I’d sure as hell hope not.
There has to be a limit to the corruption and duplicity of this facsimile of a Supreme Court, and I would have to think that it’s somewhere short of ruling that efforts to cover up the misappropriation of campaign funds and filing of fraudulent financial reports count as “official acts” of a president.
But then again, they are painfully obviously grotesquely corrupt and duplicitous…
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The GA case, Fani Willis’ conduct not withstanding, will likely be thrown out on the basis that Trump calling the GA SoS was an “official act”. The contents of the call, criminal as it is, will likely be deemed untouchable since it happened while he was committing an official act.
No, what I expect to see is the judge ruling that re-election is not (and in line with previous case law, never has been) one of the core or official duties of the President and therefore any acts he undertook in the furtherance of that aren’t immune from prosecution.
And that’s when Roberts will overthrow it, because they can’t have their newly minted king missing his tee time rotting in a Georgia prison.
I dunno…
You could well be right, but I have a hard time believing that any court - even this grotesquely corrupt one - would attempt such rulings.
So far, while obviously a significant threat, their immunity rulings have actually been broadly in line with established precedent. And they specifically stated that the precise definition of an “official act” was something that was going to have to be worked out in future rulings.
Even with as cynical as I am, I find it hard to believe that they actually intend to rule that anything that might be done in the midst of carrying out some entirely and completely unrelated official act is afforded the same protection as that official act. That would rather obviously make it so that the president could, for instance, pause in the middle of signing a bill and do literally anything - absolutely anything at all - and be entirely immune from any and all consequences.
Yes - it is possible that they’ll rule that way, but again, even as cynical as I am, I can’t imagine that they actually will, if for no other reason than that that would empower the president to order the summary execution of all Supreme Court justices.
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Yeah, Fuckface 45 is a problem. Unfortunately, there are ba6by others that he installed that are continuing to make the problem much much worse.
The coup marches on.
Conservatives have been working towards installing their king for decades. Now they have it.
Experts also said that there’s no way the SCOTUS would give the president immunity for acts up to and including the assassination of a political opponent, but here we are.
“Legal experts don’t understand fascism”
The point isn’t to get it thrown out. The point is to delay it until after Trump is elected and takes office.
Why would he? He committed those felonies before he was president.
I’m sure scotus will fix that if it becomes an issue
They were “proactive official acts”
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There’s only two routes to getting this undone. One is a constitutional amendment, the other is for the Court to get several justices who are eager to overturn this decision, and then bring a case to trial specifically to address this issue.
I can’t think of an amendment that would likely have a broader appeal than one that says presidents aren’t kings and aren’t above the law. But even so, I can’t see it getting passed any time soon, given the overwhelming bipartisan support it would need. Personally, I’d like to see this done anyway, if only so that we could also include a provision stating that a president can’t pardon himself, and can’t pardon crimes that he ordered.
By comparison, it seems a lot easier to change the balance on the court, since one way or another it will be changed over time. And assuming we reach a point where we can be confident that the majority is ready to completely erase this ruling, then you just need to bring a case against a former president.
One could wait for such a case to arise organically, but that’s leaving a lot to chance. You need a former president to have allegedly committed a crime, you need a evidence enough to bring a case, you need to go through the appeals process, they need to try to use presidential immunity, and then it needs to be taken up by the Supreme Court. Any number of things could go wrong, and there could be political fallout. If there’s a serious enough situation that requires this, by all means, go after them and make this an issue in the case so that it has to get appealed. Worst case scenario, they get away with something they would have gotten away with anyway.
Personally, if I were president and had shifted the balance of the court back to one that respects the rule of law, I’d probably tell the justice department to bring a case against me, appeal to the Supreme Court, ask that they expedite the appeal, and then they can completely reverse this insane precedent. It would all be contrived, but that’s hardly anything new. I would make sure that anyone I appointed to the Court was down with a plan like this, If they won’t do that much to safeguard the country, the constitution, and rule of law, they can’t be trusted with the responsibility of being on the Supreme Court.
Hah! Republicans will never pull off their coup by listening to experts…
And with Chevron gone, they aren’t required to listen to experts
John Bolton ® is a self-admitted expert on coups.
Though it is, in my view unreasonably deferential to the office of the president, the ruling makes it very clear Trump does not have immunity for things like falsifying the records of his private business and refusing to turn over classified documents when he wasn’t president.
He doesn’t have immunity for the crimes but there is testimony about things he said to staff while in office and the Supreme Court has declared such conversations off-limits. They really went out of their way to cover for Trump, except for the part where Biden would probably have immunity for having him killed.
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Don’t give me hope.
At this point I wouldn’t trust US supreme court to decide which underwear to wear to work today.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Six years after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began an investigation that resulted in Donald Trump becoming the first former president ever convicted of a crime, the case continues to be beset by extraordinary curveballs.
“That wasn’t just a curve, that was a 12-6 breaking ball,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-attorney who was a key witness in the case against him, referring to a baseball pitch that befuddles hitters when it sharply drops.
Trump’s lawyers indicated in their letter that their motion will focus on evidence introduced at trial that related to social media posts, public statements and witness testimony from his time in office.
Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories," Trump wrote in one April 2018 tweet entered into evidence.
Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsification of business records for signing off on an effort to cover up reimbursements for a “hush money” payment to an adult film star as he ran for office in 2016.
“In the event that it is set aside, I would expect that the government would move to re-try the case, and exclude the evidence Judge Merchan decides could be in violation of the Supreme Court decision,” Klieman said.
The original article contains 729 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
