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If I'm Biden, as soon as this is okayed, Trump is dead. Right? I mean, fuck.
Obviously, why wouldn't he? This is potentially the dumbest argument ever heard in a court room and we're all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility. What a joke.
we’re all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility.
We're all here because more than one of these judges is entertaining its plausibility. Listening to some of the questions coming from a couple of these judges, there is a very real possibility that they actually declare Trump at least partially immune, leading to the lower courts having to re-litigate the issues again (which would delay Trump's trials by years), or outright giving him enough immunity to make his current cases go away.
It's important to note that this would include the state cases. If Trump were to return to office, he could in theory pardon himself and make the federal cases go away but can't do anything about the state ones. If the SC were to rule he's immune, the state courts can't touch him either.
Honestly, I think the judges are just trying to figure out how they can rule narrowly enough to make sure Trump walks away scot-free while also ensuring that Biden and other future presidents don't get the same treatment.
Trump was not president for the crimes in NY or the retention of documents AFTER he was president. Of course it'll be delayed and litigated, but "president is immune" does not make trumps problems go away unless they go "president is immune for the rest of their lives" which is even more insane.
I'm sure they'll frame it in a way where this only applies to Trump, and no former or future presidents will have that ability.
Same as Bush v Gore
Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances
They'll stick that in their opinion and say that this case isn't binding on future cases therefore it doesn't set precedent.
I know that's what I would do.
If the Supreme Court were to greenlight this, it becomes the only logical choice in terms of preservation of the self and the state..
My opponent will use this power for great evil, so I must use it first to circumvent that.
Biden should just send Seal Team 6 to whatever courthouse Trump's hush money trial is at and tell them to sit on the steps. If anyone asks why they're there, just saying "Waiting for the Supreme Court ruling". Maybe park another team on the Supreme Court steps with a sign that says "Waiting for Clarence Thomas."
Biden would not be committing an illegal act. He'd be ordering the teams to sit on the steps and wait. Further orders would only come after the Supreme Court ruling, so Biden would be covered by the very same Presidential immunity that Trump just fought for.
He pretty much has to, or else Trump will imprison him an execute him in the next 12 months.
I mean shit, if I knew there was a fifty percent chance my neighbor would kidnap and murder me in the next year..... I'd be making contingency plans.
Unfortunately that's not how Democrats work. For good or for bad they stick to morality (except when it comes to Israel for God knows what reason) and they'll take the "high road" that just so happens to lead off a cliff, but it's the high road so they need to take it even if it means their certain death.
We're a joke, doomed to die for the sake of the moral high ground that we have no right to even assume we have (see previous Isreal comment.)
Edit: but also, from the article, this isn't the actual desire. They already got what they wanted and that was a delay.
I sort of agree, but at some point, Biden has to understand his own self, and his family, and all the colleagues he has worked with in his career are at risk. Trump is seriously escalating a dangerous game that only SCOTUS or Biden can put an end to. Politics is eventually violence, and Biden must know that.
Trump is hiring expensive, smart people, to argue at the last peaceful authority in the country, that he will regain the power of judge jury and executioner. This is fucking chilling.
Conservative justices rule that the president is immune from prosecution
President has conservative justices assassinated
President appoints more progressive justices
Progressive justices reverse ruling
Would the president be liable for the prior assassinations at that point?
Sotomayor should have asked about assassinating “corrupt” Supreme Court justices, in case some of her colleagues need help connecting the dots.
The argument has been that the president can be charged, but only after they're impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. And in the meantime, they're still president. So theoretically they could continue to have House members assassinated until there isn't enough votes to impeach. And theoretically they could also assassinate Senators until there aren't enough votes to convict. And I really don't understand why no one's making that argument to the Court, because that's exactly where the "they can kill anyone who disagrees with me because they're obviously a political rival" argument leads.
And I really don’t understand why no one’s making that argument to the Court
The argument has been made from the beginning. It's the whole "Seal Team 6" argument. They may not be saying it outright, but I think everybody understands that everybody on both sides of the argument knows that the argument would also cover a President ordering the assassination of rivals en masse.
Project 2025 anyone....
Rooting out political enemies from within government being a core part of it?
No? Anyone? Bueller?
Watching from an outside of the U.S. perspective, it leaves me speechless seeing how staggering the transition was from 'bastion of democracy and the free world' to 'increasingly malfunctioning society with russian-like values'
America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that "Bastion of Democracy and Free World" veneer gets.
We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have "sheriff's gangs" in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they're supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we're functionally at war with, who we can't put on trial because we broke their brains but we can't let go because we're still scared of them.
Dig into the history and you find out about Nixon's CIA sending arms to the Khmer Rouge. You learn about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's sex trafficking island. You learn about our century of atrocities in Haiti and Guatemala and Panama. You learn about the Tuskegee Experiments. You learn about that time George Bush Sr set up an teenager to sell a DEA agent crack directly outside the White House for the purpose of inflating fears of a drug epidemic.
Just really ugly despicable stuff. And its been happening for a long while.
Propaganda works. Always has, always will.
Oh this place hasn't ever been a bastion of democracy. There's so much inequity, vote surprising, gerrymandering, racial oppression, and straight up lying going on that even we have a hard time figuring out how much of our own history is a thick-ass layer of sugar.
If this is validated by the SC then hopefully Joe makes immediate use of it.
"Only for Republican Presidents"
Yes, kill Trump's lawyer. He said he's cool with it
No…that still ruins the country
The best thing to do would be an amendment that removes immunity
He could use it to fix the court and then have the court abolish the ruling.
Right now, it's looking like the Supreme Court is going to say "that's not allowed" but do it in a way that prevents Trump from being tried before the election. This lets them say "we're good and ethical" while protecting Trump from the consequences of his criminality:
The Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Donald Trump’s sweeping claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election, but in a way that is likely to significantly delay his stalled election-interference trial in D.C.
Well before this hearing I had the impression this SC is looking for ways to stack delay on delay without taking too much flak themselves. It showed in the weird narrow beam wording of their restrictions when they took on this case. It showed in the extra weeks they took to plan this hearing. And it is now showing in the questions they ask ...
I will not be surprised if they proclaim "a president has no total immunity, and only immunity in presidential matters, but the lower courts need to figure out if Trump's actions were (for) personal (gain) or presidential."
And with that the ball is dropped and it rolled in a sewage drain where it's hard to reach before the elections are in the rear view mirror.
It even includes another time loop for when it eventually does resurface back on the SC's lap for them to decide if his actions were presidential.
But by that time there will be a "Year one Dictator", proclaiming himself to be America's first great dictator, while ordering his rivals to be imprisoned, indicted and or shot.
And the people will loudly wonder, "Who is there to stop him? Where are the checks and balances?" But loudly will turn into a whimper then a whisper until it is a small voice in an empty room.
I don't get it, are they really arguing that Biden can just have Trump killed? And it would be perfectly legal!
No, rules only apply to the out-group.
If Trump wins the election, the SCOTUS will agree and let Trump do whatever the fuck he wants. If he loses, then SCOTUS will not let the ruling go through. The SCOTUS will conveniently wait until after the election to make a ruling on this.
This.
Plus they are arguing this knowing Biden won’t do that and so if it passed then Trump will have free rein if he wins and he will likely try to exercise that option is my guess.
Why just Trump? add the supreme Court, the senate and the house as an opening act.
“The most powerful person in the world could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Hard to make any disincentive when the ones running for office are in the twilight of their lives. If only there were any choice to the matter.
The right question to ask is whether the president can decide to assassinate a supreme court justice. Then it becomes plenty clear to the supreme court fucks how obviously insane the rationale is.
The main Trump lawyer defense has been to say that the military has it's own rules against executing such an order. But if Trump promises them pardons, those rules wouldn't be enforced, and the whole thing would be "legal".
The pardon power is kinda the root of all evil here, because even if the court finds that Trump isn't immune (which they almost certainly will), that just brings up the next question which is can the president pardon himself? I'm amazed that after the Trump years and his corrupt pardons there's been no effort to limit the pardon power.
The pardon power should be eliminated, and that's been clear since Nixon was pardoned. Sure, just about every president has a feel-good set of pardons, people who were railroaded by bad laws and bad court practices, but those corrections are only a tiny fraction of the outrageous injustices committed by our system, and their existence is used to justify the injustice in the first place - "oh but surely there will be a pardon for people who really need it" - as if depending on a single King-figure at the top to make good decisions, instead of improving systems, was ever a good idea. But in the meantime, just about every president also has a list of political pardons they trade for favors, or use for people who committed crimes on behalf of the president, or the party. Why the fuck does it make any sense at all to say "hey, this person was elected head of the executive branch, they should be able to just shield people from the rule of law", if the rule of law is an important basis of a free democracy? It's weird, when you think about it. End the pardon.
So this means someone could come in, kill the sitting President, and claim the presidency by right of conquest?
Murica!
What in the fuck is going on down there?
I don't understand how these absurd arguments aren't laughed out of court.
Who is John Sauer and why does anyone take this unfounded nonsense he's saying seriously?
Thats what is most concerning here: not so much the crazy reality that trump’s team is proposing, but the 5 conservative justices that are hand waving it off and are set to send it all back to the lower courts, giving trump the delay he needs.
"Your honor I submit to the court..our own rules instead the current ones, what say you!?"
It's just bizarre to listen to...
Kagan: If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?
Sauer: If it's structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
It's the only argument he can make. If he makes any other argument, his position on complete and total immunity is dead on the spot, as he would be conceding that the President isn't completely and totally immune after all.
Any concession, no matter how ridiculous the example, would invalidate his entire case immediately and he knows it. And if you ever hear him say "He would have to be impeached and convicted first", you'll know that he damn well knows how ridiculous his own arguments sound.
Judge: If President Trump were to run around the White House naked with a rubber glove on his head yelling 'Hi, I'm a squid! Nuke Montana so I can take out my rival octopus and his herd of glitter cows!', would that be an official act he would have immunity under?
Sauer: If it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
Doesn't matter what scenario you put there. Sauer's options are to repeat that line or essentially lose the case.
My gut tells me Trump’s lawyers don’t actually want the president to be immune. They already won by having the Supreme Court take up this absurd case allowing his other trial to be delayed until this issue is resolved. Likely after he’s president.
Lol, that's exactly what the article says. Literally the last three lines summing it all up:
Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land. Rolling Stone reported on Wednesday that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers are bearish on their odds of success — but it’s not all doom and gloom.
“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.