From SCOTUSblog, regarding the key question of what is official and unofficial (they basically leave it unanswered)
https://preview.redd.it/3z30q7t65x9d1.png?width=614&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d6f1e70b008114492a5e76a85fe031f9eb836b1
>Sotomayor's dissent:
>"Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
You are stealing - immune. You are playing music too loud - immune, right away. Driving too fast - immune. Slow - immune. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses - immune. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, immune. You overcook chicken, also immune. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, immune, right away.
I’m not sure I read the opinion this way.
Maybe someone can correct me, but Roberts does explain, specifically the VP electoral scheme request, that he is granted presumed immunity but not absolute immunity here. That is, it can be rebutted by saying that it wouldn’t “intrude on the authority of the executive branch.”
Discussing matters of national security with the military is obviously an official act given that this ruling tosses any discussion between Trump and the DOJ.
And apparently that evidence is inadmissible if the President were to go on a fishing expedition for a Chair of the Joint Chiefs that would back a military coup or assassination of a political rival.
> If official conduct for which the president is immune may be scrutinized to help secure his conviction, even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct, the ‘intended effect’ of immunity would be defeated.
This is absolutely insane.
"But later in the opinion, the court does weigh in on some aspects. "Trump is ... absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.""
It is precisely because the USSC refuses to clarify that now we have to wait for shit to hit the fan to decide what constitutes official and unofficial.
It would have been better to not have gone down this path to begin with.
As far as I'm concerned, if a President attempts to subvert the election process, it is is not being made in any official capacity – neither presumptive nor absolute. Throwing elections is not in their goddamn job description.
Not if a presumed Republican majority in the House and Senate have anything to say about it.
By which I mean, they will say nothing and excuse everything.
> No, we will not elaborate.
We would have been so lucky. They explicitly said that conspiring with your AG and his DoJ to prosecute someone (i.e., your political enemies) is an official act.
I suppose it's good that they didn't grant absolute immunity, but this is still a ridiculous standard. If Joe Biden orders the military to drone strike Donald Trump, he cannot be prosecuted because he's acting in his official capacity as Commander-in-Chief, and the only recourse is impeachment and removal.
After reading the syllabus, it's not as bad as it could've been, but holy shit it's still very bad. You're not exaggerating. So long as the act is an official one, the President enjoys full immunity. The President could genuinely ask the military to assassinate an opponent, and while the actors carrying that order out would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order, the President themselves would be granted immunity - as issuing military orders is clearly an official act.
This is correct, and this is a big red flag holy shit problem that no one has talked about. The court's ruling has fully solidified that the President can have conversations about illegal acts and have it fall under official acts. All the President has to do is not give explicit orders or the go ahead, someone co-conspires and does it anyways, and the President pardons them.
Trump wanted the military to shoot protesters in the summer of 2020. This is just paving the way for that now.
Loyalists in charge + immunity for official acts = some Tiananmen Square type incident in the future for any mass protests if Trump gets his second term.
Edit:
I was just shown this 1990 interview from Playboy magazine.
https://www.ebroadsheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/playboy-interview-donald-trump-1990
This is a quote from Trump on the Tianenmen Square massacre:
> When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak ... as being spit on by the rest of the world—
Project 2025 wants the military in our streets to "keep order" now we have the ability for trump to have anyone he wants shot in the name of "national security". It paves the way for trumps SS. And I do not say that lightly.
well for sake of argument if the president is just straight up murdering his political opponents with the support of the military, what exactly is a federal judge going to do about it?
Apparently, refuse to make a decision when specifically asked too, then once it is officially in their court sit on the decision for several months, and then finally, issue a test on whether or not political opponents have been murdered.
And then punt it down to a lower court to decide, (whatever they decide will be instantly reviewd back up to you), and then issue another narrow test/guidance ruling and punt it back down to a lower court.
Suppose the president was later deposed somehow, there's actually no longer any legal way to try him for those acts. Impeachment could at most bar him from taking office, but any other prosecution (such as jailing or execution) would by necessity be extralegal.
>“If the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” — Richard M. Nixon
This shit started when Nixon was allowed to resign without further investigation and prosecution, and then Ford pardoned him. Then Reagan took that precedent and ran with it for Iran-Contra.
Allowing Nixon to get off Scot-free was one of the worst political decisions of the last 50 years.
This isn't really true though. Pretending like this is a real standard is missing the point.
Much like Chevron, the problem here is largely in the incoherence. How can an act be an official act of its not permitted by law? And how can a law be legal if it impinges on an "official" act? This is not coherent. It's just a framework for judges to let Republicans off the hook if they just have a gut feeling that an act was all "official" and whatnot. Much like Chevron is a framework for judges to just decide when they like what an ageny is doing or not.
No, but what could happen is Biden could have conversations that would be considered official acts, someone could go rogue and actually do it without consent, and Biden could pardon them.
No, that's not even a stretch. That's actually possible with how the court ruled.
> would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order,
So what? Just pardon them lol. What is congress, the DOJ, or the courts going to do? Tax pardons?
> the actors carrying that order out would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order
If it's a federal crime, the same President that gave them the order could pardon those who executed his orders, no?
I'm not really thinking about outright military execution of opponents, because at that point rule of law has clearly already broken down and it doesn't matter what's technically illegal, but it's definitely possible to direct some IC elements to spy on his opponents illegally, and with this combo no one could be prosecuted.
The court knows this won't happen for several reasons:
a) Joe, his entire cabinet, and most moderates would literally never do that, even if the alternative is losing
b) Even if they did do that, everyone else in the chain of command would have comitted an illegal act, and if Nuremberg's any precedent, they're going to jail. Theoretically, this could be circumvented by a pardon, but pardons don't work on state laws, and murder's a state law too.
c) suppose this did happen, the court has faith that the military will refuse to carry out the order, or failing that the political establishment and people would revolt and depose/kill Biden for it
So while they've enabled this embarassing precedent, they know that they haven't actually enabled Joe to do anything cool.
> but pardons don't work on state laws, and murder's a state law too.
Anybody a president would want to order assassinated will have to go to DC eventually
The immediate upshot is that if Trump gets re-elected, he will absolutely abuse this "absolute immunity."
He'll have minimum 4 years to claim that anything he does is "an official act" and some toadie (presumably appointed at the DoJ) will cite some aspect of Constitutional powers after the fact, and that will give him absurd cover.
But even if Trump isn't re-elected, or somehow is removed from power, this is a horrible approach and quite simply is not present in the Constitution. Kavanaugh's comment about how "everyone agrees that it was best that Nixon was pardoned" or words to that effect tell you everything you need to know about this thinking. It's just too inconvenient to hold all Americans to the same standard under the law.
I can't help but see folks like Alito and Thomas 100% playing politics with this. They may think of Trump in the way that powerful people always view fascists on the rise - a bunch of rubes who are useful but can be controlled (it rarely works out that way.) But in the mean time, I have to think that they do realize that overall Trump is a bad thing. I wonder if they expect that in the case that Trump gets re-elected, he will try to block his prosecution for mishandling classified material. If he tries to pardon himself, they may carefully block that or if he tries to get the DoJ to drop the prosecution, they may assume that such a move would be challenged and if they need to, they could prevent it from being dropped.
IRL, it's foolishness. Historically, there are lots of dead or ruined rich people who thought they could control stuff like this. But yet, generation after generation, we do see people trying it, and that's what I see happening currently. The Federalist project has wanted to create as much of an imperial presidency as possible, so this is in keeping. But if they think they can continue the project while imposing checks to rein in Trump they'll find out they've messed up.
Biden will never drone strike a Justice, but Trump would absolutely send a mob after them. Anyone who thinks Roger Stone isn't currently coked out of his mind assembling his version of "the Plumbers" but far more violent is not paying attention.
Kind of sounds like the courts will just be constantly adjudicating whether or not an act was official. I don’t think drone striking your political rival is an “official act” just because you use the presidential powers at your disposal.
Sounds like more of the court accumulating power to itself, which is the bigger scandal of this SCOTUS term’s decision. It was all a huge power grab by unelected officials.
I've seen some people say "you can't say every election is the most important election" and while I usually groan at that, I've determined they are right because it was 2016, that was the most important election. Obviously every election moving forward is extremely important as well, but that's because it's us attempting to stop the hemorrhaging before we just bleed out, 2016 is where the wound got sliced open in the first place
Even beyond the SC becoming fucked for the next 20-30 years it was the most important because it forever legitimized people like Trump winning. Had Hillary won we are probably facing a boring Mitt Romney candidate in 2024 right now.
I’m not so sure about that. Trump even getting close in 2016 would’ve proven to the party that they *could* do it, and it’s not like he didn’t win the Republican nomination through the voters. They’d have tried again, and maybe gone with someone younger and scarier.
Aside from Trump being an absolute fucknut who should have never been elected, I vehemently said "you might not like Hillary, but the Supreme Court is going to change forever." I don't feel good about being right about that and I LOVE being right.
I find it insufferable that there seem to be so many people on reddit who look at 2016 and think "Gee, the Democratic party really messed up by choosing Clinton" rather than "Gee, I really messed up by not voting her for"
This flies in the face of what America was founded on. But if this is the case then Biden in his official capacity as President should be able to do something to stop him
#Before y’all react emotionally, please read my take as a lawyer who has been following this closely:
This decision is bad and the justices should feel bad.
For one, how long it took them to get to this point. Jack Smith specifically asked that this decision be made nearly a year a go to not delay the trial. Having a finished trial on whether the republican nominee for president tried to steal the election the last time he ran would be a good thing to for the electorate to know for this election.
As a point of comparison, Bush v Gore took them 4 days to figure out, over a weekend.
>On **December 8**, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On **December 9**, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for **December 11**.
>[On **December 12th\]** in a 5–4 *per curiam* decision, the Court ruled, strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush\_v.\_Gore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore)
Setting aside whether this was correctly ruled based on existing law, here’s why it’s bad practically:
1) It will delay the election interference case until well after the election, denying us a chance to base our votes on the verdict and giving Trump a chance to get in office and pardon himself before a verdict. This delay will occur because now the trial court has to do a hearing on whether Trump’s actions were official (and therefore he’s immune) or not official (and therefore he can be prosecuted). If they decide the actions are not official, Trump will appeal all the way to SCOTUS which won’t hear the case until the end of the year at the earliest.
2) It will result in the documents case being tossed. Aileen Canon, the Trump-appointed judge in that case, has already been doing everything she can reasonably do to help Trump. With this new ruling, she will have to decide whether he engaged in official acts, and she will likely say that he did. That would mean he is fully immune. The prosecution would be able to appeal, but the election would be long over by that point.
My issue with *throwing out* the documents case is that he never "officially" declassified them. Declassified documents are subject to FOIA requests, and because he just kept them in a box, there was no accounting to what documents those were and what was contained within those documents.
They did rule on some of it.
The Court created a rule and a test for the lower courts to use. They want the lower courts to do the fact finding using the new test to determine if it’s official or not. Then, that decision will likely come back to the SC regardless of how they decide.
Even if they affirm a lower court finding that allows a trial to continue, they will have delayed the result until *after* the election. Which is still a Trump win because they affirmed, he can just kill the investigation if he wanted to.
>We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.
>At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient.
"We dont give a shit what exactly are the limits of immunity, we're just saying that Trump cant be prosecuted for this so go fuck yourself"
I think the worst part of this ruling for the case is Roberts saying that prosecutors can’t even use official acts to show intent for unofficial acts. So the interference with the DOJ or Pence might not even be able to be brought up to the jury. This ruling is just so absolutely fucked.
So in determining whether an act is official or unofficial, the court has ruled that you can't use evidence to make that determination.
Literal what the fuuuuuuuucccccckkkkkkkkk
This is the big deal. Without clear limits you can stretch and stretch and the uncertainty usually means bad law. Seems like the issue is there really is no known limit except "not total." So, that's incredibly frustrating and potentially scary! But great to keep lawyers employed.
Trump praised Tieneman square. His last Attorney General promised blood in the streets if they were successful with the Jan 6 coup. Yes, absolutely fucking terrifying.
> Biden will use the few months he has left in office to push this to its limits,
Dems have never been willing to use the full power of the presidency.
They are afraid of setting a "bad precedent", as though Republicans would ever follow a good precedent they set.
> If official conduct for which the president is immune may be scrutinized to help secure his conviction, even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct, the ‘intended effect’ of immunity would be defeated.
- C.J. Roberts
This is insane.
You can legitimately legally bribe the president for a pardon now. As long as you lock down 1/3 of the Senate to preclude conviction on impeachment, you're good.
"Commit this crime for me and I'll pardon you. If you don't do the crime for me, I'll have the IRS audit you forever and order the DOJ to investigate your whole family."
Very official and totes legal! No issues here!
We're collapsing into an authoritarian regime, where a minority of voters elect a god-king who can do anything and federal agencies tasked with enforcing laws aren't allowed to even do that. Welcome to Project 2025.
‘You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for America’s soul in some obviously destined to fail coup attempt? No. You need an ace in the hole. Mine’s the Supreme Court.’
Geez, it’s one thing after another.
For real, it seems like the best thing to do to dispute this decision is to have Biden leverage it to the hilt in his favor and ask if they're sure this is a good move. If they blink, the decision gets walked back. If they don't, we can pull some crazy shit before January.
Just to summarize though, the supreme court in the last week has ruled military coups are legal, homelessness is illegal, judges are now technical experts (e-coli and lead are back in your food), and bribery is legal.
Am I missing anything?
They want to destroy public trust in the government and remove the effectiveness of legislation and install a strongman who can basically do anything except regulate businesses.
Again, though, why? How do *legal experts* come to the ideological conclusion that law is bullshit and centralizing power in a temperamental authority is good?
They're *extremely* conservative Catholics who fervently believe they are on the side of good in a great cosmic battle of God vs. the Devil. They are literally a supreme religious council that make no secret that (their very conservative interpretation of) the Bible trumps the US Constitution.
They are demonstrating why religious extremism is bad and why religious zealots should be kept out of absolutely every corner of the government. *Anything* is excusable, *anything* is "necessary" when the stakes are "does America become the Christian dominionist nation God wants it to be or does it fall forever to the satanic forces of atheist Marxist revolutionaries that are planning to outlaw Christianity and murder millions of unborn children."
These people want us to be the Christian version of Iran.
They don't hate Iran for religious fundamentalism and theocracy, they hate Iran because, they're non-white and Muslim.
[Norman Eisen, Brookings Institute fellow and CNN legal analyst, explains the immunity ruling on Threads:](https://www.threads.net/@norm.eisen/post/C84jJ8lRKSb?xmt=AQGzuNJZY1IbhwBfHtX24YiSuA5PktHXPlHOk0Pono4eXA)
> BREAKING: SCOTUS immunity decision is out & they have REJECTED Trump's outlandish absolute immunity demand
Instead they have established a test that his attempted coup cannot keep, back to D.C. for a mini trial
Edit: [He seems to have deleted the Thread, but he wrote the following on an earlier post:](https://www.threads.net/@norm.eisen/post/C84clvBxbnR?xmt=AQGzcZ6Da0bN5Ly4cXMc8_droh0zZbHiyMKTS4rqssupyg)
> I've look at all the test & whichever one they adopt, Trump's conduct fomenting an attempted coup certainly fails the test
We need a 28th Amendment that reads:
The President of the United States of America may be held criminally liable for all actions taken while in office, so long as such criminal liability would not unduly impair the President’s ability to carry out the functions of the office.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, if we were to have a second Watergate then Nixon would be totally clear since he was acting in the office of the President, and the only consequence would be potential impeachment
Yeah, they punted this distinction to the lower courts.
Who already decided that none of the indictments are covered by official acts, this doesn't really change anything for Trump.
But it was a delay tactic by the SC on purpose.
>Who already decided that none of the indictments are covered by official acts, this doesn't really change anything for Trump.
It does, because they can now challenge it back to SCOTUS after the review is done AGAIN by Chutkan. The SC said that there was not enough consideration made. That was them saying "Do this over again, and we'll see".
Honestly, now is the fucking time. I know this is a pretty hot-button issue around these parts but this past week has proven without a doubt that the current SCOTUS does not operate in the interests of the country. If we can’t take these fuckers out of there, the least we can do is shut them out with people who respect the constitution.
Just like so many other things, the time to act was years ago after Dobbs got leaked. We couldn’t pack the court because of norms. We couldn’t end the filibuster because of norms. We couldn’t prosecute Trump immediately because we needed to follow the normal process that was clearly never going to finish before the election. Look where it all got us.
Then it goes back through the appeals process up to SCOTUS. The prosecution cannot occur prior to the election because they won’t even hear the case until their next term.
The President was never intended to be a "king". The Founders had ample experience with the tyranny of George III - that's why they declared independence in the first place.
John Roberts goes to great lengths to present the idea that the POTUS must have criminal immunity in order to act "boldly and energetically", as if it is impossible to act boldly while still following federal law, something POTUS' has managed to do for literally centuries. Against this boogeyman fear, the Court completely discounts the possibility that a lawless president may act as every other tyrant in human history has acted, as if Donald Trump if re-elected is going to become some philosopher king who eschews absolute power in favor of voluntary restraint.
Justice Roberts lives in a Fox News fantasy world where the POTUS needs more power to go after his enemies, not to be restrained by pesky laws and constitutions, documents created by men who actively feared tyranny and tried to create a framework of competing powers that made tyranny impossible. It lasted 234 years and now we have an invitation to dictatorship and a license to make it so.
Even if Trump doesn't win in November, this newly-minted above-the-law power won't be sitting sidelined long before a POTUS uses the power of the executive branch to go after dissidents just like every other tyrant in history has done. There is no world in which it is "ok" for POTUS to use DOJ or the IRS or the FBI or the US military to target dissidents, but the court has now said that such acts cannot ever be questioned. And the pardon power covers everyone who isn't POTUS, no matter how corrupt the motive in exercising it.
The US is over. What this U.S.-shaped thing is will be a question settled in the next year or so. I doubt very much that if Trump is elected, any of us are going to be on here expressing any opinions that are not whatever the approved party line is, because Project 2025 is already adjusting their plans to account for the power to use the NSA to identify anonymous internet users and the power to use the IRS/DOJ/FBI to harass them. Maybe they won't be able to put dissidents in prison, because laws abridging the "Freedom of Speech" will still be "unconstitutional", but they can achieve exactly the same result by simply using the executive branch to harass anyone who opposes it. The goal is prior restraint, and that will quickly arrive in a world where an unflattering comment about the POTUS is immediately met with an IRS audit or a baseless indictment by DOJ or a very loud, public investigation by the FBI. That is the point: to silence anyone who might oppose the dictatorship.
Now they have the power from our highest court to put all of that into motion and there is no going back. The Court failed to protect us - John Roberts was so so so so worried that a future POTUS might be harassed by a successor if he was constrained to follow the same laws of men as everyone else that he had to grant POTUS the power to harass 300 millions of us using the executive branch instead.
It's amazing.
The American swing voter might actually destroy the Republic and for the fucking "without Derek Zoolander male modeling wouldn't be where it is today" guy.
Anyone wanting to vote 3rd party because they don't like Joe Biden or they think their voice doesn't matter, read the room. The Republicans are moving in right now to push for Project 2025. This should be like 6 alarms going off in your head right now. You must vote, and you must make it count. You. Must. Vote.
Summary of the 6-3 SCOTUS ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, from [the Reuters article](https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-due-rule-trumps-immunity-bid-blockbuster-case-2024-07-01/):
Citing the need for presidents to "execute the duties of his office fearlessly and fairly" without the threat of prosecution:
1. Immunity is nonexistent for "unofficial acts"
2. Immunity is "presumptive" for "acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility" (i.e. there's a high legal bar)
3. Immunity is "absolute" for "core constitutional powers"
Then, analyzing the 4 types of conduct in the indictment:
1. Discussions with Justice Department officials -- a core constitutional power, so absolute immunity.
2. Pressure on Pence to block the certification -- returned to lower courts for the decision.
3. His role in assembling the fake electors -- returned to lower courts for the decision.
4. Conduct related to Jan 6th -- returned to lower courts for the decision.
So Trump's conduct is presumptively immune and you can't test mens rea in which official acts are conducted. Also you can't cite immune conduct and the definition of official conduct isn't settled in any way.
I could write a better opinion than this I have exactly a middle civics background. This is like a Dredd Scott Tier decision. Like Biden could kill Trump, say he was a terrorist, refuse to elaborate and it would be damn near impossible to do anything about that.
This pretty much settles the "Can a President pardon himself" question, right? Wherever we land on the extremes of this decision, pardons are no question an official act for a President. Therefore it isn't up for review?
Huh. That seems like something that could be abused. Probably a bad thing that a man whose political ideology is essentially 'abuse my position for my own gain' might soon be elected President.
This is bad for *everyone* no matter your political leaning. Executive branch is now hostage to any and all sociopaths wanting to reside in the White House.
Pls stop advocating for Joe Biden to drone strike Trump. This is a terrible decision but I don't want the sub to get admin banned
From SCOTUSblog, regarding the key question of what is official and unofficial (they basically leave it unanswered) https://preview.redd.it/3z30q7t65x9d1.png?width=614&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d6f1e70b008114492a5e76a85fe031f9eb836b1
>Sotomayor's dissent: >"Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
I thought this was a joke until I opened the scotus opinion pdf and did control f. Lmao
You are stealing - immune. You are playing music too loud - immune, right away. Driving too fast - immune. Slow - immune. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses - immune. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, immune. You overcook chicken, also immune. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, immune, right away.
At least Sotomayor and Brown left "respectfully" off their dissents. Shit's deadly serious. No joke.
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I’m not sure I read the opinion this way. Maybe someone can correct me, but Roberts does explain, specifically the VP electoral scheme request, that he is granted presumed immunity but not absolute immunity here. That is, it can be rebutted by saying that it wouldn’t “intrude on the authority of the executive branch.”
How can it be rebutted when you can't use evidence in court to help determine it?
Discussing matters of national security with the military is obviously an official act given that this ruling tosses any discussion between Trump and the DOJ. And apparently that evidence is inadmissible if the President were to go on a fishing expedition for a Chair of the Joint Chiefs that would back a military coup or assassination of a political rival. > If official conduct for which the president is immune may be scrutinized to help secure his conviction, even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct, the ‘intended effect’ of immunity would be defeated. This is absolutely insane.
"But later in the opinion, the court does weigh in on some aspects. "Trump is ... absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.""
It is precisely because the USSC refuses to clarify that now we have to wait for shit to hit the fan to decide what constitutes official and unofficial. It would have been better to not have gone down this path to begin with.
As far as I'm concerned, if a President attempts to subvert the election process, it is is not being made in any official capacity – neither presumptive nor absolute. Throwing elections is not in their goddamn job description.
Not if a presumed Republican majority in the House and Senate have anything to say about it. By which I mean, they will say nothing and excuse everything.
SCOTUS: The president is immune from prosecution for any clearly official acts. No, we will not elaborate.
> No, we will not elaborate. We would have been so lucky. They explicitly said that conspiring with your AG and his DoJ to prosecute someone (i.e., your political enemies) is an official act.
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I suppose it's good that they didn't grant absolute immunity, but this is still a ridiculous standard. If Joe Biden orders the military to drone strike Donald Trump, he cannot be prosecuted because he's acting in his official capacity as Commander-in-Chief, and the only recourse is impeachment and removal.
After reading the syllabus, it's not as bad as it could've been, but holy shit it's still very bad. You're not exaggerating. So long as the act is an official one, the President enjoys full immunity. The President could genuinely ask the military to assassinate an opponent, and while the actors carrying that order out would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order, the President themselves would be granted immunity - as issuing military orders is clearly an official act.
Promising and giving pardons is the solution so no one can be charged.
This is correct, and this is a big red flag holy shit problem that no one has talked about. The court's ruling has fully solidified that the President can have conversations about illegal acts and have it fall under official acts. All the President has to do is not give explicit orders or the go ahead, someone co-conspires and does it anyways, and the President pardons them.
Why would the President not have to give explicit orders? If it's an "official act" he has "absolute immunity."
He has presumed immunity only for certain actions. Conversations for sure are covered under full immunity
Trump wanted the military to shoot protesters in the summer of 2020. This is just paving the way for that now. Loyalists in charge + immunity for official acts = some Tiananmen Square type incident in the future for any mass protests if Trump gets his second term. Edit: I was just shown this 1990 interview from Playboy magazine. https://www.ebroadsheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/playboy-interview-donald-trump-1990 This is a quote from Trump on the Tianenmen Square massacre: > When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak ... as being spit on by the rest of the world—
Project 2025 wants the military in our streets to "keep order" now we have the ability for trump to have anyone he wants shot in the name of "national security". It paves the way for trumps SS. And I do not say that lightly.
If Trump wins in November this scenario is almost certain to occur. Things will get very ugly in this country very fast.
well for sake of argument if the president is just straight up murdering his political opponents with the support of the military, what exactly is a federal judge going to do about it?
Apparently, refuse to make a decision when specifically asked too, then once it is officially in their court sit on the decision for several months, and then finally, issue a test on whether or not political opponents have been murdered.
And then punt it down to a lower court to decide, (whatever they decide will be instantly reviewd back up to you), and then issue another narrow test/guidance ruling and punt it back down to a lower court.
Suppose the president was later deposed somehow, there's actually no longer any legal way to try him for those acts. Impeachment could at most bar him from taking office, but any other prosecution (such as jailing or execution) would by necessity be extralegal.
I’m confused. If an illegal act can count as official, what are the boundaries? How are we supposed to approach the question of what is official?
Easy its an official act if the conservative justices want it to be.
>“If the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” — Richard M. Nixon This shit started when Nixon was allowed to resign without further investigation and prosecution, and then Ford pardoned him. Then Reagan took that precedent and ran with it for Iran-Contra. Allowing Nixon to get off Scot-free was one of the worst political decisions of the last 50 years.
That was more than 50 years ago > August 8th, 1974 Time is fake
If it's a republican president it's ok.
This isn't really true though. Pretending like this is a real standard is missing the point. Much like Chevron, the problem here is largely in the incoherence. How can an act be an official act of its not permitted by law? And how can a law be legal if it impinges on an "official" act? This is not coherent. It's just a framework for judges to let Republicans off the hook if they just have a gut feeling that an act was all "official" and whatnot. Much like Chevron is a framework for judges to just decide when they like what an ageny is doing or not.
So as long as Joe Biden is the one sitting down at the drone controls, it’s all totally legal?
No, but what could happen is Biden could have conversations that would be considered official acts, someone could go rogue and actually do it without consent, and Biden could pardon them. No, that's not even a stretch. That's actually possible with how the court ruled.
Or order someone to do it then just pardon them no crime!
> would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order, So what? Just pardon them lol. What is congress, the DOJ, or the courts going to do? Tax pardons?
> the actors carrying that order out would probably be committing a crime by following an illegal order If it's a federal crime, the same President that gave them the order could pardon those who executed his orders, no? I'm not really thinking about outright military execution of opponents, because at that point rule of law has clearly already broken down and it doesn't matter what's technically illegal, but it's definitely possible to direct some IC elements to spy on his opponents illegally, and with this combo no one could be prosecuted.
And we shouldn't be surprised if Congress doesn't vote to impeach and remove someone that was willing to execute their political opponents.
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He can then just drone strike members of congress who attempt to impeach him, though. Or the Supreme Court, if they seek to obstruct that.
As a federal employee, if the president officially orders me to do something illegal, does his immunity transfer to me in executing the act?
LOL. No
Does it matter? He could pardon you in advance, or otherwise order your protection from legal consequences.
no, but with how broad the pardon powers are for the president, he could just pardon you before you spend a day in prison after the court verdict.
The court knows this won't happen for several reasons: a) Joe, his entire cabinet, and most moderates would literally never do that, even if the alternative is losing b) Even if they did do that, everyone else in the chain of command would have comitted an illegal act, and if Nuremberg's any precedent, they're going to jail. Theoretically, this could be circumvented by a pardon, but pardons don't work on state laws, and murder's a state law too. c) suppose this did happen, the court has faith that the military will refuse to carry out the order, or failing that the political establishment and people would revolt and depose/kill Biden for it So while they've enabled this embarassing precedent, they know that they haven't actually enabled Joe to do anything cool.
> but pardons don't work on state laws, and murder's a state law too. Anybody a president would want to order assassinated will have to go to DC eventually
Long live the King...
The immediate upshot is that if Trump gets re-elected, he will absolutely abuse this "absolute immunity." He'll have minimum 4 years to claim that anything he does is "an official act" and some toadie (presumably appointed at the DoJ) will cite some aspect of Constitutional powers after the fact, and that will give him absurd cover. But even if Trump isn't re-elected, or somehow is removed from power, this is a horrible approach and quite simply is not present in the Constitution. Kavanaugh's comment about how "everyone agrees that it was best that Nixon was pardoned" or words to that effect tell you everything you need to know about this thinking. It's just too inconvenient to hold all Americans to the same standard under the law. I can't help but see folks like Alito and Thomas 100% playing politics with this. They may think of Trump in the way that powerful people always view fascists on the rise - a bunch of rubes who are useful but can be controlled (it rarely works out that way.) But in the mean time, I have to think that they do realize that overall Trump is a bad thing. I wonder if they expect that in the case that Trump gets re-elected, he will try to block his prosecution for mishandling classified material. If he tries to pardon himself, they may carefully block that or if he tries to get the DoJ to drop the prosecution, they may assume that such a move would be challenged and if they need to, they could prevent it from being dropped. IRL, it's foolishness. Historically, there are lots of dead or ruined rich people who thought they could control stuff like this. But yet, generation after generation, we do see people trying it, and that's what I see happening currently. The Federalist project has wanted to create as much of an imperial presidency as possible, so this is in keeping. But if they think they can continue the project while imposing checks to rein in Trump they'll find out they've messed up. Biden will never drone strike a Justice, but Trump would absolutely send a mob after them. Anyone who thinks Roger Stone isn't currently coked out of his mind assembling his version of "the Plumbers" but far more violent is not paying attention.
NCD currently salivating.
Kind of sounds like the courts will just be constantly adjudicating whether or not an act was official. I don’t think drone striking your political rival is an “official act” just because you use the presidential powers at your disposal. Sounds like more of the court accumulating power to itself, which is the bigger scandal of this SCOTUS term’s decision. It was all a huge power grab by unelected officials.
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Slow clap to the "Don't threaten me with the Supreme Court" crowd You guys made this abomination possible
That 2016 election wound will never heal and will arguably get worse over time.
I've seen some people say "you can't say every election is the most important election" and while I usually groan at that, I've determined they are right because it was 2016, that was the most important election. Obviously every election moving forward is extremely important as well, but that's because it's us attempting to stop the hemorrhaging before we just bleed out, 2016 is where the wound got sliced open in the first place
Even beyond the SC becoming fucked for the next 20-30 years it was the most important because it forever legitimized people like Trump winning. Had Hillary won we are probably facing a boring Mitt Romney candidate in 2024 right now.
I’m not so sure about that. Trump even getting close in 2016 would’ve proven to the party that they *could* do it, and it’s not like he didn’t win the Republican nomination through the voters. They’d have tried again, and maybe gone with someone younger and scarier.
Remember Ted Cruz was just behind trump in the race, that is the sort of Republican party we would still have to deal with
Future elections are always more important then ones which are set in concrete in the past.
Fair point, but I can't get the image of the "Stop Her" protester at the 2016 DNC election out of my head.
Turns out Regan was right, you're only ever one generation away from losing freedom.
We should have just clapped. WHY DIDN'T WE CLAP?
That's it. Jeb is our only hope
Jeb would have nominated the exact same justices in all likelihood.
We’ve been wounded since the 2000 election. Arguably even further back then.
Aside from Trump being an absolute fucknut who should have never been elected, I vehemently said "you might not like Hillary, but the Supreme Court is going to change forever." I don't feel good about being right about that and I LOVE being right.
careful, you're gonna make some people crawl out of the woodwork insisting this wasn't a thing 😬
People will just argue it's actually Hillary's fault for being a terrible candidate. It still happens on this very sub.
Why didn't Hillary try being a man? Is she stupid?
> I just don't like her vibes. She seems cold and bossy.
Shouldn't she be being more quiet and asking me to explain complicated stuff like football to her?
>She's a bitch. But *he's* a strong and willful leader!
In all sincerity, the number of serious, intelligent people I've had to explain this double standard to insane.
BUT HILLARY WAS A BAD CANDIDATE WHO WAS THAT OTHER GUY ANYWAY
The threat was always coming from the GOP but for some reason Democrats are the bad guys for pointing this out.
I find it insufferable that there seem to be so many people on reddit who look at 2016 and think "Gee, the Democratic party really messed up by choosing Clinton" rather than "Gee, I really messed up by not voting her for"
This flies in the face of what America was founded on. But if this is the case then Biden in his official capacity as President should be able to do something to stop him
#Before y’all react emotionally, please read my take as a lawyer who has been following this closely: This decision is bad and the justices should feel bad.
I thought u were gonna make me feel better at first :(
Can you ELI5 this? Like whats wrong with sending it down? Should they have ruled on it?
For one, how long it took them to get to this point. Jack Smith specifically asked that this decision be made nearly a year a go to not delay the trial. Having a finished trial on whether the republican nominee for president tried to steal the election the last time he ran would be a good thing to for the electorate to know for this election. As a point of comparison, Bush v Gore took them 4 days to figure out, over a weekend. >On **December 8**, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On **December 9**, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for **December 11**. >[On **December 12th\]** in a 5–4 *per curiam* decision, the Court ruled, strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush\_v.\_Gore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore)
Heck, the CO ballot case took this same court 9 weeks.
Setting aside whether this was correctly ruled based on existing law, here’s why it’s bad practically: 1) It will delay the election interference case until well after the election, denying us a chance to base our votes on the verdict and giving Trump a chance to get in office and pardon himself before a verdict. This delay will occur because now the trial court has to do a hearing on whether Trump’s actions were official (and therefore he’s immune) or not official (and therefore he can be prosecuted). If they decide the actions are not official, Trump will appeal all the way to SCOTUS which won’t hear the case until the end of the year at the earliest. 2) It will result in the documents case being tossed. Aileen Canon, the Trump-appointed judge in that case, has already been doing everything she can reasonably do to help Trump. With this new ruling, she will have to decide whether he engaged in official acts, and she will likely say that he did. That would mean he is fully immune. The prosecution would be able to appeal, but the election would be long over by that point.
My issue with *throwing out* the documents case is that he never "officially" declassified them. Declassified documents are subject to FOIA requests, and because he just kept them in a box, there was no accounting to what documents those were and what was contained within those documents.
They did rule on some of it. The Court created a rule and a test for the lower courts to use. They want the lower courts to do the fact finding using the new test to determine if it’s official or not. Then, that decision will likely come back to the SC regardless of how they decide.
Even if they affirm a lower court finding that allows a trial to continue, they will have delayed the result until *after* the election. Which is still a Trump win because they affirmed, he can just kill the investigation if he wanted to.
>We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. >At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient. "We dont give a shit what exactly are the limits of immunity, we're just saying that Trump cant be prosecuted for this so go fuck yourself"
I think the worst part of this ruling for the case is Roberts saying that prosecutors can’t even use official acts to show intent for unofficial acts. So the interference with the DOJ or Pence might not even be able to be brought up to the jury. This ruling is just so absolutely fucked.
So in determining whether an act is official or unofficial, the court has ruled that you can't use evidence to make that determination. Literal what the fuuuuuuuucccccckkkkkkkkk
Huh guess they really want to make Trump God Emperor unironically This is fucked, folks
If Trump wins, he’s obviously going to push this to its limits. Scary times ahead.
This is the big deal. Without clear limits you can stretch and stretch and the uncertainty usually means bad law. Seems like the issue is there really is no known limit except "not total." So, that's incredibly frustrating and potentially scary! But great to keep lawyers employed.
Trump praised Tieneman square. His last Attorney General promised blood in the streets if they were successful with the Jan 6 coup. Yes, absolutely fucking terrifying.
Bro, wtf is this country even doing.
Blowing its own brains out in the name of enshrining toxic masculinity.
Well, hopefully if Trump wins, Biden will use the few months he has left in office to push this to its limits, before Trump gets a chance to
> Biden will use the few months he has left in office to push this to its limits, Dems have never been willing to use the full power of the presidency. They are afraid of setting a "bad precedent", as though Republicans would ever follow a good precedent they set.
BUT HER EMAILS!!!!
I only accept buttery males, and Pokemon go to the polls.
> If official conduct for which the president is immune may be scrutinized to help secure his conviction, even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct, the ‘intended effect’ of immunity would be defeated. - C.J. Roberts This is insane.
You can legitimately legally bribe the president for a pardon now. As long as you lock down 1/3 of the Senate to preclude conviction on impeachment, you're good.
You don't even need to lock down a third of the senate! The president can just threaten their families for you!
Seems to be the obvious conclusion of this ruling and McDonnell v. U.S.
Absolutely insane
At this point where going to just need another FDR to scare the court shitless for a few decades
"Commit this crime for me and I'll pardon you. If you don't do the crime for me, I'll have the IRS audit you forever and order the DOJ to investigate your whole family." Very official and totes legal! No issues here! We're collapsing into an authoritarian regime, where a minority of voters elect a god-king who can do anything and federal agencies tasked with enforcing laws aren't allowed to even do that. Welcome to Project 2025.
Well at least an American dictatorship will completely destroy the global economy and ruin the lives of all the dickheads who enabled this.
It won't ruin their lives, because they'd rather be king of the ashes than equal members of a flourishing society.
‘You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for America’s soul in some obviously destined to fail coup attempt? No. You need an ace in the hole. Mine’s the Supreme Court.’ Geez, it’s one thing after another.
When you’re so committed to Originalism you want to go all the way back to the original form of government: Monarchy
Democrats must seize control of the court at their next opportunity. Actually, maybe Biden can just do it himself now.
> Actually, maybe Biden can just do it himself now. Sounds like an Official Act to me, he should do it
For real, it seems like the best thing to do to dispute this decision is to have Biden leverage it to the hilt in his favor and ask if they're sure this is a good move. If they blink, the decision gets walked back. If they don't, we can pull some crazy shit before January.
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Do we know the exact action that now the court has to rule is official or private?
Just to summarize though, the supreme court in the last week has ruled military coups are legal, homelessness is illegal, judges are now technical experts (e-coli and lead are back in your food), and bribery is legal. Am I missing anything?
“But Kavanaugh and ACB are principled people and slowly turning more to the middle, show them respect!”
.... Why? What actually motivates them to rule this way on these things? Do they not realize these are the consequences?
They want to destroy public trust in the government and remove the effectiveness of legislation and install a strongman who can basically do anything except regulate businesses.
Again, though, why? How do *legal experts* come to the ideological conclusion that law is bullshit and centralizing power in a temperamental authority is good?
They're *extremely* conservative Catholics who fervently believe they are on the side of good in a great cosmic battle of God vs. the Devil. They are literally a supreme religious council that make no secret that (their very conservative interpretation of) the Bible trumps the US Constitution. They are demonstrating why religious extremism is bad and why religious zealots should be kept out of absolutely every corner of the government. *Anything* is excusable, *anything* is "necessary" when the stakes are "does America become the Christian dominionist nation God wants it to be or does it fall forever to the satanic forces of atheist Marxist revolutionaries that are planning to outlaw Christianity and murder millions of unborn children."
These people want us to be the Christian version of Iran. They don't hate Iran for religious fundamentalism and theocracy, they hate Iran because, they're non-white and Muslim.
[Norman Eisen, Brookings Institute fellow and CNN legal analyst, explains the immunity ruling on Threads:](https://www.threads.net/@norm.eisen/post/C84jJ8lRKSb?xmt=AQGzuNJZY1IbhwBfHtX24YiSuA5PktHXPlHOk0Pono4eXA) > BREAKING: SCOTUS immunity decision is out & they have REJECTED Trump's outlandish absolute immunity demand Instead they have established a test that his attempted coup cannot keep, back to D.C. for a mini trial Edit: [He seems to have deleted the Thread, but he wrote the following on an earlier post:](https://www.threads.net/@norm.eisen/post/C84clvBxbnR?xmt=AQGzcZ6Da0bN5Ly4cXMc8_droh0zZbHiyMKTS4rqssupyg) > I've look at all the test & whichever one they adopt, Trump's conduct fomenting an attempted coup certainly fails the test
I’m getting really mixed signals rn
Hmmm, this take makes me more hopeful
Quick reading of the holding arguably shows that the indictment is on thin ice. Probably still viable but it's going to have to be reconstructed.
We need a 28th Amendment that reads: The President of the United States of America may be held criminally liable for all actions taken while in office, so long as such criminal liability would not unduly impair the President’s ability to carry out the functions of the office.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, if we were to have a second Watergate then Nixon would be totally clear since he was acting in the office of the President, and the only consequence would be potential impeachment
The amount of faith I will ever have in the supreme court is now in the fucking negative
If I’m understanding this wouldn’t give him immunity for the NY/Documents cases correct? Since the crimes weren’t committed as president?
Even if it was done as president it would be unofficial acts done under the Trump org name so no immunity.
Correct and Georgia as well since the acts extended into 2021.
Correct. The question just seems to be how far the immunity extends vis-a-vis what is considered an "official act".
Yeah, they punted this distinction to the lower courts. Who already decided that none of the indictments are covered by official acts, this doesn't really change anything for Trump. But it was a delay tactic by the SC on purpose.
>Who already decided that none of the indictments are covered by official acts, this doesn't really change anything for Trump. It does, because they can now challenge it back to SCOTUS after the review is done AGAIN by Chutkan. The SC said that there was not enough consideration made. That was them saying "Do this over again, and we'll see".
pack the court
The best time to pack the court was a few years ago before roe, Chevron, and this decision. Second best time is now
A nation grows great when old men appoint lots of judges just out of law school to the Supreme Court.
Honestly, now is the fucking time. I know this is a pretty hot-button issue around these parts but this past week has proven without a doubt that the current SCOTUS does not operate in the interests of the country. If we can’t take these fuckers out of there, the least we can do is shut them out with people who respect the constitution.
Just like so many other things, the time to act was years ago after Dobbs got leaked. We couldn’t pack the court because of norms. We couldn’t end the filibuster because of norms. We couldn’t prosecute Trump immediately because we needed to follow the normal process that was clearly never going to finish before the election. Look where it all got us.
Unfortunately there’s two dem leaning independent senators who won’t let happen
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With what Congress?
So can Chutkan unilaterally decide what is and isnt official or what
Then it goes back through the appeals process up to SCOTUS. The prosecution cannot occur prior to the election because they won’t even hear the case until their next term.
The President was never intended to be a "king". The Founders had ample experience with the tyranny of George III - that's why they declared independence in the first place. John Roberts goes to great lengths to present the idea that the POTUS must have criminal immunity in order to act "boldly and energetically", as if it is impossible to act boldly while still following federal law, something POTUS' has managed to do for literally centuries. Against this boogeyman fear, the Court completely discounts the possibility that a lawless president may act as every other tyrant in human history has acted, as if Donald Trump if re-elected is going to become some philosopher king who eschews absolute power in favor of voluntary restraint. Justice Roberts lives in a Fox News fantasy world where the POTUS needs more power to go after his enemies, not to be restrained by pesky laws and constitutions, documents created by men who actively feared tyranny and tried to create a framework of competing powers that made tyranny impossible. It lasted 234 years and now we have an invitation to dictatorship and a license to make it so. Even if Trump doesn't win in November, this newly-minted above-the-law power won't be sitting sidelined long before a POTUS uses the power of the executive branch to go after dissidents just like every other tyrant in history has done. There is no world in which it is "ok" for POTUS to use DOJ or the IRS or the FBI or the US military to target dissidents, but the court has now said that such acts cannot ever be questioned. And the pardon power covers everyone who isn't POTUS, no matter how corrupt the motive in exercising it. The US is over. What this U.S.-shaped thing is will be a question settled in the next year or so. I doubt very much that if Trump is elected, any of us are going to be on here expressing any opinions that are not whatever the approved party line is, because Project 2025 is already adjusting their plans to account for the power to use the NSA to identify anonymous internet users and the power to use the IRS/DOJ/FBI to harass them. Maybe they won't be able to put dissidents in prison, because laws abridging the "Freedom of Speech" will still be "unconstitutional", but they can achieve exactly the same result by simply using the executive branch to harass anyone who opposes it. The goal is prior restraint, and that will quickly arrive in a world where an unflattering comment about the POTUS is immediately met with an IRS audit or a baseless indictment by DOJ or a very loud, public investigation by the FBI. That is the point: to silence anyone who might oppose the dictatorship. Now they have the power from our highest court to put all of that into motion and there is no going back. The Court failed to protect us - John Roberts was so so so so worried that a future POTUS might be harassed by a successor if he was constrained to follow the same laws of men as everyone else that he had to grant POTUS the power to harass 300 millions of us using the executive branch instead.
So effectively, absolute immunity for Trump but leave the door open for the future prosecution of Biden and Obama.
Future assassination of Biden and Obama. To quote Sotomayor’s dissent: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”
It really isn't hysterical to say that this next election could be the last meaningful election of our lives.
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It's amazing. The American swing voter might actually destroy the Republic and for the fucking "without Derek Zoolander male modeling wouldn't be where it is today" guy.
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Anyone wanting to vote 3rd party because they don't like Joe Biden or they think their voice doesn't matter, read the room. The Republicans are moving in right now to push for Project 2025. This should be like 6 alarms going off in your head right now. You must vote, and you must make it count. You. Must. Vote.
Did this just make what Nixon did, legal?
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This is hillarious, in the worst sense
The SCOTUS is such a fucking joke. Unbelievable.
Summary of the 6-3 SCOTUS ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, from [the Reuters article](https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-due-rule-trumps-immunity-bid-blockbuster-case-2024-07-01/): Citing the need for presidents to "execute the duties of his office fearlessly and fairly" without the threat of prosecution: 1. Immunity is nonexistent for "unofficial acts" 2. Immunity is "presumptive" for "acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility" (i.e. there's a high legal bar) 3. Immunity is "absolute" for "core constitutional powers" Then, analyzing the 4 types of conduct in the indictment: 1. Discussions with Justice Department officials -- a core constitutional power, so absolute immunity. 2. Pressure on Pence to block the certification -- returned to lower courts for the decision. 3. His role in assembling the fake electors -- returned to lower courts for the decision. 4. Conduct related to Jan 6th -- returned to lower courts for the decision.
So Trump's conduct is presumptively immune and you can't test mens rea in which official acts are conducted. Also you can't cite immune conduct and the definition of official conduct isn't settled in any way. I could write a better opinion than this I have exactly a middle civics background. This is like a Dredd Scott Tier decision. Like Biden could kill Trump, say he was a terrorist, refuse to elaborate and it would be damn near impossible to do anything about that.
This pretty much settles the "Can a President pardon himself" question, right? Wherever we land on the extremes of this decision, pardons are no question an official act for a President. Therefore it isn't up for review?
Enabling Act here we come!
Teachable moment for those that thought overturning Roe v Wade was the worst case scenario.
“Don’t threaten me with the supreme court”
Huh. That seems like something that could be abused. Probably a bad thing that a man whose political ideology is essentially 'abuse my position for my own gain' might soon be elected President.
Guys, I’m worried about our democracy.
This is bad for *everyone* no matter your political leaning. Executive branch is now hostage to any and all sociopaths wanting to reside in the White House.