The ruling states that the President is immune from prosecution while exercising official duties of the office of President but can be investigated by a special counsel that is appointed by an act of Congress, and if successfully impeached and convicted can then be charged with said crimes. “Unofficial” acts are not protected by this immunity but a special counsel is still required to be appointed by an act of Congress to investigate and then bring forward charges.
Out of context this is quite reasonable and level headed. In context of the hyper partisan landscape US politics are today, doesn’t seem likely without a supermajority opposition to be able to bring charges against a president, for official or unofficial acts that are crimes.
This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.
“In its ruling, the Supreme Court decided there was no question that Mr. Trump enjoyed immunity from being prosecuted for one of those methods: his efforts to strong-arm the Justice Department into validating his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud. That was because the justices determined that Mr. Trump’s interactions with top officials in the department were clearly part of his official duties as president.” [1]
One of the president’s official duties is to direct the military to take actions that protect the country. Biden can reasonably claim Trump is a threat to democracy, and can officially request him to be killed. Right? If not why not?
Yes, I'm aware, but it's also not what I'm worried about. And I doubt it's what anyone who is alarmed by this ruling is worried about. I dream of a world where the biggest concern we have is a president doing something illegal and then giving up the most powerful office in the land to avoid consequences. Does anyone think that Nixon would have resigned if this happened in 2024?
Nixon resigned because he was going to be impeached, and convicted in the impeachment, and he couldn't stop it. The House committee (whichever one originates such things) had already voted to impeach. It was then going to go to the full House, which would have voted to impeach, but Nixon resigned first.
To show what a different world it was then, the chair of the House committee, a Democrat, called his wife to tell her "we voted to impeach", *and then started crying" because it was horrible that it had come to that, and that the president had done such things. Today they would have been cheering.
Trump has already proven himself to be more corrupt and sociopathic than Nixon. He was impeached and convicted and didn't resign. He is now a convicted felon and continues to pursue a second term. This is a different world.
He was impeached, and every single politician voted on party line, the whole GOP is 100% corrupt (if you agree he clearly did do it)
impeachment is not a useful tool in this situation.
> Seven Republican senators joined all Democratic and independent senators in voting to convict Trump, the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction of a U.S. president or former U.S. president. After the vote on the acquittal, Mitch McConnell said, "There's no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day." but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.
It's worth noting that the Supreme Court ruling here probably disagrees with McConnell's interpretation of the Constitution in a way that should have changed his vote.
Not necessarily. SILTs and RILTs are options for case disposition, but the accused does not have the power to execute one unilaterally. It's a form of plea deal, usually for military-specific offenses.
Maybe not the current ones but as Commander in Chief he absolutely can form Seal Team 7, secretly have them swear complete loyalty to him, and then assassinate whomever he wants. I think you’re sincerely thinking logically about this within the confines of a working democracy, if Trump wins and with this SCOTUS decision, that all goes out the window.
Thanks for the citation. There's no language in that law that restricts the President's ability to directly appoint members to the military who are loyal to him. All it does is establishes a commission, chosen by the President, that can appoint members to the military. But it does not restrict the President from doing so. In fact the President is free to fire them all and let it languish.
Can you cite any other law or precedent that would restrict him from doing so?
The President is not capable of appointing members to the military unilaterally. Congress has sole power "To raise and support Armies" and "To provide and maintain a Navy." The President's role in accessions under title 10 exists only because Congress put it there.
There are 2 million people in the military. All the president would need to do is find a handful of existing personnel and organize them. He doesn't need to "raise" or "provide" anyone.
This is exactly how Trump organized the legislative coup within the White House. He went through the ranks of the DOJ to find someone who would draft a letter to send to all the states implying that fraud had been found (a lie) and DOJ was investigating (also a lie). No one at the DOJ would do this except for Jeffry Clark, a low ranking official who was promised the role of AG if he were to carry out Trump's scheme.
Donald Trump doesn't give a fuck about any civil service act. He never has, and never will.
He will do as he pleases, and a GOP led congress will simply let him, laws and precedent be damned (and the Supreme Court will comply). A DEM led congress will throw up their hands in uproar, and then refuse to actually do anything.
How is that not nothing? He continued to remain in Office until the end of his term and even attempted to prolong his stay. If those impeachments were worth more than the paper the Constitution is written on, that would never have happened.
Only the Senate can remove the president. The House can only introduce articles of impeachment and vote on whether or not they go through.
This, I believe, was originally set forth because the Senate was modeled as an “upper house” not subject to the whims of popular agitation (6 year terms vs 2 year terms. Appointment/selection by States vs direct election by district constituencies). The House, having more direct connections to the people is given the power to investigate and impeach a president, hopefully as a reflection of the public. The Senate, being composed of elder statesmen and slightly removed from the direct consequences of local constituents, is to be a check on potential rash impeachments.
So I’d dare say the impeachments were worth the paper the constitution was written on. The House impeached. The Senate tried, and acquitted him.
Parent comment specifically called out a "DEM led congress" refusing to do anything. An impeachment vote is the full extent of their power in getting rid of a president. And they did it twice in one term.
> that would never have happened.
What never would have happened? Some bizarre unknown chain-of-events which led to Trump staying in office? The occurrence which DEMs are somehow taking the heat for is the GOP outnumbering them and outvoting them in the senate to keep Trump in.
They must refuse to follow unlawful orders. They never get a choice. They always must follow the law. Refusing a lawful order is a crime, and following an unlawful order is a crime. But they never get a choice.
When someone can pardon you of the crime immediately after you do it, it doesn’t really matter much, especially is you are 100% dedicated to the cause.
Citation needed. Now on, we understand that powers granted the President by the Constitution are official. Actions even marginally associated with those powers cannot produce evidence in a court of law.
The judgement says that the President has immunity (in certain narrow cases). It does not say that members of the military have immunity for following an unlawful order.
It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.
It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.
What do you think the odds are for this Supreme Court to declare e.g. that shredding official documents (or moving them to the president's private property) is an official act?
Only the President can decide what happens to his records and documents. This has been made clear under Navy v. Egan. Congress can pass no laws regarding classification or record keeping. The Presidential Records Act has a caveat where the "personal records" of the President belong exclusively to him, and it's the President who decides what is personal or not.
That's a fascinating interpretation of PRA, which establishes public ownership of all Presidential records. Specifying if a record is private is the responsibility of his/her staff and done at the time of filing. Of course, Trump has tried to quote from the PRA, but he's not charged with any PRA violations, but under the Espionage Act.
Read the judgement. It's literally in the first pages.
> No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.
A President can't pardon non-federal crimes or overturn the a conviction through impeachment as it would remove power from Congress and the Senate, which a President can't remove.
> It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.
Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.
> Read the judgement. It's literally in the first pages.
I read it. I read that it's absolute immunity in core function, which seems pretty damn broad to me. Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?
> A President can't pardon non-federal crimes
He won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties. Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.
> Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.
The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!
Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.
That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.
> read that it's absolute immunity in core function, which seems pretty damn broad to me
It's limited in scope, and still subject to impeachment, which immunity comes from because otherwise going through impeachment would be pointless.
> Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?
The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.
> e won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties.
You're beginning to understand
> Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.
And?
> The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!
These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. Because it was always the case, nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.
> Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.
If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece of paper and no amount of super-majority or SCOTUS rulings is going to make a difference.
> That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.
Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles. The oral hearings over the vaccine mandates is a good example: "but there are millions of dead children" she said crying. Yes, she did that. This is JFK assasination level conspiracy theory whether you like it or not.
Okay but the entire DOJ and military is a huge freaking scope, so what's the real limit here? We're talking about absolute nonreviewable control of the most powerful army and the biggest law firm on the planet.
> still subject to impeachment
This might be reassuring if we didn't go through two egregious examples of impeachment that didn't result in removal. In the first one, Trump attempted to us federal dollars to extort a bribe from a from the Ukrainian President. At the impeachment trial, Trump via Alan Dershowitz argued this conduct was okay because it was taken to increase his electoral chances, and Trump viewed his own election as benefitting America, therefore his actions were to benefit America and not grounds for removal. Because after all how can you be removed for doing what you think is best? From the trial:
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in an impeachment”
The Senate AGREED with that argument and acquitted him on the charges. So even in the case of extorting a bribe, impeachment is not operable as long as the executive claims the extortion and bribe were for the good of the country. The supreme court in their latest ruling seems to agree with this perspective.
In the second impeachment, Trump attempted to stay in power by orchestrating a coup. Mitch McConnell all but voted to impeach, but fell short because in his view, the impeachment happened after POTUS left office and there was a criminal justice system to hold him accountable.
On the first part, well that just means the period between an election and inauguration is a now a crime-spree zone for any lame duck POTUS. They can commit any crimes they want using the DOJ and military during that period, and we know the Senate won't impeach because there's too little time for the impeachment to happen, and now we know the DOJ will probably not be able to prosecute due to this ruling hamstringing the types of evidence and charges that can be brought.
On the second part, we have yet to see whether the system of justice can hold him accountable for the coup. To date, it has not worked and it's been 3.5 years. So it's not clear the federal system of justice can hold any former executive accountable for any criminal conduct whatsoever. States have proven to be more effective at charging and trying criminal conduct, but we have yet to see if it results in any accountability.
So no, impeachment doesn't fix this system. This is a huge exploit. Since it was added intentionally we might call it a back door.
> The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.
Who is going to stop him though? That's the thing people don't understand about executive power. Before the thing stopping that conduct was the thought it was illegal and he would be prosecuted for it after he left office. But now? Now as long as the act was "official", good luck proving it without evidence. Good luck even charging it.
How did people end up in Guantanamo Bay without trial? Tortured? Imprisoned for years without charges or a trial. Who stopped that from happening? What makes you think you're safe from the same treatment now?
> And?
Well that's a pretty big hole in your argument since you're trying to convince me the powers are limited. If the limits of the powers are currently unbounded and the bounds are left up to the people who just gave POTUS sweeping immunity over the DOJ and military, then what are the actual limitations? Neither you nor I nor the SCOTUS judges actually know, so your insisting that the powers are limited is not really true.
> These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.
The ones I had listened to had predicted some limited immunity around things like the military and DOJ, especially the DOJ.
> If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece
I mean... yes? The point is to raise the alarm before it gets that dire by pointing out the ways we can go from here to there. Are you suggesting that it's impossible the armed forces would kill politicians in America? Doesn't that happen elsewhere in the world? Hasn't there already been a civil war here?
> Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles.
Lol I wouldn't even say the same things about the right leaning justices, glad to see where your extreme biases are.
The citation is the Supreme Court ruling itself, which I had assumed people participating in this discussion were familiar with. It grants "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution [only] for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority".
That is a narrow standard. The only acts in this case which met that standard were discussions with Justice Department officials.
Everything else in this case was in fact remanded, and it remains within the power of the lower courts to deny Trump immunity on all other aspects of the case.
Thank you for the citation (citations are not limited to documents, but often and especially in a large document of hundreds of pages, direct one to specific passages, as you did did here).
Your citation is exactly the bit that makes the President immune for directing Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival -- directing the military is within the President's "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority". According to the Supreme Court, such a direction is now "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution".
But the President can declare a person an enemy combstant, or have them arrested in the name of national security, and their private records are now inadmissible.
> Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial. Pp. 30-32.
Trump's influencers work around that in a different way: by singling out individuals for military tribunals[1], he is not using the pardon power to deprive them of due process, or excuse someone else from doing so. The military tribunal deprives them of due process. But trying a civilian in a military tribunal is only constitutional if a civilian court is unavailable, which happens out of convenience in places like Guantanemo Bay.
It's pretty much a truism that one should never rely on a dissent's characterization of what the majority opinion says. Especially if the dissent writer is Sotomayor or Alito, frankly.
Murdering political rivals isn't a core constitutional duty of the President with automatic immunity. If he orders Seal Team 6 to do it, it's an official act, for which he has a rebuttable presumption of immunity. That means the prosecution has to prove he hasn't got immunity.
Roberts at least strongly hints in the majority opinion that Trump's immunity for trying to coerce Pence to commit crimes on Jan. 6 should be rebuttable. If that's the bar then ordering Seal Team Six to kill people will definitely get a president sent to prison the day he leaves office, whether the regular way or by impeachment.
Immunity before impeachment has pretty much been the position of the Justice Department (I think wrongly btw) with regard to current presidents for decades, including the Biden justice department. This isn't as big of a change as it makes sense for the Democrats to make it out to be.
Personal preference admittedly, but I much prefer Kagan and so far, Jackson. Sotomayor, like Alito and sometimes Thomas but generally not the rest, strikes me as purely results-oriented. The Chief justice is results-oriented in a different way. I think the reasoning matters more than the outcome, but I understand that not everyone does.
I've listened to her during the vaccine mandates oral arguments.
She was emotional during all the hearing and made blatantly false emotion based statements such as "think of all the millions of dead children".
SEAL Team 6 can just keep killing any one who would charge them with a crime, until they reach the final boss level i.e. SCOTUS who have X-Men like powers and attack all at once. It’s a toss-up at that point, it comes down to which side can successfully recruit Chuck Norris (both a member of Delta Force and an accomplished legal scholar.)
This remains a constructive problem though because the U.S. Congress is either variously outright dysfunctional or captured by self-interested parties.
Which we need to fix regardless, but in the interim it’s hard to conclude that the federal government isn’t starting to crumble under the combined weight of that problem and the general, concerning erosion of trust in expertise and institutions, and the rise of populism. The Supreme Court is very efficiently pouring gas on that fire.
That assumes that it occurs under a demoratic and moral president, all he has to do is blanket pardon them. It’s an easy problem to solve for the President. Circular logic is often just fine in legal circles.
Well, if they don't, it shows how evil they are. Same if it went the other way.
However, I don't believe they would. Not after the crap the Uniparty have done for my lifetime. Any president part of the uniparty will be protected and any president against it will be persecuted. We already have seen that.
Many Republicans have shown themselves to be unabashedly evil. What has happened to them? Apart from being reelected and getting more veto power? And what has happened to the principled ones who put country before party? Apart from losing or being pushed to retire?
One single indiscutable example: Trump is a draft-dodger. How many troop-supporting, valor-praising Republicans support him?
Oh, another one: Trump is a liar and a filanderer. How many Republican "values-first" voters and officials have refused to vote for him?
I think it's arguable that it's political persecution of the opposition when they are literally breaking into the White House and stabbing its guards with flags, but you do you.
No what I mean is, why is it that Democrats, those of the '68 Chicago riots, sit-ins, Occupy Wallstreet, etc., are the ones saying "Nobody is above the law"? That was always Republicans when I was a kid.
You can't blame Kagan or Sotomayor or Brown for persecuting the opposition, they haven't been a part of whatever you're talking about. They're just the ones saying that they don't want the president to be a king.
And this is good no matter what party you like best. There are three branches, they're supposed to be a check against each other so that no one branch one can attain supreme power. Congress has already abdicated so much power[1] [2] to the Executive branch that honestly the Judicial is our last chance to restore those checks. And they're failing.
And if you think political persecution of the opposition will be over once Trump is re-elected I recommend reading some of what he's said about exactly that topic, then think about how it relates to this Supreme Court decision.[3]
It's funny. You can replace every word to be the other way, and it's even more accurate. E.g:
Many Democrats have shown themselves to be unabashedly evil. What has happened to them? Apart from ballot stuffing to win and using exective power to target political opponents? And what has happened to the principled ones who put country before party? Apart from losing or being pushed to retire?
One single indiscutable example: Biden is a racist. How many diversity-supporting, inclusive-praising Democrats support him?
Oh, another one: Biden is a liar and a pedophile. How many Democrats who focus so much on calling out lies voters and officials have refused to vote for him after his perpetual lieing?
> Well, if they don't, it shows how evil they are. Same if it went the other way.
See, the problem is some of us don't want to get to the point where we derive petty satisfaction of definitively knowing how evil someone can be. That's why we have (had) checks and balances: to prevent us from knowing -- in the most real way -- how evil someone can be. A significant check on presidential power was removed yesterday.
Where once the president was bound by law and constitution, now he is bound only by his ambition and personal moral compass.
I'm not an American, but I would assume so? Or wouldn't they?
If not so, is there a reason why not? "Murdering an oppositional politician in your own country" seems quite clean-cut bad and unjustified. I know your political system is very much "they vs us", but it can't be that bad?
Part of the ruling was that the conversations between the Department of Justice, the main law enforcement arm of the US federal government, and the President -- which are among his "official duties" -- cannot be entered into a criminal proceeding as evidence against him. Part of the criminal case brought against Trump regarding his attempted coup on January 6 relied on evidence and testimony from conversations where he requested unlawful things or showed an unlawful motive, but he did so within the framework of his official duty as President. The case now returns to a lower court and the prosecutor must prove it without that evidence.
So henceforth from this Supreme Court ruling, the President can call up the Attorney General ("official duties," remember) and say, "find a reason to investigate and arrest my political opponent."
That act, that conversation is now protected. And that action will be carried out, and there is no legal recourse, at least not long after much damage has been done.
At many junctures, not only the January 6 capitol riot, but many others, Trump was only prevented from disastrous anti-democratic actions by principled staff and officials around him. This time around, Trump (or any other dictatorial pretender) will not make the mistake of filling their administration with anyone but sycophants. Trump installed many federal judges. Even leaving it up to the courts to decide if something is an "official" or "unofficial" act, after the fact, is now left to fiat.
It's even worse than that. The Supreme Court says prosecutors can't even question the motive for that corrupt action, meaning that essentially all conversations between a President and his AG are de jure assumed to be above board.
We must assume the President opened an investigation into his opponent because he had a good reason to do so. Otherwise we might restrict his ability to take
bold and decisive action, according to the court.
The problem is, the way things have been for the last couple of decades, many of us are not absolutely certain that the Senate would ever convict a sitting president unless it was 2/3rds of the opposite party -- which is pretty rare.
Probably, if a sitting president (regardless of party) assassinated a political rival, the Senate would convict. Probably.
They are almost certainly hyper-partisan Senators (of both parties) who would not convict a president from their own party no matter what.
The reasons for that would be multiple... greed, fear, a weird sense of loyality to the person, or even just a warped view of reality.
For example, if you thought Trump was Hitler 2.0 coming to take over the government and hunt down minorities and LGBTQ people, then you might feel justified in doing anything possible to prevent that -- including assassination.
What’s happening in the U.S. isn’t politics. It’s a quasi-religious schism that goes to fundamental beliefs about the nature of human society, how government should work, etc.
It doesn’t map on in obvious ways to what you see in Europe. In Denmark, for example, immigration was a political issue. When it turned out the people wanted to restrict immigration, the left of center government supported “far right” immigration restrictions.
In America, a large part of the left sees immigration as a moral issue, not a political one. When Trump was first inaugurated, the left refused to even accept Trump as legitimate because of his opposition to immigration. Hilary Clinton called his supporters “deplorables” and said he was “illegitimate.” This was long before any of the bad things he did.
> This was long before any of the bad things he did.
The reason Trump is now a convicted felon is due to conduct that happened while he ran for office.
Are we not allowed to call into question the legitimacy of someone who commits crimes to get elected, and then uses his position to cover up for those crimes?
Then you should have just asked that. My knowledge about the convictions comes from the court proceedings, not the debate. If you need info about the the charges you should read the transcripts.
What crimes did he commit to get elected? Trump is a crook but his crimes are almost all sleazy real estate and tax fraud. He didn't commit any crimes to get elected before his first term.
Did you follow the trial? He committed election fraud by paying a porn star hush money in order to buy her silence, an expense which he didn't report, lied about, and then covered up with business fraud. For this he was charged and convicted with 34 felonies.
Moreover, the payments should have been reported as a campaign expenses, but they were not because doing so would have defeated their purpose. So the payments were fraudulently misrepresented to be lawyer fees, and when it was discovered, Trump lied about the scheme.
> the payments should have been reported as a campaign expenses
You have it exactly backward. The law is clear that "campaign expenses" cannot have any personal component. That makes sense, because the focus of the law is to prevent candidates from calling things "campaign expenses" that are actually for personal benefit. John Edwards was prosecuted for using campaign funds to keep his mistress silent because hiding an affair has a personal component in addition to a political component.
If Trump had been charged with a campaign-finance violation, his straightforward defense under well-established precedent would be that paying off Stormy Daniels had a personal component (avoiding personal embarrassment and his wife finding out), in addition to whatever effect it had on the campaign. The prosecution would have been required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump's marriage was so dysfunctional that the only reason he would have paid off Stormy Daniels was the election.
That's why prosecutors didn't charge him with a campaign finance violation.
Whatever you're trying to say here is lost in the weeds.
You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.
If you're running for public office, you can't commit fraud to hide things from the electorate because you don't want them to find out. That can't be allowed in free and fair elections. If you get elected doing that, people have every reason to question your legitimacy. If you get caught and lie about it, expect people not to trust you. If you get charged with a crime related to that conduct, don't be surprised when a jury finds you guilty, because it's shady af. This is all very straightforward stuff.
> Whatever you're trying to say here is lost in the weeds.
No, I’m talking about the law. You’re wrong about what you think campaign finance law says.
> You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.
The law is the exact opposite. You cannot call something a “campaign expense” if it is an expense you would incur “irrespective of the campaign.” (That’s the magic phrase in FEC regulations.) If you pay off your mistress and call it a campaign expense, you’ll be prosecuted for campaign finance violations, because the prosecutor would say that you could have non-campaign reasons to do that. John Edwards was prosecuted for doing exactly that.
The New York federal prosecutor (SDNY) investigated the exact theory you are talking about: charging Trump with a campaign finance violation. They didn’t bring the case because all Trump would have to do is prove that he would have paid off Stormy Daniels “irrespective of the campaign.”
And? Like I said you’re lost in the weeds. I think you’re focused too much on being coy, rather than what I’m saying.
> The law is the exact opposite.
As far as I know if you spend money on a campaign you have to report it. If you get someone to spend money for you, you have to report it.
Seems like what you're trying to say is he didn't have to report it because arguably it had a personal component. Okay but that apparently wasn't the case; after the trial it is clear the payments were mostly for the campaign and not to save his relationship or himself of personal embarrassment. If you're trying to say "well he wasn't charged that way so it can't be election fraud" then again, I think you're missing my point.
Either way, I'm left at trying to guess your point because you haven't been clear in making it.
> They didn’t bring the case because
And?? Leaving aside you don’t know why any prosecutor didn’t bring a case, what are you implying? Make your point instead of dancing around it for 2 days.
Whether a prosecutor thinks they can prove that at trial is a different matter. That he was charged under a different law doesn’t make the underlying conduct okay from an elections perspective whether or not some federal prosecutor decided to charge that.
Either way what he did was he committed fraud and lied about it as POTUS, committing some of those crimes in the Oval Office, all to increase the chances of being elected. That is not okay. That makes one arguably (and definitely in my mind) illegitimate as a public servant. Apparently it’s also a felony.
If you think that conduct is okay because of whatever technicalities you can come up with, you’re missing my entire point.
How could it be about "campaign funds" when the charge was about the Trump organization's business records? What you're describing is a straightforward campaign finance violation, which he could have been charged with if it were true.
34 felonies for paying someone not to talk about something? That sounds like the mundane, everyday activity I can possibly imagine at the highest level of politics.
Meanwhile we’re sending billions of dollars to obliterate a people in the Middle East which is a crime that will someday result in violence on our doorstep. Bill Clinton is on record flying to Epsteins island, and I could go on about the insane things our government has got away with.
I dont know anything about politics but that’s my reaction when people bring up “34 felonies”.
>This was long before any of the bad things he did.
You haven't been paying attention for long, have you?
Donald Trump was known as a fraudster and a genuine piece of shit since the 1980s at a minimum.
I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of NYC in the 90s and early 00s and was well aware of Donald Trump being a sideshow joke and a wannabe rich dude about 20 years before he was elected. Nobody in my hometown that had real money thought Donald Trump was anything besides a lawsuit-happy wannabe with midget hands.
None of that changes what parent's points you're trying to respond to. The a partisan divide in the US is so bad now that neither side accept the results of elections being legitimate. Or court rulings for that matter. There's no nuance, and everything is a partisan conspiracy to take over the country, or wreck it.
None of that changes the parent's points you're trying to respond to. The a partisan divide in the US is so bad now that neither side accept the results of elections being legitimate. Or court rulings for that matter. There's no nuance, and everything is a partisan conspiracy to take over the country, or wreck it. Trump is lousy and shouldn't be president, true. But he's a symptom or result of the ongoing partisanship and failed politics.
Yes they (democrats) would, they’ve yet to support a coup or overthrow of the government or criminality by former or current presidents. So yeah I think they would.
The Seal Team 6 example keeps getting batted around and that's unfortunate because it would be an extreme and obviously outrageous attack which would attract much unwanted attention.
Part of the ruling was that conversations between DOJ and President constitute the President's official duties and "therefore" (per the three judges appointed by Trump, one who expressed sympathies with Jan 6 rioters, and yet another whose wife was an active endorser and planner of aspects of the coup) those conversations are protected and cannot be entered as evidence in a criminal proceeding against the President.
The more insidious outcome is that the President can now, because these conversations are official, officially order the AG to investigate and prosecute political opponents.
Maybe some court can review it on down the line, years later. Given the number of judges appointed by Trump, maybe not. Either way, the federal government and rule of law was massively, severely crippled yesterday by the Supreme Court
The Seal Team 6 example is batted around because it is specifically cited by Trump's legal counsel as an official act that isn't bound by law -- the conservative Supreme Court has endorsed this.
Yes, I will take Sotomayor’s well voiced dissent as golden over an opinion on HN any day of the week. I might have been less worried it at least one of the conservatives had voted against this attempt to validate Executive assassinations and imprisoning opponents as the law of the land, but it was 6-3
Not even political rivals. What’s stopping Biden from ordering cumbersome investigations on each of the Supreme Court justices? Especially the ones that are ducking ethics issues?
I think Biden won’t do it because he has morals and believes in democracy. There is nothing stopping Trump from doing it, since he doesn’t believe in anything other than power and self advancement.
Agree with your sentiment. But overseeing elections is not the official duty of either Trump or Biden, that goes to individual states. And using the military to neutralize political opponents is only extreme if Biden does it. Trump openly wants military tribunals for treason against his opponents, which is his way of grasping for jurisdiction in ordering military intervention in the halls of power.
Do you have any evidence to support the claim that Biden has ordered his AG to investigate Trump? Simpler explanation for Trump's legal issues: he committed crimes.
To be honest I'd rather live in a world where Obama¹ assassinating an US citizen would land him and everybody involved in prison than in a world where it does not.
I assume you are referring to the killing of alleged al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike. The major difference between that situation and the situation going forward is that Obama had a legal justification. Assistant Attorney General David Barron justified the action as follows [1]:
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To justify the Awlaki killing, Barron relies heavily on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the law that Congress passed to permit striking al-Qaeda post-September 11th, and which was used to justify the US-led investigation of Afghanistan.
Awlaki, according to Barron, was a leader in al-Qaeda's Yemen-based branch, which is known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The intelligence supporting this claim is redacted from the memo. But Barron claims that, because Congress authorized using "necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaeda, the AUMF would thus give the US legal cover to target Awlaki.
"In consequence," Barron concludes, "the operation should be understood to constitute the lawful conduct of war and thus to be encompassed by the public authority justification." He also writes that the AUMF argument makes the killing justifiable under international law as a defensive use of force.
One possible counter-argument is that this is unconstitutional: the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the killing of US citizens without due process of law. Barron argues that this case is an exception because capturing Awlaki was impossible — for reasons that are again redacted. If capturing Awlaki was "unfeasible," as Barron says, then killing him to prevent him from threatening the US becomes the only option.
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You may disagree with that interpretation of the law, but it seems — given that Obama was not prosecuted for this action — that the legal system does not agree with your disagreement.
Now the point is moot, since any president can order up the killing of anyone they like, because there is no longer a consequence for criminal behaviour. If you think the al-Awlaki killing was unlawful, I hope that you are gravely concerned by the fact that administrations no longer need to even attempt the appearance of complying with the law.
Drone strikes against combatants aren't assassinations, and Obama is hardly the first President to engage armed force against someone the U.S. recognized as a citizen but who felt no personal loyalty to the U.S.
When that American is fighting in a foreign force and aiding actively against US/alied armed forces as a combatant? Yeah I think that’s okay. You can’t hold off on a military target because some American mercenary is there. Those are the chances you take as a mercenary. We’re discussing a president who can now kill anyone he wants with Seal Team 6 and not face any repercussions ever, unless impeached, well I hate to say it but the current MAGA party will never impeach Trump under any circumstances.
They said in effect that using Seal Team 6 would be presumptively immune, and at that point the court would have to consider whether prosecuting a president for assassinating his rival would impose a chilling effect that would impair future presidents ability to command the armed forces. Since killing your domestic rival is not an important part of tactical wartime decisions, the government would easily overcome the presumption.
The presumptive immunity standard only applies to official acts that aren't "core" exercises of the President's constitutional authority. Any enumerated power is core and enjoys absolute immunity, regardless of motive; anything unenumerated but "official" has merely presumptive immunity.
The President's power as Commander in Chief is enumerated, so having Seal Team 6 whack DeSantis would be absolutely immune to prosecution.
> The President's power as Commander in Chief is enumerated, so having Seal Team 6 whack DeSantis would be absolutely immune to prosecution.
This does not seem to fit either the examples set in the majority opinion or a reasonable understanding of what the President's enumerated power as commander in chief means. In the absence of a Congressional declaration of war against Ron DeSantis (which I am all for) the President's core duty would seem to cover killing DeSantis only in the event of a clear and present danger to the nation from DeSantis. Otherwise this is rebuttable, and will be pretty easily rebutted, immunity.
Yes, we are relying on the courts to carve that kind of fine distinction, and yes, this decision makes that a bit harder. But hardly impossible, and we were already relying on the courts for that. Subjecting this decision to the most ridiculous interpretation is politically useful right now but that's about all it's good for.
The Seal Team 6 example was actually originated by another judge 5 months ago and even then Trump's lawyer did not dismiss the example as purely ridiculous. You can look it up.
Trump's lawyers didn't have the opportunity to read the majority opinion before it was written. We do have the opportunity to read it now. Also, I don't know if you have, but I've noticed that Trump doesn't hire the highest quality lawyers.
What is the scope of these "core" powers? During times of war, the Commander in Chief directs military maneuvers etc. in active theatres of combat. At all times he directs readiness and training.
I wouldn't say that the history and tradition of the office is to have Delta Force manufacture artistic pottery cups for children to drink milk from while at school. That action in that time and place would not seem to fall within the role of Commander in Chief (regardless of his intent / subjective belief that the use of fine porcelain may provide some tactical advantage).
This court would rule that people upset about the president assassinating all their rivals should just get elected president and change the policy.
After all, they already did say that women that want health care and the right to prevent (according to the court) overwhelmingly male politicians from messing with their lady bits should just run for Supreme Court and overturn their recent rulings.
The President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Why would he have to stop at only his domestic rival when he could instead simply eliminate anyone who appears to be in the way, and whether or not that is the right decision is deferred to congress and the courts who now consist of people who are still alive and have fallen in line?
That's wrong. The President can still be impeached and convicted by Congress. What this prevents is the weaponization of partisan courts anywhere in the Country against a President for actions they took while in office.
The president may now murder anyone in congress who disagrees with him, as long as he writes the order on presidential letterhead, so they aren't much of a real threat are they?
It doesn't take all courts. It takes only one court across the entire country to disrupt the executive branch. In total, there are nearly 1,770 judgeships authorized across the 209 courts in the federal court system alone, and thousands and thousands of state courts. Having any one of these courts being able to disrupt the executive branch of government is not a feature of a stable governmental system. That is why the impeachment process exists. The SCOTUS merely reaffirmed what was already the law.
> Having any one of these courts being able to disrupt the executive branch of government is not a feature of a stable governmental system.
It appears so stable that it actually hasn't cause any of the damage you fear in over 200 years. That the chief executive is not above the law has produced the most stable democracy that's ever been conceived.
I don't think this is the case. All military members of all branches are taught that they must not obey unlawful orders. Killing elected officials is clearly unlawful.
And the president is still subject to impeachment.
Is this not a problem given impeachment votes will follow party lines? A party with the presidency and with >1/3 of the senate would have unchecked power. As long as there are individuals who are willing to execute the orders (who can later be pardoned), the president could delay elections or eliminate political rivals indefinitely. The system of checks and balances were put in place by the founders assuming each party will serve their own interests. Politics aside, if this immunity is given to the president, the current system would provide no checks for the executive branch of a party willing to exercise the full extent of those powers. People would essentially be expecting on good faith each election that the president will not become a dictator; there would be no procedure to actually prevent that.
My concern is the immunity allows for perpetual, single party rule with only a 1/3 of senate seats and the presidency. There would be no checks in place at the federal level if the party was willing to exercise power to interfere with elections or opposing candidates.
It may be unlawful, and it may fail because lower level officers refuse. But it seems like in that case the president cannot be charged. Lower level officers that go along with it could, but the president has the ability to pardon them.
So even if I some case they fail, there are no consequences so people can try again.
Yes there is also political considerations, but if the president feels confident enough to plan assainations of a rival, or for instance a coup with others in the executive branch, then he must feel he has that handled.
How is Obamacare like assassinating someone? What is your reading material that likens a program meant to bring affordable healthcare to millions to government-sanctioned killing?
That scenario is from the dissenting opinion of justice sotomayer in the pdf brief. Trump's lawyers argued that immunity extends to assassinating political opponents.
It makes the president a king. If Trump gets reelected do you think he will ever leave office? If you think that's far fetched then you haven't read Project 2025 where he can replace weather service employees that don't make forecasts he likes.
Short of a civil war, yes, because the text of the 22nd Amendment is unambiguous and requires considerably more process than a supermajority in the House and Senate to overturn.
I think we need to remember that Presidents have gotten away with a whole lot in the past. Many a blind eye before Trump came on the scene. Now that the seal has been broken, we were on course for a whole lot of these post presidency prosecutions in the future. I think the SC was sensitive to that and wanted to nip it in the bud.
Yeah, it seems this would hinge on whether it was done to protect democracy (official duty?) vs win an election (not but who knows by now). If Biden gives up on running anyway, that removes that question. Then it may not matter much because it's not clear which testimony, recording or other evidence might be admissible where. Then it may not matter because the issue is not even whether that would be illegal or not - just whether the president would have immunity in case it is illegal - and there is evidence - and someone attempts to charge something
Interesting rough overview of that question is here:
Some positions seem more absurd than the usual. For example someone argues "SEAL team 6 would obviously not accept that illegal order" Which seems irrelevant every which way: presumes it's illegal and focuses too much on this one specific example. And accepts SEAL Team 6 for more than a meme - there are obviously lots of outfits other than that one.
Okay, but invert that hypothetical. The American President orders a lot of people killed, including sometimes U.S. citizens. More commonly, they order things that result in significant loss of life, which could be prosecuted as negligent or reckless homicide.
Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions? Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing. Heck, part of the J6 prosecution against Trump somehow involves an Enron-era document shredding law.
What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country with pretty much unrestricted discretion to stitch together vague criminal laws into criminal charges against former presidents. Why should we place such trust in prosecutors?
Why should we instead trust a single person with an absolute immunity for vague “official acts”? Said person is way more powerful than any of the prosecutors.
Because we live in a democracy and at some point we have to respect the pesky will of the pesky people to elect their pesky leaders. If you assume that the people don't want the rule of law, then you must conclude that the people don't want a government.
Government for thee and not for me seems to be the going (and historically traditional) approach - hence why fascists are attractive to people who want to be “lords”
Being able to do what you want, so long as you “kiss the ring” has unfortunately been a reliable path to temporary and virtueless power
Unless the non-activist citizen votes to give their power to the most virtuous, they generally default to giving away power to someone they believe will ultimately give them priority with the least amount of impact to their core personality trait
Trump’s authoritarianism appeals to people who feel that he can control the various unelected people they feel have too much power over their lives and society: career bureaucrats, corporate HE, NGOs, universities, etc.
This revealed that no matter which party wins the election, the fourth branch of government is staffed and run by Democrats. All the three letter agencies are staffed by 95% Democrats. And people think that Trump can bring them to heel.
I’ll add many federal employees are members of professional organizations. And in the last decade, professional organizations have become overtly political. And all of these are staffed mainly by democrats. Paul Clement, one of the leading Supreme Court advocates of our generation, left Kirkland, known as a conservative firm, over the firms opposition to second amendment cases: https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2022/06/23/kirkland-ellis.... This is a firm that will not hesitate to represent the worst Russian oligarchs, mass polluters like BP, etc.
Another example is SFFA. A super-majority of the public opposes racial preferences in college admissions and hiring. But not a single prominent law firm authored an amicus brief in support of overturning affirmative action.
Half the country doesn’t trust credentialed professionals anymore, and with good reason
"The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump."
From your article, that sounds more like close to even instead of your exaggerated 95%.
The point is that credentials plus $3.50 will buy you a coffee in our democratic system. The system shouldn’t be designed to give more weight to your views on broad value issues-say through the actions of unelected bureaucracies or professional organizations—just because you have credentials.
You won’t find it because it’s impossible. Majority democrats? Probably they’d be more likely to be attracted to a government service office. 95%?they pulled it out of their posterior.
I don't agree that this is what living in a democracy means. It has been known since ancient times that democracy is vulnerable to hostile takeover by a populist demagogue. Sometimes, paradoxical as it seems, it is necessary to overrule the people to preserve the democratic system.
Maybe, but who is doing the overruling, how do prevent it from being abused for political purposes, and how do you keep the overruled people from becoming very cynical and dissatisfied with democracy as a result?
Keep asking those questions while trump implements project 2025. I’m sure once you figure it out, the stooges behind it will give up all that juicy executive power.
The executive is already 90% filled with people who not only are one party, but share a particular, distinctive ideology, who have demonstrated their willingness to subvert the institutions they work for in service of that ideology: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/resistance-from-with.... (Remember this happened before Trump did anything. It was based purely on federal workers’ moral objections to Trump’s stance on immigration.)
If Project 2025 succeeds behind its wildest dreams, it won’t even come close to even balancing things out.
> If Project 2025 succeeds behind its wildest dreams, it won’t even come close to even balancing things out.
You're pretty optimistic about that. Trump has amply demonstrated that he can be ruthless. And he'll bring on people as cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries who will be of the same mind.
No, its pessimism. Trump doesn’t have what it takes to restore the system to even a semblance of balance. I’m not sure it’s even possible given the decay in government-adjacent institutions like the law schools and bar associations.
What does “democracy” mean to you? A country where people vote, but unelected bureaucrats and lawyers actually run things and will do what they think is best?
Hypothetical: Trump is campaigning on immigration. Say he wins the election and issues an executive order to deport every single illegal immigrant. What should happen, in a democracy?
> What does “democracy” mean to you? A country where people vote, but unelected bureaucrats and lawyers actually run things and will do what they think is best?
"People" generally don't have the expertise to run things in a complex modern world. Bureaucrats and lawyers aren't always better, but pace Damon Runyon (quoting sportswriter Hugh Keough), that's the way to bet. [0]
"Democracy" in a complex modern world means that "people" periodically get an opportunity to toss out the bureaucrats and lawyers — because ballots are better than bullets.
The problem isn’t that bureaucrats and lawyers are exercising their expertise. It’s that they’re elevating their personal values above their jobs and institutions. They need to shut up and dribble.
I don't think the president should be above the law. I think most presidents have committed crimes and I'd like to see them face more scrutiny not less.
Because that person is elected by a nationwide polity, while prosecutors often aren’t elected, or are elected by politically skewed polities.
Half the country doesn’t share your faith that career prosecutors will do “what’s good for the country” instead of indulging their personal biases.
I would point out that prosecuting Trump under Sarbanes Oxley (a financial fraud law) for supposed insurrection doesn’t exactly engender trust and confidence in career prosecutors.
> What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice
Why do you presume that the dissent did not consider this? What are your qualifications to think you’ve considered this more completely than the SCOTUS (whether or not you agree)?
> More commonly, they order things that result in significant loss of life, which could be prosecuted as negligent or reckless homicide.
> Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions?
Yes! That war crimes have become normal behavior for US Presidents doesn't mean that we now need more legal frameworks for protecting from prosecution of them.
It seems to me that, if we are to actually become a nation of laws and not of men, we need to acknowledge and account for the crimes in office of virtually every president. And if that's too difficult to do, politically speaking, then we simply aren't what we say we are.
> Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing.
This is also a huge problem. It seems that many of us walk around unknowingly subject to capricious prosecution for felonies (according to one author, three felonies a day[0]). How can we have equal protection under the law when any of us can be prosecuted at any time, and the matter of which of us are is one of political discretion?
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> What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country
While the dissent is unsatisfying in some ways (including following the trend of exhaustive and distracting analysis of the particular facts of the case instead of sharp focus on the ostensibly simpler constitutional issues), you are mistaken, as the phenomenon you are describing is contemplated at length - 9 pages (13-21) are committed to this analysis [1].
The inverse of immunity is not that any prosecutor can prosecute. That's the happy medium. Even the most reckless prosecutor would still have to convince a jury, and would still have to go up against a defense in court.
The inverse of total immunity (freedom, no jury, no trial) would be total oppression (prison, no jury, no trial).
> This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.
That is what the media - the same media who until a few days ago told you your current president was in no way diminished in his mental capacity - wants you to believe, they in turn were prompted by a 'progressive' judge - Sotomayor. It was clear from the outset that the media was lying about Biden and it is clear from the outset that this ploy about presidents being able to order hit jobs on their political rivals is a lie.
In short, think for yourself and you have a much better chance avoiding becoming a useful idiot as Lenin called those who blindly followed what the Party told them.
Did they forget that Biden is currently President? What's to stop the sitting President from just rounding up the former President and all of his supporters athen locking them in a cave until after the election?
Couldn't he just make up some BS about a national security threat to make it "official"?
SCOTUS said there was an extra procedural step, namely impeachment and conviction by the Senate. Ultimately the Senate would decide factually, whether that hypothetical action was an appropriate basis for further criminal prosecution.
Prosecuting a president fundamentally is a political act, and why would we think a random DC bureaucrat better qualified to make a consequential political act than the Senate itself?
Normal criminal prosecution is not a good check on a president's authority because the president indirectly supervises the prosecutors. So as a system to ensure "equality in the eyes of the law" the criminal justice system already is not very functional in anything like real time.
The DOJ threat of criminal prosecution only becomes functional when the president becomes a private person, at which point the president no longer has the ability to act in an official capacity anyway.
As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority.
I’m not a NSW operator but I was an operator for HVT ground and helicopter assault missions in Iraq with the teams.
There are a non trivial subset of Tier1 operators who would absolutely take whatever mission they were given by the president and do not view their role as being political
Yes it’s in the training, but it’s not something that is expected because operations like this touch hundreds of people who ARENT operators (generals, joint staff, analysis, strategic planners etc…) that teams rely on to wave that flag through the targeting and JPOE process
> As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority.
This is an incredibly flimsy check on power:
- What if the president uses a drone strike instead?
- What if the president staffs the military (and seal team 6) with loyalists?
- What if the president uses this power to threaten and extort officials into doing his bidding?
>As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority.
Now, let's play that out in real time:
Donald Trump: please kill person XYZ.
Seal Team 6: Uh, no sir, that's illegal. We cannot do that.
Donald Trump: the courts say I have immunity, this is an official act. Person XYZ is a threat to our country, and under the constitution I'm allowed to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This person is a domestic enemy. Kill them.
Seal Team 6: Uh, no sir, we can't do that.
Donald Trump: You're fired. I'm replacing you with someone that can do what I tell them.
Seal team 6: Ok, we'll kill person XYZ.
And the courts will have no problem with that, as per their ruling.
The office of the presidency is certainly not equal under the law to everyone else's professional position. The president is in charge of the military, for one thing, and can act in the interest of national security.
It's not about what the president deserves, but what the people deserve. The founders (after overthrowing one government, forming another, deciding it failed) were tasked with forming a government that can "long endure"... with structuring an office that can both facilitate liberty, but also contend with major enemies foreign (and domestic). The scale of the question is beyond one life or death, but operates on centuries-long timelines. It deals with the equities that face millions of people, not merely the single person holding office.
This is quite common. British parliamentary systems offer immunity to members in their official acts.
Why?
Because, and this is purely hypothetical (lol), an opponent could try and convict politicians with spurious charges to get them out of power.
Singapore’s ruling party loves this tactic. Political opponent is charged with defamation, and if fined more than $5,000, they are no longer eligible to run for office.
It’s a commonly used political weapon which is why most democracies offer immunity.
Absolute immunity does not make for a credible juridical system. While most democracies have some sort of restrictions, a full out absolutely immunity is not very common.
Because the government kills people all the time and destroys their lives and businesses. And because nobody is combing through the criminal law books trying to convict the average person for something.
I mean, the former governor of New York just said the New York prosecution against Trump wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else.
175.10 has been used before. There are many things which are firsts, and a lot of shaky legal theory. My I'd put 10 to 1 odds this gets overturned, and 5 to 1 odds it happens before it gets to the supreme court.
1. Usually they charge the predicate crime.
2. FECA has never been used as a predicate crime.
3. I don't believe a campaign finance reporting violation has been tried as election interference.
4. There are a lot of unsettled questions about these laws like can 175.10 point to a federal crime? Is hasn't been prosecuted that way before. Can it point to FECA despite FECA's broad preemption?
The examples in the article tie the business records crime to another crime that’s at least charged, things like insurance fraud, failing to pay taxes, fraudulently obtaining government benefits, etc. Remarkably, prosecutors couldn’t find evidence of “Kinpin” Trump doing any of those things.
The problem with the Trump prosecution is that it is predicated on an uncharged and rarely used election law crime, and that in turn is predicated on an uncharged federal campaign finance crime. It’s a double bank shot. It’s fair to say that prosecutors didn’t have occasion to charge someone else with a documents crime in connection with an election law crime. But there’s not a single example in your list where prosecutors upgraded the documents crime to a felony based on a chain of two other, uncharged, crimes that relate to far-flung areas of the law.
On top of that, the uncharged predicate crimes have been interpreted in a sweeping way. According to New York prosecutors, agreeing with others to suppress bad news during a campaign is criminal election interference, so long as it can be connected to any other “unlawful” act.
Then the third piece, the unlawful act underpinning the election interference charge, is a federal campaign finance violation that SDNY declined to prosecute, and which New York couldn’t have brought against Trump.
There’s the statute of limitations and jurisdictional issues: none of the claims could have been brought by themselves. There’s the due process issue: because they were not charged, Trump’s counsel had no way to challenge the novel interpretations of the election interference and election law charges.
Cuomo (the former NY AG) and Honig (a former federal prosecutor) are correct. A case based on such an elaborate legal theory with as much hair on it as this one had would not have been brought unless the defendant was Donald Trump.
This case was architected by Carey Dunne, my former boss at Davis Polk. If this case had instead been brought against a gang member, him and folks at Davis Polk would be lining up to do the appeal. But instead they have abandoned the principles of the legal profession and are looking the other way out of class loyalty. It’s shameful and a stain on the profession.
Ultimately the prosecution proved Trump’s indictment of the professional managerial class. They cannot be trusted to uphold the principles of their professions, and will abuse the authority those professions confer to advance their own ideological agendas.
> I mean, the former governor of New York just said the New York prosecution against Trump wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else.
Trump is flagrantly corrupt and coordinates crime through lackeys, many of which have been convicted of felonies. No, you don't catch old kingpins on the stuff you get everybody else with. There's definitely a two-tier justice system going on, but it bends in Trump's favor at every turn.
“Trump actually did all these bad things! But we can’t prove any of them, so we’ll prosecute him for influencing an election by covering up an affair after he already won the election. Don’t sweat the details, you gotta get creative with these kingpins.”
This is persuasive to nobody that doesn’t start from the assumption Trump is a criminal. The irony is that I used to share that assumption, because I’m a pretty trusting person. But after almost eight years of the smartest lawyers in the country going after him, I’m not so sure. My former boss at a white shoe law firm in New York helped engineer the New York case, and it’s the same kind of contrived legal theory the firm would use to help a corporate client make it seem like all their income was earned in Bermuda. Utterly unpersuasive.
Well, he hasn’t argued that he’s innocent; that the evidence is fabricated. The evidence is stuff he tweets. He argues that the system allows these mean people too much time to talk and scheme.
As a Canadian who keeps up on the news but has no skin in the game, from up here it does look petty when after seemingly hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to prosecute Trump, their “we got him now” case amounts to “he expensed an invoice from his lawyer to a business instead of paying it personally”.
That's because the things they can't get him on (yet) include inciting violence intending to prevent the lawful transition of power (aka a coup attempt) -- because the judge is deferring the case past the election -- and influencing states to cast votes in the electoral college against what their people voted for -- because the case is on hold pending investigation of the prosecutor. Both of those have already resulted in convictions of multiple Trump staffers; Trump himself has managed to delay justice in both of those more serious cases.
There is a reason they got Al Capone on tax evasion, and it wasn't because that was the worst thing he did. Crime bosses are notoriously slippery.
Because average citizens and politicians don't generally attract (unceasing) partisan lawfare that is tantamount to systemic corruption.
When prosecutors campaign on pursuing an individual, when such efforts are multipolar and unending, and when the sum effort looks corrupt to a large portion of the country, then it seems obvious to suggest that outrage at a resultant SC ruling, which would not have otherwise come under consideration, is crying over one's self-inflicted medicine.
I don't think that it is healthy that this was put to the SC.
But it was absolutely inevitable given the various prosecutorial efforts and the norm breaking they represent. Even ignoring the open political corruption, and lies, involving them. Though, these aspects aren't necessary to ignore.
In short, breaking norms to pursue Trump was worth the squeeze for them. They were squeezed. That's it.
Assuming that these aren't crocodile tears over a ruling that will protect others from actual accused crimes of the past, or what might come in the future. That these prosecutions weren't specifically brought to force this result. Which is entirely possible. Certainly, such a benefit will be had.
If I understand this correctly, the core effect of this is to essentially transfer the gateway through which it is possible to prosecute a president from any AG's office to Congress.
I suspect which will serve to further entrench establishment power, of which Biden's camp is a part. Presidents within Congressional graces will be effectively immune, crime or no crime. Presidents outside of them may not be so much.
Whomever lived through 2016-2020 and thinks that Trump will have some kind of Congressional carte blanche either hasn't thought this through or is being deceptive.
Compare the improbability of Trump being able to swerve out of his lane, as far as Congress is concerned, and what Obama was able to legally get away with without stirring Congress.
Now predicated on the precedent of Obama's extrajudicial action, Trump may have been able to carry out extrajudicial acts during his term. But no one who was watching thinks that anything without a precedent would have resulted in anything except another Trump impeachment.
Did you really refer to charging Trump for several felonies for which there is abundant evidence, "lawfare?" That is a weird way to say "consequences for breaking the law."
Then I guess Trump has only been successfully prosecuted (so far) for 11.33 days' actions of his presidency. That's a lot of days to go. I can see why he needs immunity.
Actually based on that logic, we all need immunity! Quick, let's get rid of laws entirely.
There's no provision in the constitution for immunity. They made it up there's nothing reasonable about it.
Under this decision the president can commit a crime or order someone else to commit a crime, and as long as the crime is committed using a power of the office, it can't be charged.
For example, if in an official communication the president orders an officer to solicit a bribe for doing their duty, the president can't be charged.
It's ridiculous, horrible, and destructive to the constitution.
Those wouldn’t be crimes. They cannot produce evidence. As of this ruling, it looks like:
- Biden issues a prepardon essentially deputizing anyone who detains Eric Trump or Eric’s laptop.
- We might endure some debate whether it is an official act. That debate actually only matters to Congress or future historians.
- Since the extrajudicial apprehension of Eric and his evidence is defined as not-criminal, there is no need to preserve details. Seal Team 6 and those involved enjoy a prepardon and some assurance that their names are scrubbed.
- This is constitutional if Congress has granted the President (Biden at this point) war powers and is satisfied that some elements of the military identified Eric Trump with the enemy. We’ll debate whether the President is a member of the military, just as we had to debate whether he was an officer of the USA under Amendment 14, section 3.
On paper it makes sense. The people elect a congress charged with checking the powers of the President. States can also pass constitutional amendments to further limit or define the powers of the President.
In reality, power can be consolidated to the point where these checks and balances no longer work properly.
No it doesn't. There's nothing in the constitution that grants immunity to a president and no reason why Donald Trump had to commit the crimes he's charged with.
You're suggesting presidential immunity is a new idea, and criminal charges against ex-presidents are a new threat to the executive branch, both of which were wrong. 230 years ago people had already through through this. Immunity isn't in the constitution because they didn't want it in there.
The president already has all the constitutional protection he needs from prosecution: a prosecutor can't remove him from office.
The ruling also doesn't clearly define what is official, and that one must presume everything is "official" unless proven otherwise, and that anything "official" cannot be included as evidence.
Clarence Thomas even wrote openly that the concept of a special counsel is illegal.
> and if successfully impeached and convicted can then be charged with said crimes
The opinion explicitly rejects this line of reasoning.
> Transforming that political process [impeachment] into a necessary step in the enforcement of criminal law finds little support in the text of the Constitution or the structure of our Government
- Trump's lawyers argued in this case that an ex-president can only be charged with a crime if he was impeached and convicted for that same act. But all of the justices rejected this view today. The newly granted immunity is orthogonal to whether or not the president is impeached.
- Though, the president does have to leave office somehow before he can be prosecuted. He can't be prosecuted while still sitting. This wasn't technically decided in this case, but the parties mostly agreed as much beforehand, and the majority opinion has a footnote approvingly citing an Office of Legal Counsel memo to that effect.
- Separately, Trump's lawyers argued that the special counsel that prosecuted him was not properly appointed by an act of Congress. But the Supreme Court did not grant certiorari on that issue and the majority opinion today did not address it. Justice Thomas's solo concurring opinion, however, did address it and agreed with Trump (but a concurring opinion has no legal effect). In any case, this is a different question from whether prosecutions of ex-presidents must go through a special counsel. As far as I know, there is no formal rule that would require it, but it's highly desirable as a way to avoid political bias. That question didn't come up in this case, though.
Trump's attorneys did not say "the special counsel that prosecuted him was not properly appointed by an act of Congress", Justice Thomas brought this up in oral arguments. Trump's attorneys admitted in oral arguments that they had not brought this up during the appeal, so as an argument it was not saved.
Further more, historically there is no basis for the argument. Special prosecutors, which are different from the "independent counsel" that came about after Nixon; the laws around "independent counsel" expired a while ago.
"Special counsel", and all of the other similarly named, have been around since Marbury. By happenstance, some have been X-members of Congress, Cabinet members, etc... but far from all.
There is a reason why none of the other Justices brought this up, it is absurdist.
I found some time to read the main opinion and Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. I approached them both with a genuinely open mind because I figured that the public discourse lacked nuance.
Well, the opinion is just as awful as everyone has said. For one thing, it is dishonest. The court spends a lot of time distinguishing the different presidential powers and levels of immunity, as if its holding had limitations. It doesn’t. The practical effect of Trump v. U.S. is that it is all but impossible to prosecute even the most heinous abuses of presidential power.
For another thing, the court really couldn’t manage even a semblance of textual or historical support for its decision. Given the court’s recent emphasis on fidelity to those sources, it really is astonishing! (And I say this as someone who is somewhat sympathetic to textualism in principle.)
I think it’s really worthwhile to read at least the syllabus and Sotomayor’s dissent.
It also reflects common practice: https://oxcon.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law-mpeccol/law-mpe... (“ 3 Functional immunity applies to both sitting and former heads of state; however, this immunity is available to such individuals solely with respect to acts performed in their official capacity (Fox 667).”)
France, for example, has prosecuted former presidents for things like bribery. But I don’t think you can prosecute a former president of France for something he told the Ministry of Justice to do.
I suspect this distinction between official and unofficial acts is also what most people assumed the law was, until Trump forced the Supreme Court to confront it under a particularly unsympathetic set of facts.
I think the point is that because there are no limits initially, it makes it extremely easy for the President to murder half the government who disagree with him as an official act. As long as he uses marines instead of his own 9mm hand pistol on the street it would be an official act because the SCOTUS decision assumes everything he does as a precursor is fine. It provides cover for him to act in that manner, and by then there is no one to impeach and convict and then hold him criminally liable. If you have read Project 2025, then you know their first act will be to fire everyone in the executive branch and military and install only loyalists. I think people are seriously underestimating what Trump and his followers are up to.
> Out of context this is quite reasonable and level headed. In context of the hyper partisan landscape US politics are today, doesn’t seem likely without a supermajority opposition to be able to bring charges against a president,
In context though, it's quite terrifying given how much the US has fallen into tribalism. Half the population wouldn't convict a certain candidate no matter what they did.
Actually it's not true of both sides. Hunter Biden was tried and convicted and nobody is up in arms about it, because he did the crimes and should do his time. If his father has done any crimes he should do the time as well.
Most people still think this. The only people who don't are those in thrall to one particular cult of personality.
It involved suppression of an article published by a New York newspaper, by social media companies with a large presence in New York. You could indict the social media companies as part of a conspiracy charge under New York law, even if other relevant events happened elsewhere.
Also, do other jurisdictions have obscure election interference laws they never use? Does Delaware? I bet they do.
Do you mean to argue that the social media websites were legally required to allow links to that article? I don't think that's how the First Amendment works.
A key part of the New York case against Trump was the “catch and kill” “scheme.” Of course tabloids aren’t required to publish stories, just like social media websites aren’t required to publish links. But in the Trump case that was deemed election fraud.
A key part of the NY case was also that Trump, the actual candidate, was a causal agent in the catch and kill scheme which, it was argued, violated election laws. What does the case against, say, Twitter look like? They weren't running for office or a part of any candidate's campaign.
No, Section 230(c)(1) [1] protects users and websites sharing user generated content against liability for relaying other users' generated content. Section 230(c)(1) protection is not conditional on whether such websites remove some legal content while keeping other legal content up.
> (1)Treatment of publisher or speaker
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Section 230(c)(2)(A) separately disclaims the relayer (whether website or user) of liability arising from actions of "good faith" restrictions of access to online third-party content (such as removal thereof) that the relayer considers to be "otherwise objectionable". Content that violates terms of service falls under "otherwise objectionable", and so does content that the would-be relayer is biased against. Section 230(c)(2)(B) disclaims the relayer of liability for actions of granting someone the technical means to restrict access to online third-party content. Nowhere does Section 230(c)(2) act as a legal condition on which Section 230(c)(1) protections depend [1].
> (2)Civil liability
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
> (B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
The authors of Section 230 were Senators Ron Wyden and Chris Cox in 1996. Here's Ron Wyden in 2023 explaining the function of Section 230 [2]:
> I wanted to take a few minutes to share my thoughts on why Section 230 remains vital to a functioning internet - and how the Supreme Court oral arguments and briefs in Gonzalez v. Google helped make the case for 230.
> First of all, Section 230 is a law that Chris Cox and I wrote. It essentially says that the person who creates a piece of content online is the one responsible for it.
> As a result of 230 and the First Amendment, websites are able to take down posts they don’t want — stuff like hate speech and violent content and other muck — and elevate other posts.
> So much of the focus on Section 230 is on the big social media companies. But my goal with 230 is protecting two groups: First, users, who want to be able to speak online and to access interesting content. And second, the startups and small sites that want to compete with the incumbents — whether that’s going up against big cable or big tech. Everyone from Wikipedia to Reddit to a knitting message board.
> It’s what allows sites to host controversial content without fear of being deluged with lawsuits.
Later on regarding proposed changes to Section 230, Wyden says [2]:
> There may be ways to change Section 230 to make it clearer about what the law is supposed to protect, and what it isn’t. I’m constantly evaluating ways to make the internet a better place for users. But as the son of a journalist I can’t support any bill that narrows the First Amendment in the process, or that discourages moderation. So far, the proposals on offer violate one or both of those principals.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
Yeah as other commenters have pointed out, I just don't know what your rebuttal to my original point is with all this. Do you really think my belief is that if any of this broke any laws, I don't want to see it be tried in court, just because I support Joe Biden?
That's just not how I think, and I don't believe it's how most people think. Most of us are really boring normies who don't like criminals and think people should follow the law and be tried in court when they don't.
I don't know anything about it, but if fraud - or some other crime - was committed by someone in a conspiracy to benefit a campaign, then it seems like that may well be a case that could be tried under New York's laws.
If a prosecutor brings that evidence to a grand jury, they indict one or more people, and then those people are tried and convicted by a jury of their peers, then I think justice will have been done.
Posting like this is not allowed here and will get your account banned, so please don't post like this—no matter how wrong or provocative someone else is being, or you feel they are.
Edit: we've had to warn you about this multiple times before, and you've been posting abusively in other places too (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40817954). If you don't want to be banned here, it would be good to fix this.
That story was painted as a Russian hoax by federal agents who knew better. It was systematically suppressed on corporate and social media, and the people who were telling it were smeared. All right before an election that was extremely close.
And here you are saying it wasn't a big deal.
Besides, Joe Biden is currently incredibly complicit in atrocities and war crimes up to and including genocide and ethnic cleansing. I don't hear many Democrats calling for him to be held accountable.
Posting like this is not allowed here and will get your account banned, so please don't post like this—no matter how wrong or provocative someone else is being, or you feel they are.
Posting like this is not allowed here and will get your account banned, so please don't post like this—no matter how wrong or provocative someone else is being, or you feel they are.
And the other half wholeheartedly endorses convicting a certain candidate of something, anything to keep him out of office.
I happen to agree that he should be kept out of office, but I'd rather that be done by putting him up against an electable opponent than by giving his base yet more fodder for their belief that they're being collectively persecuted.
> And the other half wholeheartedly endorses convicting a certain candidate of something, anything to keep him out of office.
There's a strong argument that the candidate in question shouldn't be in the position he was in is because he acted inappropriately. Not just in demeanor and professionalism, but he has several ongoing criminal trials going right now. There is a real possibility that he committed treason.
But even so, no one is really opposed to him gaining office if that's what truly people want. At that point, the concern is what the hell is wrong with the people that voted him in, and what the hell happened to get the population to that point. My guess is Reagan.
There is just a lot more power invested in republican elites than democrat elites than we realized.
There are organized efforts, decades long to skew courts, remove laws, increase dysfunction to prove the point that government fails.
Medicare was based on Romney’s model, and he was forced to disown it because the party would rather be partisan than give democrats a win.
Partisanship, divisive politics get you here. It gets you Fox News, and infowars. It gets you the idea that everything is a liberal conspiracy, like evolution.
Hell, people heard “build a wall” and were cool with it.
I believe the term that was coined by republicans for people whose feelings are hurt was snowflakes.
the
I don't understand how anyone can genuinely believe that.
Half the population has an absolutely astounding and embarrassing level of education, think things like climate change are hoaxes, don't care about the constitution and just want Jesus' word to be law, etc etc etc.
The problem is absolutely the voters. It's also why this model of democracy is actually kind of terrible unless you have an educated population. We're basically watching the fall of the American Empire here.
No, not enough. The lack of 'both sides' is what got us here.
You want to know what the hell is wrong with the people who voted him in? They have felt alone, disenfranchised, and cut off by the coastal elite (both sides!) for decades. One party took their vote for granted, the other wished that they didn't have a vote at all. They got sick of being ignored and condescended to, and a freaky sociopath named Donald Trump realized that they were the key to "winning" his perverted game and he finally successfully courted them.
They fell over themselves for Trump because no one else spared them a second thought.
So no, I'm not going to be done with 'both sides'. The Left thinks that if they just prosecute Trump and get him convicted these people will just go away and we can go back to business as usual, but this populist movement has found its voice and it's not going anywhere.
The only thing that's going to stop this from turning tragic is for the Left to figure out that these people exist and have a vote and find a way to speak to them. And the only way I have to help is to cry "both sides". Trump voters are normal people with very real needs, and our only hope to avert catastrophe is to see them and hear them.
> No, not enough. The lack of 'both sides' is what got us here.
lol, why are you going out of your way to reply to this? It's not in my comment, and it wasn't in the comment when you logged in to reply. Did you copy and paste it from your rss feed or whatever specifically to be able to reply to it? That's really weird. Anyway.
> They have felt alone, disenfranchised, and cut off by the coastal elite (both sides!) for decades.
The problem is they have no education and have no idea how to think critically. In society we have made it such a bad thing to be 'stupid', combine that with studies showing being wrong can be similar to being physically hurt [0], well, now we have a population that has no education, is religious and rejects science, doesn't want to be called stupid or be wrong, so they rally around 'alternative facts' and a charlatan who they see as one of them.
The only solution here is mandatory re-education and/or limiting who can vote, or hopefully waiting for the oldest and most stubborn conservatives to die out so alphas and gen-z can vote with a little more heart and brain.
> So no, I'm not going to be done with 'both sides'. The Left thinks that if they just prosecute Trump and get him convicted these people will just go away and we can go back to business as usual,
Trump's an especially bad candidate to be leader, the left just wants the Romney style republicans back. You know, not the science denying nazi wackos obsessed with guns and controlling women's bodies.
The left isn't the problem here, and never has been.
> The only solution here is mandatory re-education and/or limiting who can vote.
History tells us that the Narodnik[1] plan failed. The real change in minds came when the rural masses migrated to cities with dense habitation and the calculus of labor doing industrial jobs proved fertile for new ideas.
The only problem we have today is that large-scale rural->urban migration leaves huge swaths of the heartland emptied out which severely exacerbates our present problem because of the way senators are apportioned.
> The only solution here is mandatory re-education and/or limiting who can vote
Sounds very authoritarian and not democratic at all. What makes you think they won't try to do the same thing? I certainly don't want any government to have the power to re-educate adults and limit who can vote because they're voting wrong. That's Orwellian.
> Sounds very authoritarian and not democratic at all.
It's what we already have, just extended a little. We already limit voting to citizens, and we have mandatory education for age groups and as a prerequisite to do certain professions.
> I certainly don't want any government to have the power to re-educate adults and limit who can vote because they're voting wrong. That's Orwellian.
Look at the situation we are in now, though. We have an extremely ignorant, outright science denying, not insignificant subset of the population, who due to our system of government can elect in people who share their beliefs, who then go on to be in real positions of power.
What do you do when you have a slight majority of Trumps or MTGs as your representatives? More than likely, freedoms will erode and wars would likely increase.
So, how can you avoid that, or worse problems caused by an ignorant voting block? If you want to keep this form of government (which I would argue we should not), I'm not sure what other solutions there are other than to have some sort of test for voting. Maybe moving the definition of what constitutes a citizen like in Starship Troopers could work.
Regardless of what you may believe was "meant to be," we live in the reality of today.
Try and remove citizenship from an extremely well-armed populous and see what happens.
(Bring on the "you need F-16s, man!" Guess to which side the overwhelming majority of the military and private arms ownership leans? Hint: it's not yours.)
> Regardless of what you may believe was "meant to be," we live in the reality of today.
It's not a question of what I believe, the fats and argument are outlined in the link previously provided.
And if the last few years in US politics has shown us anything, it's that some people choose to reject reality for one of their own making.
> Try and remove citizenship from an extremely well-armed populous and see what happens.
The only insurrection attempt in recent history came from the right, and the only presidential candidate who threatened to be a dictator also came from the right.
Gun nuts are also on the right and allegedly compare very much about rising up against an authoritarian government. Except if such a government would agree with them, I guess. What traitorous hypocrites.
Those people with guns won't ever do anything because they are all preparing for an imaginary Red Dawn type situation. If legislation sneaks up on them, if it's a 'threat' they can't shoot, they will be helpless to fight it.
That side has also shown how incredibly gullible they are, so the simplest information warfare will likely pacify them. Russia has certainly demonstrated how easy a group they are to control.
> Guess to which side the overwhelming majority of the military and private arms ownership leans? Hint: it's not yours.)
Ooooh scary! lol.
Anyway, I'm done with this convo. I'd rather not enable this kind of fantasizing any further. Cheers.
Nah. Like I said, the changes will sneak up on the gullible while they're waiting for a Red Dawn type scenario. Wasn't ever expecting folks like you to show up on HN to be honest, but everyday you learn something new I guess.
> The only solution here is mandatory re-education and/or limiting who can vote, or hopefully waiting for the oldest and most stubborn conservatives to die out so alphas and gen-z can vote with a little more heart and brain.
What do you do in a situation where half the population won't take a vaccine during a pandemic because they think Bill Gates is going to track you with microchips?
Honestly, what's the solution here other than to wait and hope the voting population normalizes and self-corrects?
I agree that would be a great help, but I don't see that happening when half the population is just going to be contrarian and obstructionist to something like that. Not least because it would mean they would have significantly less power if people had more options.
Are you suggesting the population came up with the idea and conclusion on their own that Gates tracking and microchips were real?
Or did they listen to and trust someone who told them that? And if so why did they listen to and trust that person?
How about the people who have the right, and science backed answers learn how to hear out and build trust with the population, so the population actually wants to listen and trust what they say?
The population doesn't have to be smart, those who have the right answers just need to be caring and compassionate and build trust with the population.
I'm sorry, but democrats seem to have no interest in even attempting to hear the right out and to work towards building any sort of trust with them.
> Or did they listen to and trust someone who told them that? And if so why did they listen to and trust that person?
Who cares? The issue is their gullibility and lac of education and ability to think critically.
> How about the people who have the right, and science backed answers learn how to hear out and build trust with the population, so the population actually wants to listen and trust what they say?
We're past that point. The tribalism is so entrenched that most of those people are never going to give the other side a chance.
You'd have to devote time to sit with each person individually and put in the time to try and educate and better them, and it's impossible since we don't have time or people to do that.
> The population doesn't have to be smart,
They kind of do. Or you end up with people that think Alex Jones is a credible source.
> I'm sorry, but democrats seem to have no interest in even attempting to hear the right out and to work towards building any sort of trust with them.
It's hard to hear out and build trust with a group of willfully ignorant superstitious ultra patriots who all too often behave in ways that could be described as bigoted.
> Trump's an especially bad candidate to be leader, the left just wants the Romney style republicans back.
Pretty much. The left wants people they can debate and negotiate with. Not a bunch of McConnell-style babies that absolutely refuse to negotiate on anything.
I’m an FBI agent and I kill my wife. Am I immune from prosecution unless Congress appoints a special counsel, simply because I work in the executive branch?
> Out of context this is quite reasonable and level headed.
That's why I'm opposed to making changes to the way the Court is selected and empaneled.
The fact that it's inconvenient for one party right now is irrelevant. It'll be inconvenient for the other party soon enough.
> In context of the hyper partisan landscape US politics are today, doesn’t seem likely without a supermajority opposition to be able to bring charges against a president, for official or unofficial acts that are crimes.
Good. If it were easy to bring charges against a President, then Presidents wouldn't be able to do anything they were elected to do.
The failure of that protection at the end of the term is one of the major reasons for the end of the Roman Republic. If you repeatedly make powerful political figures choose between prosecution and violence, it won't take long for one of them to choose violence.
The fact that we've peacefully transitioned between presidents ~45 times is honestly rather amazing.
> Good. If it were easy to bring charges against a President, then Presidents wouldn't be able to do anything they were elected to do.
Leaving aside the difference between "bringing charges" and "successfully bringing charges," there's a big gap between "easy" and "impossible." Nobody wants presidents to be criminally liable for the things they do in good faith. But this ruling makes good faith irrelevant; it doesn't matter why they do an official act, it's immune.
The fact is that a former president exerted pressure on government officials in a way that would halt a lawful election and coordinated to subvert its true results by presenting fake results. In determining whether that was an official act, we cannot reference his motivations according to the SC's ruling.
Allow the motivation for official acts to be taken into consideration for prosecution, and a lot of the problems go away.
I honestly can’t tell if you’re talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which many leaders of the intelligence community claimed was fake Russian disinfo, only to be recently admitted into court evidence as being real and factual. Who exerted pressure on those officials to lie to the public before the last presidential election?
Retired and former intelligence officers have opinions which cannot, in the US, be silenced (unless they are breaking an oath | NDA related to secrets).
~50 (out of how many tens of thousands?) former intelligence officers expressed the opinion that emails on Huneters laptop could not be trusted as absolute sources of truth.
50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on Monday that the information on Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,”
These opinions, whether true or false, are insufficient to stop the laptop being admitted as evidence for a jury to consider - and the fact of that admission doesn't make the laptop "fake" or "not fact" ... liars give testimony in trials all the time and juries often hear and see conflicting "evidence", the reason for juries and lengthy jury discussions is for independant people to weigh up evidence and judge what they each believe to be true.
This is a technology forum: the vast majority of these emails contained valid DKIM signatures.
Did Russia snag those keys from Google and retroactively sign forged emails? Were the dozens of clear, repetitive images and videos produced by generative AI?
>The fact that it's inconvenient for one party right now is irrelevant. It'll be inconvenient for the other party soon enough.
I hate to dive into conspiratorial thought; but with a ruling so brazen, they might think this, and a few other steps, will bid them enough time to not worry about the other party having a slice of their same cake for the foreseeable future.
The ruling states that the President is immune from prosecution while exercising official duties of the office of President but can be investigated by a special counsel that is appointed by an act of Congress, and if successfully impeached and convicted can then be charged with said crimes. “Unofficial” acts are not protected by this immunity but a special counsel is still required to be appointed by an act of Congress to investigate and then bring forward charges.
Out of context this is quite reasonable and level headed. In context of the hyper partisan landscape US politics are today, doesn’t seem likely without a supermajority opposition to be able to bring charges against a president, for official or unofficial acts that are crimes.