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Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.
More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.
In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.
Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.
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Scotus is illegitimate
This is the problem with them making decisions that are way out of line with the general populace. Laws are just words on paper (and screens these days). The only thing that gives them meaning is people’s willingness to follow them.
From a purely academic standpoint, I think there is some merit to debating the limits of how and why Presidents can be held to account. The Conservative judges were quite concerned with the fate of former Presidents after their terms were over, even though most Presidents managed to not get indicted after leaving office. I think it’s quite clear that if this Court would have just let the lower court ruling stand, the idiots in Texas would have found some reason to prosecute President Biden over his “handling of the Southern border”, no matter how much bullshit that stance is. So in a way, the Court needed to take this up.
To me, it would have been sufficient to say “A President can’t be held liable for executing laws that were in place at the time he was in office, but can (and must!) be held liable for breaking any laws while acting outside his official capacity”.
Even though they needed to take it, they have been deliberately slow-rolling it. I predict they will rule much like I outlined above, but do it in a way where there is no way for the trials to go forward before the election.
I’m not saying a former president should have no immunity, but they should have practically no immunity.
I can envision no rule by which legitimate crimes could be prosecuted while preventing bad actors. The whole system relies on at least some number of people having good intentions.
The whole system relies on at least some number of people having good intentions.
Which is why we’re in the trouble that we are. Have you seen how the GOP is acting lately? Anyone who holds the country above their King is being purged.
I am alarmingly aware. But no rule can fix that.
the idiots in Texas would have found some reason to prosecute President Biden over his “handling of the Southern border”, no matter how much bullshit that stance is.
Then the court can take a few moments to deal with the actual facts of that poorly considered case the same way they could take a few moments to deal with the actual facts of this legit one.
Hard to square presidential immunity with the concept of Originalism in law. Surely, if the President being immune to prosecution were intended to be a thing, wouldn’t the framers have specifically stated that in the Constitution? I mean, come on!
If they rule in his favor, prepare for King Trump. The more I think about it, the more I worry.
Any kind of partial immunity would likely be the death knell for the cases he’s involved in.
If he is immune from prosecution for “official acts”, regardless of the actual intent or motive behind them, then the GA case is basically out the window. Contacting another governing body and ‘ensuring the results of the election were fair’ would most likely qualify as official duties which would make him immune from prosecution even if his actions and motives were criminal.
Similar things could easily happen in DC. He could say he declassified the documents as an official act. You and I both know he didn’t, but if the action is classified as an “official act”, it may not be reviewable. And if the law sees Trump’s mental declassification as an “official act”, the rest of the case goes away because the Mar-a-lago documents would therefore not be classified.
And we all know that Cannon is waiting for an excuse to dismiss the Florida case. She’s stated as much. She’s most likely going to rule that everything he’s accused of falls under “official acts” and is therefore not prosecutable and dismiss the case.
Having virtually all of the cases dismissed would likely send his polling numbers soaring and energize his base. And if he gets a 2nd term with what is essentially a blueprint of what he is and isn’t allowed to do endorsed by the Supreme Court, he’s going to abuse the shit out of that until he establishes authoritarian rule and purges/jails his enemies.
An “official act” cannot be simply anything a President does. It should be either enumerated directly in the Constitution (like the pardon power, or the right to make cabinet and judicial appointments), or an authority given to the Executive through legislation.
There is no role for the President in the electoral process at all. The Constitution offers him no role at all. He is not responsible for ensuring elections are fair, the elections officials in the different states are. I see no possible way that provisioning alternate electors, which were not the ones that were ratified by the States, could possibly be within his official duties.
You are talking like a ratioinal, educated human being. The problem is that we are not dealing with rational human beings.
We are dealing with a man who has openly said he wants to establish authoritarian rule, a political party cheering him on, and multiple federal judges who are eagerly paving the way for him.
As you said, the term isn’t specified in the Constitution. Which means that, in reality, the term “official act” means whatever the hell the Supreme Court wants it to mean. If the Supreme Court wants to say that the phone call to Brad Raffensperger was an “official act” because it was a phone call to another government official, they can. If the Supreme Court wants to say “President Trump packed the documents from the White House and sent them for storage at Mar-A-Lago while he was still technically president, therefore it’s an official act”, they can. If the Supreme Court says that having Hunter Biden jailed right before the election is an official act because he’s under federal investigation, they can. You may not agree with it, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it either.
And just because there’s no official role for the President in the Constitution, that has never stopped the Supreme Court from just making something up. Heck, the broad powers that they exercise now only exist because the Supreme Court themselves made it up out of the blue and nobody bothered to stop them. If they want to say that the President “overseeing” the election process and “ensuring its fairness” is one of his official duties, they can. There’s nothing stopping them.
And even if there was, they’re all but untouchable. They can basically just say “we’re doing it anyway because fuck you that’s why”. The only way it would be overturned would be if Congress takes direct action (hahahahahahahahaha) or if they were to impeach and remove the judges that voted for it (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Remember, these aren’t normal people. These are people who are literally above the law and are now beginning to leverage that to their benefit to further entrench their rule.
I hate how right you are.
I’m cool if we determine Trump is not in fact a ‘man’ and therefore immune but also not eligible for human political office or any other human privileges like living indoors or accessing businesses
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.
It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.
Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom.
In a detailed amicus brief submitted in support of the government in Trump v. United States, 15 leading historians of the early American republic show the extent to which the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution rejected the idea of presidential immunity for crimes committed in office.
“His person is not so much protected as that of a member of the House of Representatives,” Tench Coxe wrote in one of the first published essays urging ratification of the Constitution, “for he may be proceeded against like any other man in the ordinary course of law.”
But having heard the arguments — having listened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh worry that prosecution could hamper the president and having heard Justice Samuel Alito suggest that we would face a destabilizing future of politically motivated prosecutions if Trump were to find himself on the receiving end of the full force of the law — my sense is that the Republican-appointed majority will try to make some distinction between official and unofficial acts and remand the case back to the trial court for further review, delaying a trial even further.
The original article contains 1,223 words, the summary contains 328 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yeah, no shit, “liberal media”.
