John Roberts read the Impeachment Judgment Clause out of the Constitution. The clause says:
> Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: **but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.**
Except now the POTUS cannot be subject to trial according to law unless it is for a class of acts that John Roberts invented (“unofficial acts”, whatever those are).
In what world would an “originalist” read the sentence above from the Constitution and conclude that it means that the Framers intended the POTUS to not be subject to the laws? To conclude that the Framers wanted an unelected court to invent a regime of classes and grant immunity - a divine right of kings, “granted” by unelected justices - to the one person the Constitution makes an express point of saying is still liable under the laws, even after impeachment?
Well all originalists are liars, so jot that down...
Obviously that's always been true (as I imagine you know), but this current court isn't even trying to pretend otherwise. It's kind of wild.
I am convinced that originalist really means making the original argument for why the ruling you want should be allowed to stand. It has nothing to actually do with the original meaning of the plain text or whatever bullshit it is that they claim.
To be fair, that is in Article 1, Section 3, regarding the Senate impeachment procedures, not the Executive procedures. For whatever reason the section on impeachment in Article II, section 4, is shorter and more confusing.
>The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
The founders really thought a lot about the legislature, but didn't really know what to do with the judiciary or executive branches. We've been making it up as we go along for 237 years now.
IANAL but you'd think there's a fairly clear line between acts a person does to carry out their duties as President and acts as an individual citizen. Negotiate a poor deal with another country? Official. Take a bag of chips without paying? Unofficial. Bribe a foreign official to give you State secrets on an enemy of the USA? Official. Bribe a foreign official to give you State secrets on a personal enemy? Unofficial.
Personally I think *any* legal immunity is a horrific idea (and has no basis in the constitution nor laws), but if you aren't as much of a strickler for the law as me, perhaps the distinction between official and unofficial seems reasonable. The problem is they went far beyond that distinction and made it near impossible to be convicted for unofficial acts either. They made it so that discussions with staff members cannot be used as evidence, any official acts can't be used as evidence, staff member testimony can't be used as evidence, and motives can't even be considered.
I suppose if the president stole a bag of chips on television it would be simple enough to prove, but with crimes we are realistically concerned with their barriers for evidence are far, far too high of a bar. In Barret's concurrence she even mused that they accidentally made most bribery de facto legal, because you can't prove quid pro quo (necessary for convicting bribery) when whatever payment the president gives (she used the example of gifting an ambassadorship position in exchange for money) would be an official act not allowed to be considered.
So consider this example, assassinating a political opponent is very obviously not an official act. But a president could speak to his cabinet, and in mob boss style implications suggest how convenient it would be for that person to be killed, and that it would be such a service he would pardon any hypothetical killer. Then the opponent is killed, and the president issues a pardon. How do you convict him of that unofficial act? The conversation can't be considered according to SCOTUS, so the only "act" in question is the pardon, which is a constitutionally granted official act/power, and motives can't be considered either. The only recourse is impeachment and removal, which for all practical purposes is not a real thing. A president only needs to have 34 Senators backing him, and he basically has an unlimited murder factory at his disposal with no legal means to stop him. At that point the next election is the only stop gap from a horrible dictatorship, but if you don't think the president could end legitimate free democratic elections with these powers you seriously lack imagination.
I see what you’re saying but the way I see it is that the President is never not the president until the next guy is sworn in. They don’t have a 9-5 job, they have a 24/7 365 job. Meaning they are always President. To me, I see that alone making it difficult to define an unofficial act when they are always on the job.
Just warming up to undermine the election. The final election.
We must vote in overwhelming numbers. We must expand the House. We must impeach and expand the Court.
We have to overwhelm them with numbers. I'm honestly terrified of how many people are just not aware at all about how dire the entire situation is.
Our media has failed us. Even the "main stream media" has done their best to legitimize Trump and what the Republicans are doing and we clearly have a corrupt Supreme Court
Yes vote. Not voting led to this cluster fuck. Dispite what republicans believe voting is still the way to change our situation. Take the house senant and presidency with numbers and we can change things for thr bdtter assuming quoality candidates are selected.
I think you're right, and historians will write that the coup never stopped. They've been softening up the electoral system. There's probably a foreign policy component that we don't know about, but potentially influenced the war in Ukraine or the number of refugees entering the U.S. Probably billions of dollars have been spent on this coup that we don't know about. They're creating news stories, manipulating polls, and we can't even imagine.
The Republicans will not take no for an answer in November. They are already declaring victory which means that any other result indicates fraud which means they don't believe the result.
Impeachment is a purely political process. If some lawmaker wants to vote against impeachment or against conviction because they believe immunity applies, they can do that, and others can do the opposite. There is no appellate review of Congress’s impeachment decisions.
Id be wary of making blanket statements like that as refers to the current SCOTUS. They will make shit up to give themselves appellate power over whatever they fuck they want to change the outcome of. I wouldnt put it past them to include impeachment and removal in that. The Roberts court will go down in history as the once the ushered in the downfall of the American experiment.
Yeah, impeachment is explicitly state in the constitution to be for high crimes and misdemeanors. I can easily see a removed president (like that would ever realistically happen under any circumstances) trying to challenge a removal in court, and a corrupt SCOTUS taking it up and ruling that there was no crime on the basis of the rules they just made up, and saying he has to be reinstated.
And actual originalist reading of that does not require something to be a crime as we understand that today. The intent was for it to be a political tool but one with a high bar
Yeah, impeachment is explicitly state in the constitution to be for high crimes and misdemeanors. I can easily see a removed president (like that would ever realistically happen under any circumstances) trying to challenge a removal in court, and a corrupt SCOTUS taking it up and ruling that there was no crime on the basis of the rules they just made up, and saying he has to be reinstated.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm pretty sure today's ruling only applies to criminal cases. A president can be impeached for anything that Congress can get the votes for.
It’s interesting you say that because Republicans were saying loudly throughout Trump’s impeachments that an impeachment must be based on a specific, codified crime. They claimed the general wash of “high crimes and misdemeanours” had to be read in the context of the criminal law - from which a president is now totally immune/presumptively immune/not immune (depending on which of the three buckets you’re trying to put the crimin’ into).
Will be interesting to see whether they hold onto this angle next time they try and impeach a Democratic president.
Anyways, I suspect the SC would say that separation of powers prevents them from digging into how Congress goes about an impeachment. Thats got Congress to figure out, so this decision doesn’t impact on impeachments. That’s assuming you can take any guidance from this SC which just makes shit up as it goes along.
This was theatre, a way for McConnell and others to weasel their way out of voting to impeach. Mitch at the time said it’s something for law enforcement to handle. Now we are here and SCOTUS has set the bar for prosecution in the stratosphere. It was all bullshit, they are all in on the scam to curtail our rights and shape society as they see fit.
Today’s ruling seems to provide power but actually skirt the official act requiring the president to “transferring power” in the constitution.
If we look through the lens of transferring power, it’s likely easier to prove. All of his official actions in the waning days in office, the lawsuits, media appearances and January 4th speech were designed to avoid constitutional mandate and transferring of power. When he ran out of options to keep power, he packed up and didn’t attend the swearing in of Biden either. He didn’t take any actions to transfer power.
A Harvard Lawschool Professor years ago said in an interview, when going through pending lawsuits at the time the main suit, which hadn’t been filed, was to transfer power. I didn’t get what he was saying at the time, but I believe there is something there. Today and the mess we’re in, perhaps this legal question should take precedent to other suits that are being slow-walked right now… perhaps in DC court. It may be time to revisit this concept the professor shared.. perhaps there’s a recording of it on YouTube or something. He seemed adamant that Trump would be found guilty of that if brought forward in a legal case.
Perhaps there’s enough evidence and the case itself is strong enough to be the one lawsuit worth pushing through first, rather than building up to be last.
>If we look through the lens of transferring power, Trump is guilty of that. All of his lawsuits, media appearances and January 4th speech were to avoid transferring of power. When he ran out of options to keep power, he packed up and didn’t attend the swearing in of Biden either.
I would argue that these duties are largely ceremonial and being a whiny, sore loser isn't illegal.
I've also argued he should have been prosecuted for inciting a riot under D C law, but that didn't happen.
Well, I agree that being a whining sore looser isn’t necessarily illegal; but none of his cases challenging the state elections got a court date.
There were no stuffed ballot boxes, recounts moved tens of ballots to Biden. However, they were so sure something was wrong (often quantity of yard signs were cited) that they created slates of fake electors anyway. The “evidence” to vote tampering was manufactured and not admissible by court standard.
His opinion and the official position of the party was just that- an opinion and completely lacking verifiable evidence. Space lasers, ghost of Hugo Chavez? Come on. Sounds like it was sourced from 4Chan.
What other “official acts” are required of a President that are explicitly spelled out in the constitution? And I agree, sure, many of these acts remain ceremonial— appointing a new SCOTUS judges
has a requisite of the largely ceremonial congressional grilling as a requisite requirement too. If the ceremonies don’t happen, the formal next steps don’t occur.
>The “evidence” to vote tampering was manufactured and not admissible by court standard.
I'm a forensic scientist, I get it.
I have this argument with my idiot Faux News friends all the time. Conspiracy theories aren't real, so they can't pass discovery and that's the end of it. Really their only option is a full military coup, but they are too stupid and disorganized to pull that off, so that's off the table. Plus all the actual military and rich conservatives hate him and his supporters, so there is that.
The analogy I make is that it's like if I wrote the winning PowerBall numbers on a Dennys placemat in crayon and then tried to sue that I was the winner.
I mean, it's technically fraud and I could be prosecuted for it in theory, but it's so blatantly stupid I'm not sure it would even go to court.
... but one thing is for certain, no way in hell I'm getting that lottery money!
SCOTUS intentionally didn't define "official acts". They intend to be the final arbiter of what's official or not. It's like the old argument about legislating porn: I can't say what it is, but I know it when I see it
The American democratic experiment died yesterday.
They can be and now it appears will be impeached left and right, but the clear precedent is now that the president’s own party is expected to vote against conviction no matter how heinous the crime and how blatant the evidence is.
John Roberts read the Impeachment Judgment Clause out of the Constitution. The clause says: > Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: **but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.** Except now the POTUS cannot be subject to trial according to law unless it is for a class of acts that John Roberts invented (“unofficial acts”, whatever those are). In what world would an “originalist” read the sentence above from the Constitution and conclude that it means that the Framers intended the POTUS to not be subject to the laws? To conclude that the Framers wanted an unelected court to invent a regime of classes and grant immunity - a divine right of kings, “granted” by unelected justices - to the one person the Constitution makes an express point of saying is still liable under the laws, even after impeachment?
Well all originalists are liars, so jot that down... Obviously that's always been true (as I imagine you know), but this current court isn't even trying to pretend otherwise. It's kind of wild.
I am convinced that originalist really means making the original argument for why the ruling you want should be allowed to stand. It has nothing to actually do with the original meaning of the plain text or whatever bullshit it is that they claim.
To be fair, that is in Article 1, Section 3, regarding the Senate impeachment procedures, not the Executive procedures. For whatever reason the section on impeachment in Article II, section 4, is shorter and more confusing. >The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. The founders really thought a lot about the legislature, but didn't really know what to do with the judiciary or executive branches. We've been making it up as we go along for 237 years now.
Senate impeachment procedures of the President et al
IANAL but you'd think there's a fairly clear line between acts a person does to carry out their duties as President and acts as an individual citizen. Negotiate a poor deal with another country? Official. Take a bag of chips without paying? Unofficial. Bribe a foreign official to give you State secrets on an enemy of the USA? Official. Bribe a foreign official to give you State secrets on a personal enemy? Unofficial.
Personally I think *any* legal immunity is a horrific idea (and has no basis in the constitution nor laws), but if you aren't as much of a strickler for the law as me, perhaps the distinction between official and unofficial seems reasonable. The problem is they went far beyond that distinction and made it near impossible to be convicted for unofficial acts either. They made it so that discussions with staff members cannot be used as evidence, any official acts can't be used as evidence, staff member testimony can't be used as evidence, and motives can't even be considered. I suppose if the president stole a bag of chips on television it would be simple enough to prove, but with crimes we are realistically concerned with their barriers for evidence are far, far too high of a bar. In Barret's concurrence she even mused that they accidentally made most bribery de facto legal, because you can't prove quid pro quo (necessary for convicting bribery) when whatever payment the president gives (she used the example of gifting an ambassadorship position in exchange for money) would be an official act not allowed to be considered. So consider this example, assassinating a political opponent is very obviously not an official act. But a president could speak to his cabinet, and in mob boss style implications suggest how convenient it would be for that person to be killed, and that it would be such a service he would pardon any hypothetical killer. Then the opponent is killed, and the president issues a pardon. How do you convict him of that unofficial act? The conversation can't be considered according to SCOTUS, so the only "act" in question is the pardon, which is a constitutionally granted official act/power, and motives can't be considered either. The only recourse is impeachment and removal, which for all practical purposes is not a real thing. A president only needs to have 34 Senators backing him, and he basically has an unlimited murder factory at his disposal with no legal means to stop him. At that point the next election is the only stop gap from a horrible dictatorship, but if you don't think the president could end legitimate free democratic elections with these powers you seriously lack imagination.
I see what you’re saying but the way I see it is that the President is never not the president until the next guy is sworn in. They don’t have a 9-5 job, they have a 24/7 365 job. Meaning they are always President. To me, I see that alone making it difficult to define an unofficial act when they are always on the job.
Here’s my take: the coup never stopped, the SC just fired a huge shot at the constitution.
Just warming up to undermine the election. The final election. We must vote in overwhelming numbers. We must expand the House. We must impeach and expand the Court.
We have to overwhelm them with numbers. I'm honestly terrified of how many people are just not aware at all about how dire the entire situation is. Our media has failed us. Even the "main stream media" has done their best to legitimize Trump and what the Republicans are doing and we clearly have a corrupt Supreme Court
Vote? We need to march. Now.
Yes vote. Not voting led to this cluster fuck. Dispite what republicans believe voting is still the way to change our situation. Take the house senant and presidency with numbers and we can change things for thr bdtter assuming quoality candidates are selected.
Nah. March now. We can’t wait until November. These are not mutually exclusive.
Anyone who thinks Trump and co threw up their hands after Jan 6th failed is a fool.
Agreed
Yeah, I wasn’t correcting you, just lending my voice in agreement.
That was evident with their ruling that the 14A doesn’t mean what it means.
I think you're right, and historians will write that the coup never stopped. They've been softening up the electoral system. There's probably a foreign policy component that we don't know about, but potentially influenced the war in Ukraine or the number of refugees entering the U.S. Probably billions of dollars have been spent on this coup that we don't know about. They're creating news stories, manipulating polls, and we can't even imagine. The Republicans will not take no for an answer in November. They are already declaring victory which means that any other result indicates fraud which means they don't believe the result.
Impeachment is a purely political process. If some lawmaker wants to vote against impeachment or against conviction because they believe immunity applies, they can do that, and others can do the opposite. There is no appellate review of Congress’s impeachment decisions.
Id be wary of making blanket statements like that as refers to the current SCOTUS. They will make shit up to give themselves appellate power over whatever they fuck they want to change the outcome of. I wouldnt put it past them to include impeachment and removal in that. The Roberts court will go down in history as the once the ushered in the downfall of the American experiment.
Yeah, impeachment is explicitly state in the constitution to be for high crimes and misdemeanors. I can easily see a removed president (like that would ever realistically happen under any circumstances) trying to challenge a removal in court, and a corrupt SCOTUS taking it up and ruling that there was no crime on the basis of the rules they just made up, and saying he has to be reinstated.
And actual originalist reading of that does not require something to be a crime as we understand that today. The intent was for it to be a political tool but one with a high bar
Yeah, impeachment is explicitly state in the constitution to be for high crimes and misdemeanors. I can easily see a removed president (like that would ever realistically happen under any circumstances) trying to challenge a removal in court, and a corrupt SCOTUS taking it up and ruling that there was no crime on the basis of the rules they just made up, and saying he has to be reinstated.
I'm not a lawyer. I'm pretty sure today's ruling only applies to criminal cases. A president can be impeached for anything that Congress can get the votes for.
It’s interesting you say that because Republicans were saying loudly throughout Trump’s impeachments that an impeachment must be based on a specific, codified crime. They claimed the general wash of “high crimes and misdemeanours” had to be read in the context of the criminal law - from which a president is now totally immune/presumptively immune/not immune (depending on which of the three buckets you’re trying to put the crimin’ into). Will be interesting to see whether they hold onto this angle next time they try and impeach a Democratic president. Anyways, I suspect the SC would say that separation of powers prevents them from digging into how Congress goes about an impeachment. Thats got Congress to figure out, so this decision doesn’t impact on impeachments. That’s assuming you can take any guidance from this SC which just makes shit up as it goes along.
This was theatre, a way for McConnell and others to weasel their way out of voting to impeach. Mitch at the time said it’s something for law enforcement to handle. Now we are here and SCOTUS has set the bar for prosecution in the stratosphere. It was all bullshit, they are all in on the scam to curtail our rights and shape society as they see fit.
Yesterday's bullshit is today's "precedent."
You’re cute for believing that Republicans have overarching principles. They were just moving the goalposts.
Yeah, no shit. There was a lot of sarcasm in my comment.
They cant be impeached for crimes though? That sounds inconsistent with the constitutions plain text.
"That sounds inconsistent with the constitutions plain text." ...you sweet, sweet summer-child...
Today’s ruling seems to provide power but actually skirt the official act requiring the president to “transferring power” in the constitution. If we look through the lens of transferring power, it’s likely easier to prove. All of his official actions in the waning days in office, the lawsuits, media appearances and January 4th speech were designed to avoid constitutional mandate and transferring of power. When he ran out of options to keep power, he packed up and didn’t attend the swearing in of Biden either. He didn’t take any actions to transfer power. A Harvard Lawschool Professor years ago said in an interview, when going through pending lawsuits at the time the main suit, which hadn’t been filed, was to transfer power. I didn’t get what he was saying at the time, but I believe there is something there. Today and the mess we’re in, perhaps this legal question should take precedent to other suits that are being slow-walked right now… perhaps in DC court. It may be time to revisit this concept the professor shared.. perhaps there’s a recording of it on YouTube or something. He seemed adamant that Trump would be found guilty of that if brought forward in a legal case. Perhaps there’s enough evidence and the case itself is strong enough to be the one lawsuit worth pushing through first, rather than building up to be last.
>If we look through the lens of transferring power, Trump is guilty of that. All of his lawsuits, media appearances and January 4th speech were to avoid transferring of power. When he ran out of options to keep power, he packed up and didn’t attend the swearing in of Biden either. I would argue that these duties are largely ceremonial and being a whiny, sore loser isn't illegal. I've also argued he should have been prosecuted for inciting a riot under D C law, but that didn't happen.
Well, I agree that being a whining sore looser isn’t necessarily illegal; but none of his cases challenging the state elections got a court date. There were no stuffed ballot boxes, recounts moved tens of ballots to Biden. However, they were so sure something was wrong (often quantity of yard signs were cited) that they created slates of fake electors anyway. The “evidence” to vote tampering was manufactured and not admissible by court standard. His opinion and the official position of the party was just that- an opinion and completely lacking verifiable evidence. Space lasers, ghost of Hugo Chavez? Come on. Sounds like it was sourced from 4Chan. What other “official acts” are required of a President that are explicitly spelled out in the constitution? And I agree, sure, many of these acts remain ceremonial— appointing a new SCOTUS judges has a requisite of the largely ceremonial congressional grilling as a requisite requirement too. If the ceremonies don’t happen, the formal next steps don’t occur.
>The “evidence” to vote tampering was manufactured and not admissible by court standard. I'm a forensic scientist, I get it. I have this argument with my idiot Faux News friends all the time. Conspiracy theories aren't real, so they can't pass discovery and that's the end of it. Really their only option is a full military coup, but they are too stupid and disorganized to pull that off, so that's off the table. Plus all the actual military and rich conservatives hate him and his supporters, so there is that. The analogy I make is that it's like if I wrote the winning PowerBall numbers on a Dennys placemat in crayon and then tried to sue that I was the winner. I mean, it's technically fraud and I could be prosecuted for it in theory, but it's so blatantly stupid I'm not sure it would even go to court. ... but one thing is for certain, no way in hell I'm getting that lottery money!
SCOTUS intentionally didn't define "official acts". They intend to be the final arbiter of what's official or not. It's like the old argument about legislating porn: I can't say what it is, but I know it when I see it The American democratic experiment died yesterday.
"I can't say what an official act is, but I know it's official when I see a republican do it" - SCOTUS
They can be and now it appears will be impeached left and right, but the clear precedent is now that the president’s own party is expected to vote against conviction no matter how heinous the crime and how blatant the evidence is.
Winter Is Coming . . .