Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assasinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?
“That could well be an official act,” Trump lawyer John Sauer says
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.
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.
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.
This should help left leaning voters reconsider gun restriction laws since most of them are enforced in blue areas, while red areas are all allowed to have essentially entire armories.
If you live in New York or California, you can’t find a gun store within 100 miles of where you live that can only sell extremely restrictive features that would give the most battle hardened Navy Seal issues hitting targets, but in Idaho and Texas there’s a gun store on every fucking corner selling easy to shoot highly ergonomic firearms that allow morbidly obese boomers to effortlessly hit the dick off a fly at 1000 meters.
Depends on how you determine victory. Their criteria was “invaders go home”. For your local militia a better comparison would be asking David Koresh how things worked out.
Begging to differ, I’m sitting on my toilet in California and a quick Google shows there’s 3 gun stores within 5 miles of me. I’d have to pass the legitimate restrictions (which I easily could) and one of them looks very upscale and expensive, but physical access is not a problem at all.
Fair point, but I’m sure you are only able to be sold a very specific set of authorized firearms, that when compared to what similar stores in other states happen to also sell; will reveal the differences are orders of magnitude.
Case in point: a Cali compliant AR-15 is a horrible thing to shoot (I own this one).
The father of the F-16, John Boyd, would tell up and coming officers that in their career they would have to face choices where they could do something or be somebody. And we are facing the consequences of having our country’s leadership full of people who wanted to be somebody.
Not some random courthouse. Just the steps of the Supreme Court.
Decisions like this should have immediate consequences for those deciding. If you want to make the President above the law, well, enjoy your stay in Gitmo.
While funny to imagine...please let's not. I got a kid to raise, I don't want to raise one in a civil war. I know for sure some of the "SEAL team 6" members wouldn't very much like being turned on government officials, especially if their politics align.
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.
A bold move for the council of the current president’s political rival, but alright bet. Pretty sure the lawyer just wants a way to escape the current client while saving face.
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.
You know, I’m honestly not sure why everyone’s thinking this is part of some plan for the future they have. Fuckhead was already president. Given this guy’s track record, it’s far more likely that he didn’t get to finish covering his ass for something the first time around.
If Trump wins the election, he’s going to do what he wants regardless of the Court’s ruling. Let’s stop pretending that “Even when it accomplishes nothing, following the rules to the bitter end is the noble thing to do.” Why the fuck does the Captain need to go down with his ship?
“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.
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.
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.
Well no it’s dumber than that. If a president can have sometime killed he could then have someone banished or imprisoned. They’re literally arguing that the argument they’re making is pointless because a president can do whatever they want.
I’m not sure they can realistically run out that clock. But they can absolutely just ignore a past ruling, if they want. Also, Biden just wouldn’t do that. He’s a shit, in a lot of ways, but not that kind of shit. Buuut the important point is that this argument is effective, accurate or not. Scare the MAGAts about what Biden, or, say, a future President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez might do. It doesn’t have to be a realistic threat, just play into their existing narrative.
Add comment