https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-immunity-supreme-court/
Under this new standard, a president can go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable.
Sadly no. The way they turned it around was very clever.
So they said that only official presidential business is immune, but were ambiguous what that actually means, so inevitably they made it so it would go through them to determine what is the official business.
Second thing is that they picked up from their ass that Constitution also says that no official business can be used in any trial, even if it is unrelated. This not only jeopardizes all the indictments he had, it possibly will negate the New York trial.
trump already submitted request to have it referred based on this SCOTUS ruling.
This election might be the last free election we have. And even if trump loses it will still not be over.
Please vote and make your friends and family vote. And not just for president but also for the Congress.
Edit: I also recommend everyone a book "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century" (there's also reading on YouTube) all the warning signs are present. The more people are aware what it is at stake the higher chance that this can be stopped.
I also recommend everyone a book "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century"
In case it makes a difference to someone, it's a pretty short book.
How does one prove whether or not something is official business if official business can't be used in any trial?
The “unbiased” judge will define what is allowed in the trial or not. And the prosecutor can appeal that decision and hope the higher judge is not also bought and paid for by the criminal president.
Until it eventually hits the Supreme Court and they decide what is and isn't an official act based on what political party the President is affiliated with.
Idk, one of the judges said this ruling made him a king. I'm going to take her word over your half-assed opinion. lol
For all intents and purposes does. Just SCOTUS made itself as a final check on what is an official act and what isn't.
So officially dissolve the Supreme Court and instate a new pack of judges and let those judges decide if it was an "Official Act" and thus totally legal.
Trump could kill anyone and they would determine that it was official business. On the other hand, Biden could have the Republican judges executed and replaced with sycophants who could rule that this also was an official act. It’s a bad ruling.
He can't appoint justices without Senate approval. He only needs 50 Senators to approve though. The rest can be bombed for reasons that apparently don't matter.
He only needs 50 senators if all 100 are present. Start tossing some of the more treasonous ones in Gitmo as an official act and that threshold can be brought down quite a bit.
The NY trial was unrelated to his presidential business anyways. It was about private property and fraud relating therein.
But also, other states that have indicted him for Jan 6th activity are unaffected by this, regardless of how Trump could spin this.
We are dealing with an openly partisan court. Normally this wouldn't affect it, but they already broke a lot of rules.
Under this new standard, a president can go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable.
Uhhh, that already happened.
Well, we've already had a president assassinate US citizens, so let's rev up those predators and go looking for whatever billionaire's yacht Coney Barret, Kavanuahh, and Roberts are chilling on
If you want to get a bit more cynical, you could very easily describe the deaths of Fred Hampton and the Freedom Summer murders as presidential assassinations. If you want to take the extra step down the rabbit hole, there's very real reason to suspect MLK was assassinated by the FBI.
Maybe Obama should have been charged, just to set the record straight, but likely this wasn't attempted because (1) Trump was too busy grifting to put any weight behind this, (2) all of those killed were on foreign soil, and (3) they were all working with Al Qaeda. This is getting into the realm of whether or not killing an enemy combatant is murder and what really defines an enemy combatant. I'm sure there was also pressure from both sides to specifically not answer these questions.
Either way I'd rather live in a country where a President gets charged after leaving office as a rule, than live in a country where a President can practically burn everything to the ground and walk away untouched.
Most presidents have done this. Whether it be bombing countries they're not at war with, trafficking drugs to enrich the war machine by arming enemies of the state, or invading foreign countries and committing war crimes based on their own manufactured lies.
bombing countries they’re not at war with
Fun fact. We haven't officially declared war since 1941.
Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and now Ukraine? All NATO led military interventions or AUMF policing actions. No articles of war required.
trafficking drugs to enrich the war machine
One of the craziest "America just be like that" stories I've ever heard was the time Bush Sr set up a drug buy right outside the White House, by having the DEA extort a teenager picked up for selling crack on the opposite side of town to show up on Pennsylvania Avenue the night of a State of the Union Address and do a straw sale to another agent, just so he could talk about it on national TV an hour later like it happened organically.
Bush dangling a bag of crack on national TV and saying in his Father-Knows-Best voice that we need to go full-on Phoenix Program across every major American city, because of his little kabuki crack sale, is one of those "burned into my conscience" factoids that really changed how I saw our country operating.
Also, we've already had a president assassinate US citizens
So, yeah, in the long term we definitely need to put some guardrails on this. Short term, though, I say rev up those predators and go looking for whatever billionaire's yacht Coney Barret, Kavanuahh, and Roberts are chilling on
Except for the whole retiring from public life part. I wish Trump would just retire from life entirely.
Would this same ruling have happened if Trump wasn’t involved? No, I don’t think so.
Stop the steal overthrow.
So now Biden can do what trump did and not certify the next president using fake electors.
And if he can’t break the law, can’t he illegally introduce a new law that makes all this presidential law breaking illegal?
How would he "illegally introduce a new law"? He could issue a decree but it would be meaningless because nothing gives a president the power to make laws.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_executive_orders
The president can issue executive orders pursuant to a grant of discretion from Congress, or under the inherent powers that office holds to deal with certain matters which have the force of law.
Read more carefully:
The president can issue executive orders pursuant to a grant of discretion from Congress, or under the inherent powers that office holds to deal with certain matters which have the force of law.
Executive orders are limited to exercising powers already granted to the President by Congress or the Constitution. The President cannot just make up new laws. This is basic stuff that should have been explained to you numerous times if you're American.
Correct. There's absolutely nothing stopping Biden from doing exactly what Trump already tried and failed to do. He could put pressure on Governors to "find x number of votes", submit a fake slate of electors to cast doubt on the results, outright threaten people if they don't comply with his wishes. I'm sure this SCOTUS will find a way to interpret any of Biden's would-be illegal actions as actually illegal, but tiptoe around Trump's sedition and fraud.
I can't believe that the prevailing opinion of the times is that the president can literally break the law, even ones specifically meant to bind them and only them such as campaign finance laws, and be immune from consequences under almost any circumstance as long as the court says it's official. Congress effectively can no longer act as a check against the Executive. Only the Judicial can say what is official or unofficial.
This isn't power anyone should have.
I heard a good argument that while these justices are appointed for life to be judges, it doesn’t specify which branch. Reappointment them to a lower court and appoint new justices. They voted for this let them reap the consequences. Outline enforceable ethics standards.
The rules of the Senate, as undermined by McConnell and inexplicably tolerated by Schumer ensure it won't happen.
That co-equal branches thing was nice while we had it.
Just dismiss the senators as official business. What still stands in the way of a total power grab by a US president?
As long as it's official business and they keep it official by officially removing all obstacles, they are legally perfectly in the clear. IANAL obviously, but total power seems just a matter of being audacious enough to grab it.
The president can't dismiss them. That's adding executive power. They took away criminal liability. He'd need to kill/kidnap/imprison them. And who knows if they'd rule that as an official act. They didn't actually outline what counts and what doesn't. So maybe for Biden that wouldn't count and for Trump it would.
I think the more viable option is just packing the court but biden would have to get two Republicans to flip and all Democrats to agree. It's embarrassing he didn't do it when the Democrats had Senate in 2020
The President Can Now Legally Assassinate You, Officially if it Supports the SCOTUS Majority's Agenda
Anything Biden did would be determined to be "not official" by them because he's a Democrat.
Sounds like a reason for Biden to set a whole bunch of legal precedent while he's still president.
As I mentioned on another comment, there is no mechanism for the court to enforce that. The DOJ is under the President. Who will arrest the President? The SC may think this empowers them more, but it really does not.
The conservative court acts in tandem with the GOP. Any government organization run by them will provide the support.
Its more like, the president can assassinate you if it is in the interest of the USA and not for the personal interest of the president.
So if ellected, Trump can assassinate all political competition, Putin-style, legally, but not Stormy Daniels
Who's to say that maintaining the dignity of the office of President is not in the interest of the US? She is impugning his reputation therefore making him look weak which could embolden our enemies. She must disappear for the good of all Americans. It's not hard to justify just about anything as an official act in the interest of the US.
If "maintaining the dignity of the office of President" is a core obligation of president, Trump could be impeached and convicted of that charge.
Not according to the way they define "official act". If it involves presidential power, it's an official act.
Not really. Exercise of a Presidential power, no matter the reason, is immune from prosecution. If it's legal to drop a bomb on ISIS it's legal to drop a bomb on a pornstar.
So letting district courts decide if an action is or is not an official act, is just a joke if anything a president does is official act
A lot of people are reading this wrong. What is likely going to happen is that the district court will say that a grand Jury can decide if something is an official act. That might be challenged again but I'd wager that's the next stop in this saga.
But don’t forget that official government records and any inquiries as to the motives of the president will not be admissible as evidence in any such case.
It's settled law so not to worry, they can just change their minds later when it doesn't benefit their conservative bosses.
The president can also now legally dissolve the Supreme Court and instate a new supreme Court who can then make the decision if it was an official act or not.
Welcome back to another episode of "Where's Humanity Going to Shit Next?", where we tackle the depressing consequences of the actions of the human race to our beloved planet Earth. This episode we visit the US once again, where the president decides he now has the power to kill you himself if he feels like it.
Join us next time to see where humanity is really gonna shit next.
To do a "well, actually" I guess we didn't really have an empire until well past the country's founding. We were a mostly irrelevant backwater for some period of time.
ETA: And as someone who freaking loves this country, I realize that saying a comment like the above is one that could probably get you into a fight two days from now, most especially, when all kinds of fetishistic performative military nonsense and uncritical screeds about this country are at peak ridiculousness (and I love July 4th in spite of these flaws). I consider myself a real patriot, but one that is unwilling to whitewash this country.
I don’t think most civilizations start out in their final form. They typically start much smaller and grow.
No, the US has been an empire from the start. Unless you don't count conquering and colonizing the indigenous peoples because they aren't "civilized" or something.
The pres can now assassinate a billionaire and take all their wealth for themselves as an official act, and be immune.
Couldn't the next president rip that order up and replace it with their own definition?
Too late. Biden made himself SCOTUS and changed back the rule, effective next term. Then replaced SCOTUS with the cast of Arrested Development.
All this murder crap is lame; why has nobody been parroting how the president can do other crimes, like tax fraud or lie under oath or buying drugs or literally anything but murder?
Because the point is to scare you. "Breaking news president buys crack" is not as scary as "Breaking news president axe murders cabinet."
The ruling is not good, but it's not Seal Team Six executes its political rival bad. It's more likely to be President sells nuke secrets to Saudi Arabia under the new official "I Get to Sell Nuclear Secrets to Saudi Arabia Act" he just made up right now.
The President can fire employees that refuse to have sex with him. Firing executive branch employees is well within the President's power. If they don't submit to him, he can fire them. Official act.
literal killing if human beings is lame? we already know to white collar criminals are doing tax fraud and use drugs. old news.
Lame like an overbeaten dead horse, I mean. I was just trying to put out there that there's worse ways to try and ruin our country like Madoff did but worse. And plenty of others I didn't even mention.
No, the murder isn't crap.
Biden can now murder the billionaires. Never mind the small fries.
Biden needs to commit to overturning this, and ideally Citizen's United, if he is re elected
I mean, I wouldn't mind the current President exercising this power over their political rivals, in the election, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, purely as a defensive measure to protect America. It sets a shitty precedence, but do we really want He Who Shall Not Be Named to set the precedence first?
"It sets a shitty precedence.." is a gross minimalization to attach to effectively making the US be a dictatorship. And saying you're ok with a dictatorship because you happen to agree with the dictator is the kind of sentiment that cannot be left unchallenged/unexamined
Right?
And it's incredibly short sighted.
So, in 4 years, will the next dictator be just as "good"? What about the next?
Also the whole "To save America" is literally the exact same reasoning used, and even believed, by the other side. It's circular at this point, one is better, but the other thinks THEY need to save America just as much.
It's a real fucked situation.
