He doesn’t even have to assassinate 1 or 2. Thomas committed tax fraud on his RV deal and Alito probably did on his bribes. Joe Biden apparently has dictatorial powers over the IRS and DOJ. Start arresting people and when Trump supporters act up, use emergency powers to drone strike Mar-a-Lago. Those are all official acts.
No. No, it would not. The cooler thing would be to deny SCOTUS in this. Their interpretation of this is far and away the wrong decision. Playing by the new rule only legitimizes it. Pull an Andrew Jackson, deny SCOTUS their ruling and continue as though nothing happened. Same with the end of Chevron deference and Roe.
Andrew Jackson was a racist pursuing genocide, but he was right that the court doesn't have any inherent power to enforce its edicts. That was explicitly outlined in the Federalist Papers as a reason giving court "ultimate decider" powers wasn't a problem.
Ah, right, certainly the next President will also behave the same way...
This feels terribly naive. It would be one thing if we could cement into the Constitution that the President does not have immunity, but Congress can barely pass a funding bill, let alone an amendment. But failing to use the power granted to try and set the country on a better path just ensures that a dictator will rise who does not care about keeping the status quo. And Trump will have a rubber-stamp SC that will say any act he seems to be official is.
You know as well as I do that this ruling will only apply to Trump. They'll have some other bullshit to come up with if Biden wants to do literally anything, but Trump will have absolute immunity.
Trump IS going to win and with this ruling we just created a king...
I mean... I actually agree with (aspects of) that ruling. A nation's leader is going to have to, by necessity, do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put "war"
The issue is defining what counts as an "official act" and having any kind of checks and balances on that.
For example: Let's look at the purely hypothetical example of an outgoing president engaging in a violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to prevent losing power. Crazy, right? But, in that example, it is not at all a stretch that said former president is an enemy of the state. There is a lot of legal discussion on whether it is legal to pop them in the head without a series of trials but it is in that range where it is probably better than not to give the elected POTUS immunity in that situation.
But what if that outgoing president insisted that it was an "official act" to lead that violent insurrection? No intelligent person would at all consider that a defense.
Whether described as presumptive or absolute,
under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official
power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune
from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is
baseless
When the foremost observers of the fascist cabal say their ruling is "just as bad as it sounds", I will take their word for it.
Prior presidents have done all kinds of shady shit without worrying about prosecution. Even the angry orange didn't get charged until he tried to overthrow an election.
There was zero reason to even decide this case except to give immunity to someone who blatantly abuses their authority.
Note that as bad as that is and as evil as it has sometimes been, it is "legal", and thus not subject to criminal prosecution. It is specifically legal for the president to do that sketchy stuff.
For an "official" act to be illegal, but not subject to prosecution just makes no sense. It shouldn't be possible for an illegal act to be "official".
Extra bonkers is the 5/4 opinion that you can't even mention official acts, like if you accept a bribe in exchange for an appointment, you can't mention the appointment while trying to prosecute the bribe.
We won’t because we’re asleep at the wheel. Don’t worry though, we will finally wake up when Trump enters his third term. It’ll be too late to do anything about it but at least we’ll be awake.
Edit: Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people, and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
The level of corruption of the court is another matter.
at which point 3 people's views were ignored which is why they dissented to the majority opinion. Joe Biden in 2020 had 51.5% of the vote, under your same logic 155 million people as a group decided to elect Joe Biden. Which, while technically true, you're pushing semantics at that point that minimizes the differences in views and opinions.
I was never was and never will be a Trump supporter, or even Republican so you see wrong.
But I can see from your comment that you are one to jump to conclusions without reason, so "Not someone I’d listen about anything".
The person you're arguing with made the point that if you hold the ones who voted against the bad thing happening as partly responsible, by the same logic, you should hold people who voted for Clinton in 2016 partly responsible for the election of Trump.
I don't think you can have it both ways. Either the entire USA including you is responsible for Trump becoming president and the entire SCOTUS is responsible for today's ruling, or you're not responsible for Trump winning and the three dissenters are also not responsible for today's ruling.
I get that you're angry, and it's a good day to be angry, the day that they ended democracy, but maybe be more selective about who you're angry with and sometimes try to check if maybe there are some valid things people can disagree with you about.
Yes, but the comment didn't say that the SCOTUS decided, it said 9 people did. Would you say that 53 people played badly? That's how many are on the team, after all.
Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people
funny how you are proud of your kindergarten logic
and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
and the majority in this case was... wait for it... SIX PEOPLE 😂
so "the court decided to..." or "6 members decided to..." is true, but "9 members decided to..." is not true, because 3 members decided not to.
similarly you can say "51% of people voted for biden" or "people voted for biden", but not "100% of people voted for biden" - because that would simply not be true.
if you have any other difficult question, like why is water wet, don't hesitate to ask 😂
Trump's appointments tipped the balance. They didn't "decide" as much as been taken over. It's a part of the judicial system gone rogue and Congress is supposed to reign it back in.
Someone must always make decisions, a world where no decisions are made would devolve into a Mad Max type thing, where the fact that we are members of the animal kingdom would become very readily apparent. We used to decide these things with trial by combat, where the most skilled warrior (or who chose the most skilled as their champion) was right because God apparently said so, by making him so good at fighting. Still a person making a decision. Not far off from a world where you decide if someone was a witch by trying to build a bridge out of them.
The modern trick is dividing up the decision-making power so much that nobody can assemble it all into their personal toolkit and fully embrace corruption with no consequences.
Citizens United was the first step to make it blatantly legal by being able to hide donations in a way that makes make it easy to give money directly to candidates from any source, foreign and domestic.
Then that "it was a gratuity, not a bribe" ruling last week means anyone can just buy off politicians in the open.
So as of this morning it is legal for a foreign country to bribe the president to have someone assassinated.
Wouldn't this mean a president has an obligation to kill his political opponents if they're seen as a threat to the United States, and as an official act, it would be completely legal? Effectively making one man above the law.
Even if it's not seen as an official act, you can't charge the president while they're in the office, and with that power and a loyal justice department, you could eliminate anyone who might try to argue the legality of your actions.
Good luck convincing anyone to bring a case against the guy who keeps making people disappear when they investigate him.
This + project 2025 & a trump presidency is the end of US democracy. I don't even wanna start thinking about the impacts globally..
Trump could now argue he, as sitting president, was threatened in his functioning by the new president elect, and it was an official act to block the transfer of power as long as the sitting president has concerns about the validity of the votes.
(Ofcourse he always has those concerns)
And now with the coming elections he will claim the same and as a bonus he officially and in the open has the republicans refuse to certify a losing vote because that also threatens his position and impedes his functioning.
If the lower courts now claim his acts were not official he will just appeal that back to the Supreme Court, thereby still delaying any closure of the case well after the elections.
I would rather he just pack the bench to 50 seats, one for each state, fast track nominations, and force congress to stay in session until a full court is appointed by putting hoteling them in the vicinity and only allowing them movement between hotels and congressional chambers. This would be in his power and immune as official acts after all.
You are confusing the United States that existed until this decision with the United States that exists after this decision. As long as it’s an official act, the president can now do whatever it wants. If the supremes court objects, the president and threaten or assassinate the justices as long as it’s an official act. The President is now effectively a king. Read Sotomayor’s dissent in this decision. She explicitly states this.
That's the thing, for the executive branch, passing laws is not an official act. It's outside that branch of government. That's what the Legislative branch does.
It would be like Biden overturning a court ruling. That's the Judicial branch, not your dance.
I get it. This is how government functions according to the constitution. Please understand however, under this new interpretation there is no effective legal check on the executive doing anything at all. Yes, it’s not official for the president to do that, but there is no enforcement mechanism, and the president now has authority to coerce anyone or any institution. I know it is difficult to grasp the implications of that, but that is in fact what the Supreme Court did today.
That's the plan right, that's part of Project 2025, to instantiate Unitary Executive Theory to make everything they do legal regardless of courts and impeachment trials.
So in your opinion, did they just reaffirm something like the presumption of innocence but it's tailored for someone who's job it is to sometimes order the deaths of people? So he has "The presumption of immunity" when making otherwise illegal orders, until it's otherwise determined by a court case, or impeachment hearing? Is that what's going on?
Bear in mind that the drone strikes are less attributed to Trump because he revoked or ignored accountability rules and authorized the CIA and defense department to conduct drone strikes without seeking authorization from the White House.
It’s easy to assume that Trump was ‘better’, but nope. He was much, much worse. He just hid the evidence and delegated the crime to others.
Oh, I never meant to bring Trump into it, just that Obama continued Bush's drone program and in a perfect world it would have all been illegal... but not if the President does it. ;)
The Supreme Court ruled that presidents are “absolutely” immune from criminal prosecution when their actions involve allegedly official acts while they were in office.
In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts remanded the case to the lower courts, which now have to determine whether Trump’s conduct was official or unofficial.
A grand jury approved an indictment against Trump in August for charges including conspiracy to defraud the US and obstructing an official proceeding.
Trump faces a series of legal challenges across the country both at the state and federal levels.
Most recently, he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York in a trial over hush money payments, including payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress a story about her and Trump having sex.
That means — unlike in the state case — that if Trump were convicted but elected president, he could potentially pardon himself.
The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
What he did was not official. Now the lower court gets to decide what is official, and it's being intentionally slowed down until AFTER the election so the current admin can't go ballswild with the new allowances. Fuck these Maga-locing shitheads on the SC.
It happened before AND after he was out of office, and they were caught on tape moving locations. Knowingly relocating Presidential documents outside of the chain of command in itself is a crime. It's technically treasonous.
Intent is proven by subjective knowledge of what he knew about the law, and his internal staff have already testified he knew of the existing laws. There's also recent recodings of him saying so and worrying about a crime being committed. He knew, and illustrated such, it's not a hearsay case if he's on tape, and others acted at his direction, which again, is already on record.
The ruling explicitly states that those things on the record are not admissible if they were not through some public form of communication. So his phone call to the Georgia governor would be inadmissible even though it is currently public knowledge since it was originally a private call he claims was official business.
