@GottaLaff
I’m declaring today “I hate the Federalist Society with the passion of a million flaming suns” day.
We are subjected to these kinds of discussions and decisions because of that group of miscreants.
@GottaLaff if the Supreme Court decides to upgrade the presidency into a supreme dictatorship, I'm 100% behind Biden removing the conservative justices and senate/house members from office using any means necessary as long as he restores the president's powers.
@GottaLaff The 44 presidents before and the one after seemed to have dealt with it. The president was never meant to be king, hence that little war. ;)
Here comes the first hypothetical question. Chief Justice John Roberts asks ... what about an official act taken by a President (appointing an ambassador)... "for a bribe?"
Roberts - the bribe isn't an official act. But the appointing of an ambassador is one
(NOTE: I’M HAVING ENOUGH PROBLEMS TRYING TO DO ONE THREAD, LET ALONE 2, LET ALONE HAVING A DR APPT SOON… SO I’LL BE CUTTING ALL OF THIS SHORT SOON)
Justice Sotomayor interjects with next hypothetical.... about what happens if a President orders an assassination.. "for personal reasons"
The DC appeals court used similar hypotheticals in January (Bribes and assassination)
Sotomayor cites amicus briefs received by Supreme Court in this case detailing how founding fathers once considered immunity for President, but didn't include immunity in founding documents of our nation
Kav now imagining that bc none of the statutes charged have a clear statement that POTUS could be charged.
Murder does not have a clear statement.
Scott MacFarlane:
A Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice (Gorsuch) and Trump's attorney (Sauer) just did a round of hypothesizing about a future President pardoning himself
Both emphasize that such a prospect is untested and uncertain
Kav seems set to say POTUS can't be prosecuted FOR ANY OFFICIAL act unless the crime says POTUS can be prosecuted. But may be willing to let DC District to review for official acts.
Folks... I think we might have Barrett on team "no immunity, no remand." But I'll have to see how she handles the government's argument before I'm more confident.
Also, Barrett dissembles a lot in oral arguments about her position. She talks one way but often votes another.
Thomas says presidents in the past have participated in coups, "yet there have been no prosecutions"??
Is this motherfucker serious? His argument is "Every president coups, why is mine getting charged?"
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Roberts: "The court of appeals did not get into a focused consideration of what facts we're talking about or what documents we're talking about... they did not look at what courts usually look at when... taking away immunity."
Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are more worried about a prosecutor going after a president for political reasons than A PRESIDENT TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT.
SCOTUS now really bothered that Trump would have to go to trial. This is insanity.
Kav: It's a serious constitutional question whether statutes can be applied to the President.
This is insane.
But I guess he heard Trump's demands.
Gorsuch now wanting to claim an Article II challenge is immunity.
Gorsuch: Let's say President leads mostly peaceful protest in front of Congress, delays proceedings before Congress.
And by "this" I mean the rule of law and by "over" I mean delayed indefinitely to help Trump.
Gorsuch suggesting that under the government's standard a president could be prosecuted for leading a "civil rights protest" in front of Congress and sought to "influence an official proceeding."
Yes, because Jan 6 and a fucking sit in are the same thing, Neil.
Justice Sotomayor: The president is only explicitly mentioned in a few federal statutes. "Justice Barrett made the point that if we say a president can't be included in a criminal law unless explicitly named, then that would bar the Senate from impeaching him for high crimes or misdemeanor because that means that he's not subject to the law at all."
16/ Justice Jackson: "Why .... [would] the president ... not be required to follow the law when he is performing his official acts? Everyone else — there are lots of folks who have very high-powered jobs and they do so against the backdrop of potential criminal prosecution."
17/ Justice Jackson tells Trump's lawyer that he seems to be "worried about the president being chilled." She argues a "significant opposite problem" would emerge:
"If the pres wasn't chilled, if someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world … could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country."
Alito: "Did I understand you to say, 'Well, you know, if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake. He's subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else' You don't think he's in a peculiarly precarious position?"
Michael Dreeben, representing the U.S.: "He's under a constitutional obligation ... he's supposed to be faithful to the laws of the United States and the Constitution of the United States."
"And making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution."
so according to Trump's lawyers, if Trump returns to power he could sell all of our most sensitive military secrets to the CCP and he would be completely immune from prosecution so long as he kept it quiet until he left office. This is something SCOTUS is taking seriously!
Alito again stops Dreeben from talking about the facts of the case.
We're at the point of this horrid hearing where Alito is suggesting it would be bad if the interned Japanese-Americans had recourse for their false imprisonment.
THAT'S THE FAFO WITH A BORICUA VOICE @GottaLaff you have not met true power until you've made a Puerto Rican woman tap into all of our ancestors for that voice that comes from within our existential core. RESPECT is a very big thing for us Puerto Ricans but especially women because... you know the reasons.
it's a very Puerto Rican thing to use the tone of our voice, not words, to command respect. in this case, with Sotomayor, she's demanding respect for the rule of law.
Kagan is like the first person to be asking about the actual criminal acts Trump is charged with.
I assume Alito is not listening because Kagan is a woman while Gorsuch is probably sitting there emailing the New York Times because they got something wrong on the Spelling Bee.
Alito: "If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election & knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the pres is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the pres may be criminally prosecuted … will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country?"
Dreeben, repping the U.S.: "I think it's exactly the opposite, Justice Alito. There are lawful mechanisms to contest the results in an election."
I see the internet is unimpressed with Dreeben but that's being a little unfair. The Republican justices want to do this, there's nothing that Dreeben could say to stop them.
What he could be doing was making their hypocrisy more clear for the non-legal media following along.
But... SCOTUS advocates have to preserve their ability to argue another day, and blowing up the justices in one case
A: Doesn't help them actually win the case.
B: Actively hurts them in the next one.
30/ These are the last few posts in Mystal's thread:
This could be a men v. women 5-4 ruling.
Men: Let's kick this back to DC to further delay Trump's trial.
Soto, Kagan, Jackson: Why? That's fucking dumb.
Barrett: Ladies, I agree with you, but we shouldn't call the men fucking dumb. We should politely disagree.
We're past the two and half hour mark for an argument where the Republican justices made their decision when they were appointed, some of them decades ago.
KBJ is closing by trying to answer all of Gorsuch's questions, which would be effective if Gorsuch operated in good faith. But... he doesn't. So...
I had hoped that one of the liberal justices would have made the point from the Common Cause brief, highlighting that the whole point of what Republican justices are doing is to give Trump delay.
Not a persuasive argument for the justices, but good for the media to hear.
The case is submitted. Court doesn't come back till May 9th which will be a decision day.
But I think they won't decide this case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.
I wish I had better news for you. Thanks anyway for following along with our national descent into madness.
I totally understand. I am a Canuck who lived in the USA from 1995-2003. I returned to home because I could see where the country was going. Now I’m relocating to Colombia because:
I cannot afford to live in my own country.
The medical system is being privatised. (My wife lost her doctor years ago and will never have another.)
Trudeau killed #ProportionalRepresentation and as a result, a hard right asshole (Poilievre) is likely to win a majority.
@GottaLaff
Not going to give up. I am unhappy about some things JT has not accomplished, PR being one of the biggest, but this is my country. @Greengordon@DrGeof
If politically motivated prosecutions are a legitimate concern, why are they not common at the state level with governors who do not enjoy the blanket immunity of the US President?
@potus In case you weren't paying attention, SCOTUS is pretty sure that you're now allowed to purge Congress until there's no quorum for impeachment and then clear the bench and install a bunch of 25 year old leftists for SCOTUS.
It would be helpful if your administration had any visible interest in this matter.
@GottaLaff By July 3rd, Trump may have already been convicted in the NY election interference/hush money case. Also, the Republican Natl Convention will be held on July 15th, just 12 days later. Okay, so a potentially convicted man who's still waiting to find out if he has absolute immunity will be "crowned" Republican presidential nominee. We're living in upside-down times.
@GottaLaff Actually it’s Easy! so to save our democracy Biden must have CIA “officially” assassinate Alito, Thomas (at least Ginni), Gorsuch and Roberts asap… by the time it’s exposed we’ll have a whole new court anyway but also it will be past the time Biden could be “impeached” Please hurry up and do it @potus !!
@GottaLaff Reminded me of this quote from Ruth Bader Ginsberg:
"And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."
@GottaLaff I had to share this comments with my hubs, and he said "If women told men they were dumb more often..." and I said: "I tell you that all the time" and he said, "I know, and I'm still alive because of it!"
Well. 🤷🏻♀️ I guess if that's the case, we can just let Biden know he can stay regardless of the election outcome, also he can have TFG thrown in a deep dungeon ASAP as long as he can say it's "in the course of his duties."
@GottaLaff I am speechless. Alito may as well just say, “I am personally going to protect Donald Trump from prosecution or being held accountable.” His head is so far up Trump’s ass he can see his molars.
@GottaLaff affecting the outcome of an official proceeding by threatening to withhold votes is not the same as affecting the outcome of an official proceeding by threatening to hang Mike Pence.
@GottaLaff NFL
So it’s okay for a special prosecutor to go after anyone else in Congress for political reasons though? Why is just a President immune?
What makes something a political reason vs a legitimate concern? There needs to be a circuit breaker to protect the country against a rogue President. No one should have absolute power.
@GottaLaff #DonTheCon is the only person I know who has said he will go after former presidents and... execute them? I seem to remember him saying that somewhere but it's hard to keep up with it all. 😆
@GottaLaff That's ridiculous. There should be exemptions, not every law has to include him, that's ridiculous. "You jaywalked!" "Well, the law doesn't specifically say I can't, so carry on."
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