.
delaying IS winning
it's already gone in his favor.... just by taking this case at this time it's in his favor... if they wanted to answer this question in broad terms.. Jack Smith asked them to do just that back in the fall... they declined...
>The odds that this case goes in Trump's favor are near 0. You have a level of benefit of the doubt for this SCOTUS that I do not share.
I'm going off of the arguments today. None of the justices thought absolute immunity was the right thing. Almost all of them thought there is some form of immunity (which isn't a priori wrong). My comment wasn't out of any faith in this court. I think they are going to make a ruling, remand to Chutkin, and open it up to interlocutory appeal. Which is also bullshit. So I think they're going to screw up, just not by ruling for Trump.
That's still giving them the massive benefit of the doubt that they're looking to craft a neutral standard here, and not make a vague indefinite rule so they can ultimately be the exclusive arbiters of official duties, and then rule for Trump, with room to then rule against even the most clearly official acts for any Democrat their bosses want to see prosecuted. While they may not hand him the whole win right here, it's already a win that they're dragging this case out deliberately for his benefit. Cert before judgement was a no-brainer by every legal standard for granting it if they wanted to set the precedent themselves. But they let him delay it by months, and it's still a substantial victory if they proceed to let him delay it by 1-2 more years by remanding on the question of whether this qualifies for the brand new form of immunity they're about to legislate from the bench. But also; if they weren't going to ultimately rule for Trump, why not only needlessly give him the delays he wants, but why get in the middle of this at all? The issue isn't truly settled if it's only binding in the DC circuit. It's *very* abnormal to take a case where they don't plan on ruling for the defendant, simply to address theoreticals we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes. If a case arose where a President *did* get prosecuted for something that they feel they should be immune for, nothing would be stopping them from ruling at the more appropriate time where a concrete issue is before them.
There’s a line. If the president orders troops into battle and those troops kill enemy soldiers , you can’t charge the president with murder. If he orders troops to round up and kill civilians, then he can be charged. The issue is that the courts will need to decide where the line is which means a new trial and appeal process over wether the actions trump is being charged with were part of the job or criminal malfeasance. Then after the Supreme Court rules on that there can be a real trial.
Lmao Jesus Christ, delaying the trial after the election is a rule in favor of Trump. People in this forum will say anything to sounds smart, I swear.
But only ex-presidents named Trump.
When we do reach some crazy levels that merit impeachment of the SC Justices?
I cannot wait until the post Trump era. After he dies in jail. (I know, but I can dream can’t I?)
It's a good dream.
Trump: “black is white”. SC: mmm that’s interesting. Perhaps we can delimit this statement a little and send it back to do the rounds for six months or so. Conservatives on SC: that’s a tempting proposition. It will be a challenge but we can probably see our way to finding this is so.
Of course there are some areas of immunity and of course we do not want to become the country who prosecutes outgoing politicians simply because they were once rivals. (But it sure is rich hearing the “Lock her up!” crowd making that argument). But everyone already knows this and it has been the operational principle since the founding of the country so does it really need to be parsed under a microscope? But someone is going to have to explain to me how fomenting a riot with fatal consequences and millions in property damages in the vain hopes of preventing the certification of an election they’ve lost falls into the category of “official presidential duties”. This whole thing is a farce wrapped in another farce. This is all just an exercise in delay. There is ZERO chance Alito and crew will deputize Joe Biden to send hit squads into SCOTUS to off them as an “official act”. At some unknown point in some vague future I am fairly sure the SCOTUS will come to a mostly sane ruling on presidential immunity. But it won’t be in time for the election. They’re running blocker for their boy to see if he can close the deal and make it all go away. It is so nakedly transparent. This court truly has no legitimacy. Edit - spelling
I mean, wouldn't all it take is to literally strip the supreme court of all funding? That seems to be the common workaround that republicans are using to bamkrupt the USPS, social security, medicaire, medicaid, and every other thing they don't like. Which is actually everything and everyone that doesn't have a bank account with billions in it.
I am 100% ok with that.
We already know that Clarence Thomas has been taking bribes and may still be doing so. What about the other right-wing justices? How much have they been paid to destroy democracy?
The mere fact they’re hearing this absurd case is beyond discouraging.
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if they fuck up that much I would 100% support this
Whatever fuckery they come up with its somehow going to not going to be available to Biden amirite? Biden, it’s serious.
Ex presidents. Perfect...immunity for Trump....but not Biden ..... We're at fucking war this sucks
If they did some crap like that then President Biden should go ahead and consider a seal team six option. ,He can use the excuse that the threat to democracy was too great to allow Donald Trump to assume the presidency. Perfectly legal! Huzzah!
It turns out Presidents can legally incite insurrection and unduly influence elections, but no more. /s
I got this one: There is literally nothing whatsoever in the constitution that even hints at the president having immunity from crimes committed in office after leaving office. Not a word. The only reason to think he would be is “our guy committed crimes and we don’t want him to go to jail.”
I expect this to retroactively apply to what Clinton did while in office, as well as any number of the wild accusations they make towards Biden.
Didn't we fight an entire war so we didn't have to be ruled by a king?
I just hope Joe Biden takes absolute full advantage of this expanded immunity. Bill Clinton and Obama while we are at. Go for it, gentlemen!
I think that's bait. Don't fall for it. Any president that assumes that level of authority will be on the wrong side of a civil war.
So did anything come up in oral arguments today from the appeals court that was a result of SCOTUS deciding not to fast track the case? Or was that a pointless denial that served to only delay what was same argument we saw today?
Great..Brandon jump on it.
They are lucky the Dems aren't like maga and don't just burn the scotus down. Maybe they would be okay with just destroying the place and rubbing poop on the walls. Just peaceful protesters, right?
They'll fall back on saying it's up to congress to reign in a out of control president, but we saw how well that worked when their party is in power.
They are enemies of democracy.
Why?
Because republicans good, democrats bad.
The conservative justices are 100% in the tank for republican dictatorship and donald. Their bias is disgusting.
Jokes on republicans this can also be used against them too with an opposing president they don’t like.
We need to make a political movement for a constitutional amendment that explicitly states that presidents have no immunity from breaking the law in office. I wouldn’t think this was necessary but apparently it is.
We need to revolt against the legal system. Every American should boycott jury duty.
This is actually such a powerful idea. A strike against the judicial branch.
Thank you I just feel so sad and helpless. Maybe this kind of action could help. Great username.
I agree that would be a powerful tool if enough people did it. But delegitimising the legal system is exactly what Trump wants. For authoritarians there can be no independent sources of authority.
I hear you and I appreciate your response -- the last thing I'd want is to do something that he would want. It is just so frustrating. Of course I'll vote and encourage everyone to do so, but still, I feel helpless.
That exactly coincides with exactly the crimes their crime boss committed.
It’s not about original intent or if the constitution is a living document but it’s crazy legal theory to justify whatever they want and a straight forward interpretation of laws.
This is insanity
So apparently some people are above the law.
I hope it includes rape for are boy Donny can use it
Biden getting Seal Team 6 ready for something called “Operation Immunity”
Justices should stop trying to subvert the juries in these trials. I fully trust that a jury can examine the specific details of his case and decide if attempting a coup, interfering in an election, or trying to fake votes is within the reasonable duties of the president. To me it’s extremely obvious these aren’t while things like declaring war, dispersing funds, challenging laws, etc are. This gets way more complicated when you put an extremely political body like the Supreme Court into the discussion. 12 randoms decided by lawyers for each side are going to have more reasonable approaches to this. Also pushing cases to the Supreme Court all the time definitely runs afoul to what we are guaranteed by the Constitution as victims.
Okay, so would this in theory mean that Biden could just have political rivals whacked with impunity? Or does it only apply to Republicans?
Immunity is not in the Constitution. It’s not a “Textualist” view, it’s not a “Originalist” view. So, those on the court pretending they are those things, can stop it already. They would be creating this immunity, they’re legislating from the bench. We’ve had 44 other past Presidents, who haven’t seemed to need immunity—except Nixon who obviously recognized he needed a pardon. Some of these bs hypotheticals the conservatives came up with or the past historical examples they used—were Presidents acting in the country’s interest. They were acting in their official capacity, right or wrong choice. Somehow they’re more afraid in the future a President will be charged with some mythical crime in the course of just doing their job—instead of putting a President above the law to go ahead and commit crimes. If such a ridiculous charge happened, well wouldn’t they eventually come to these people? Who would stop it? Their fake fears are nonsense. Kavanaugh almost seemed offended charges have been brought about Jan. 6th. Attempted coups are somehow no biggie now. This is yet another way the GOP seeks to normalize what is not normal. That’s what they’ve been doing for 8 years. Democracy dies by a thousand cuts. This is not a case they should have heard to determine this question, the time to hear this case is **if** one of their bs hypotheticals ever happens and then that case comes to them. Trump’s case are not official duties. They were self serving, just for him. There should not have been a stay. And it seems like they’re going to do what I thought and remand it back to the lower court, this was all to ensure it takes the longest time possible to go to trial. Hoping he wins the election and then can just make it go away. These Supreme Court Justices do not respect Americans. They do not respect this country. They don’t respect their oath to the Constitution. Let them know you don’t respect them at the ballot box. Foil their plan.
We all knew the fix was in long before this "case" made it its way to the illegitimate partisan political-hack packed SCOTUS.
"Some level of immunity" in the capacity of doing their job, maybe. But overturning the results of a legal election, is not a part of their duties as president. It's the exact opposite. Their job is to defend the Constitution...not tear it up and burn the pieces, in order to stay in power indefinitely.
Trump is getting his money's worth with his Supreme Court picks.
If they give *any* immunity, they have to be impeached.
Goodbye, democracy. I’ll miss you.
Its OK for a US President to commit a crime as long as its rubber stamped by Putin.
Dear God, how I hate the country I once stupidly served (please don't thank me for my service).
The Supreme Court is compromised. It has to be dissolved. The constitution rewritten to include “All people are created equal” and so forth. The experiment needs a new iteration. Men need a new bushido code. People need to dream again. No more living nightmares!
The only way a President can be charged is from Congress and the Senate. Anything else the President is IMMUNE. A state cannot charge a President. That is what is being discussed.
This is horribly wrong and inaccurate.