I wish Dems had that dog in them to fight, even if this was possible. The fact they still go around calling modern day GOP their friends and colleagues says more than enough.
They’re all on the same corporate payrolls, dems are and have been nothing more than controlled opposition.
So, Fat Orange Clown, how is “hiding documents you shouldn’t have as a non-president” an official act? How is anything done as “not the president” an official act?
RIP
That’s not what they said iirc. Now everything has to be presented to determine if it was an official act, if so immunity, if not no immunity.
It’s a very half hearted way to look like they’re backing trump but actually throwing him to the wolves since it’s not an official act and everyone knows it. It would similarly reverse clintons impeachment since lying to Congress was as president and therefore an official act.
It would similarly reverse clintons impeachment since lying to Congress was as president and therefore an official act.
No, this decision wouldn’t affect that at all. This decision covers criminal prosecution, not impeachment. Now, if Clinton had been indicted, tried, and convicted of perjury for lying to Congress after Bush was elected in 2000, then it would be unwinding that conviction, if it was determined that it was an official act as president.
I don’t think that actually matters, if a president is immune from serious criminal prosecution the same reasoning would make them immune from civil.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here.
Impeachment isn’t a criminal process. It’s also not civil. Impeachment is it’s own thing, outside of the judicial system. A prosecutor can’t impanel a grand jury and have the grand jury impeach an elected or appointed official. If Clinton had been both impeached and removed from office, this decision would do nothing to affect that.
On the other hand, if he had left office, and then had been criminally charged for lying to COngress, while he was sitting as President, and was convicted, then this decision would be unwinding it.
Impeachment is by definition civil. If I can shoot you in the face and get immunity then I can certainly lie to Congress. They’re pretty literally saying it’s absolute immunity.
“High crimes and misdemeanors” the president is immune to them all now. Criminal, civil, administrative, doesn’t matter with absolute immunity comes absolute power.
It’s not a civil or criminal matter. Impeachment is inherently a political process. This ruling has near-zero bearing on it.
It’s civil the clause even specifically refers to civil officers, it’s a civil process like every other process don’t by the government. There is no such thing as a political process.
All this talk about Biden could do all of these administrative things that he can’t legally, but it misses the point.
Say he pushes some illegal orders. He can not get in trouble for pushing them, but they can be legally challenged and shot down quickly. Especially when you can legally “tip” helpful justices.
He would need to do things that could not be taken back.
You’re missing the point, where the president can now legally commit an illegal act, and call it an official act, before the lawyers can deliberate, he’s rounded up dissenters in the government and had them shot. No amount of lawfare raises the dead.
Its not absolute immunity. Its presumed immunity for official acts. Its literally the same rules as always. He can still go to jail if they can prove it.
It was basically the supreme court saying “we aint touching this, you figure it out”
It’s absolute immunity for “core constitutional acts” and presumed immunity for every other official act.
The ruling also said trump can appeal rulings on if specific acts receive immunity, so they can overturn a ruling they don’t like.
Then you get to prove it wasnt an constitutional act.
Dementia. But hopefully one of his handlers arranges for this.
Last episode of
DragonWeekly Americano, we witnessed the once heroic group known as the Supreme Court Justice 9 reveal their evil plans meant to enslave the citizens. The author made the villains so strong, the emboldened villains themselves wrote themselves a weakness knowing that there is no opposition strong enough to wield the mighty power of “Absolute Immunity” against them. Is there anyway to stop the Supreme Court Justice 9, find out in this episode of Weekly Americano.Dems are controlled opposition. How many times do they have to betray you before you learn that.
One thing has nothing to do with the other.
Unpopular opinion: You should be allowed to run for president and be a president even with a criminal record. I don’t support trump and think the convictions are well earned. But democracy is a democracy - it’s up to the people to decide whether or not they should have a convicted criminal in office.
Let’s start with letting felons work and rent apartments in the US before we move on to the presidency.
Good point
Especially given that prosecutions are often racially biased, and sometimes politically biased.
If an opponent with a criminal record can’t run, you incentivize an immoral president to have their political opponents charged with anything they can think of.
OTOH, the American electorate is filled with idiots. You would hope that people would see through a purely political conviction and not let that stop them. But, the reality is probably the opposite, a serial killer who ate his victims could run, and if the party got behind that candidate, half the electorate would not know he was a serial killer, or they’d vote for him anyhow, or they’d think his conviction was just a psy-op and his victims were crisis actors.
Your second paragraph is the main reason.
I am from the UK and a famous example is Bobby Sands MP. Was a member of the PIRA, but was in prison and got elected MP for his constituency. While I do believe the PIRA to be a brutal terrorist organisation, the people who voted him in wanted to show their support - and I agree with their right to do that as much as I vehemently disagree with their choice
I agree, but I wish there were some way to ensure that voters were making an informed choice.
In the case of Bobby Sands, I assume they were. That was a high profile case. It’s even vaguely possible to make the case that he was a political prisoner.
But, almost daily I see interviews with Trump voters who seem to have lost their connection with reality. And, it’s not even a wrong but consistent worldview. It’s just a bunch of incoherent conspiracy theories that fall apart under the most gentle questioning. Unfortunately, there’s probably no way to restrict voting to only sane and well informed voters, because any restriction you put in place could be abused.
I think the main issue was the “don’t trust the mainstream media” and “fake news” BS. It was genius if you think about it. Then people will go to him for their info.
I also understand though that the USA has less unbiased reporting, unlike the UK where unbiased is generally the standard for TV reporting, especially for the BBC.
Our newspapers, however…
Yes, I really think a major reason that the US is failing is the lack of an equivalent to Australia’s ABC, Britain’s BBC, Canada’s CBC, all the way to (I wish this were true) New Zealand’s ZBC.
Those public broadcasters anchor the news reporting space. Many people think they’re biased, and it’s probably true that they aren’t 100% neutral, and definitely have an institutional bias. But, the kinds of people who work for those public broadcasters really believe in their mission to tell the truth. Normal news consumers still end up in filter bubbles, but it’s really easy to pop out of those filter bubbles for a second and check out the public broadcaster. In the US, even the supposedly centrist for-profit broadcasters are heavily biased because they need to make money. The bias isn’t necessarily left or right, but it’s in favor of whatever’s sensationalist and will keep people glued to their TVs.
Interestingly enough, you find a lot of people claiming the BBC is biased, but those people cannot agree on who they’re biased towards 😆 so they must be doing something right.
Agree. The fact that we have to try to think of ways to block this guy from being on the ballot is the truly sad part. It’s mind blowing that the simple gigantic list of inadequacies and reasons not to vote for him isn’t enough. I can’t comprehend what has happened to peoples brains. A pod person epidemic seems like an increasingly viable explanation.
That he’s an executive not legislative?
Well, yes he is. He is both legislative and executive. In the US system head of state and head of government are the same person. In Germany for example the head of state is the federal president Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He is part of the Legislative and ratifies laws. Then there is the more famous chancellor who is the head of government Olaf Scholz. He holds the executive power. Although Bidens power in legislation is limited he still has some.
He very specifically isn’t both…he can use Executive orders and Veto laws, but he President can’t make a law without Congress. Correction: SHOULDN’T … it’s a free-for-all with the new King-Maker ruling from SCOTUS.
Immunity from prosecution doesn’t mean he can pass laws.
Theoretically he could murder members of the other branches of government until the remaining ones did what he wanted, but it doesn’t let him pass new laws or unilaterally change the constitution.
If I had the Army he has, I could unilaterally change whatever I want…
The army wouldn’t go along with it. Even in countries with dictators, they need to purge the army before they try anything too radical. And, often, the generals retain a lot of power.
I keep seeing post and comments like this.
You all realize it’s only immunity from criminal prosecution, right? It’s not instant dictatorship power over the nation. He’d have to order the assassination of Trump and members of SCOTUS to leverage the ruling for those goals.
Kill the SC then replace them with ones to sanction anything he likes?
That’s pretty much all this ruling liberates him to do. There’s no additional executive power.
State sanctioned murder of political dissidents doesn’t seem like a significant additional executive power to you? I’m not convinced that’s enabled by this particular ruling but that’s how you’re framing it and the fact that doesn’t seem concerning to you is pretty wild.
Of course it’s concerning. It’s batshit insane.
All of the posts and comments I keep reading are making it seem like he was granted full executive control of the government. I’m legitimately almost as concerned with the literacy of people as I am the new criminal immunity of POTUS.
That’s fair. That didn’t seem like what you were getting at but I understand that point.
You are correct. But the fact that the ruling enables those actions is batshit crazy.
Not even order it, he’d have to do it himself
Anyone who’d hypothetically take the order has an obligation to refuse it, all he’s doing there is passing the prosecution that he wasn’t going to be in for anyways.
That’s a really good point. They’d need plausible deniability to avoid being convicted.
Yeah, but he can just pardon them.
Depending on the jurisdiction the assassinations are prosecuted under, and I can very well see the Judiciary hard intervening to keep that shit well out of reach of a pardon.
The precedent of sanctioned assassinations of judges might come across to them specifically as a rather especially bad one to set.
I mean yeah, but as long as they do it in dc, is there anything they could really do?
DC has it’s own criminal court
Yeah, but the president has pardon power over the dc courts.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/apply-pardon
Does a member of the military have the right to refuse the direct order of the president?
If the order is illegal, they’d be in hotter water if they didn’t.
Is that so? I thought one main staple of military ranks was that if the soldier rejects an order because of judicial concerns but the superior tells them to do it anyways the judicial blame is on that superior
Indeed this is not correct. Practically speaking, the soldier should keep refusing the order and will be relieved of duty and thrown in the brig. They will then have to hope that by the time the court martial date rolls around their name has been cleared and the officer who gave the order has been or will be court martialed in their place.
Theoretically the officer should go through every underling and find nobody willing to execute illegal orders, but practically they’d only need to go through three or four at most before they had a volunteer.
Nope, I was just following orders is no valid defence.
Of course Biden shouldn’t do anything heinous, but he definitely should do something earthshaking against either Republican party or the Supreme Court just to make a point.
Thing is, this tool the SCOTUS has given the POTUS only works for fascists. Even if Biden did house arrests it would likely blow up in our face.
Perfect opportunity to do something, get impeached (including dems) and rally behind a new canditate.
Biden will only abuse his presidential powers in a Trump way for real important matters.
Such as bypassing congres to send bombs to israel for Genocide.
The president can’t bypass congress for elections, because congress/states have control. You can for the military, because it’s an executive department.
The president can’t do anything unless it’s Trump. Then he can do everything.
Biden can appoint more supreme court justices and play the same dirty game for America.
There 100% are legal loopholes to abuse if Biden wants to. But apparently he only wants to abuse those to support Genocide. After that he suddenly grows “morals”.
Congress, of course, is totally concerned about Gazans. that’s why they voted not to release the number of deaths! /s
An obstructionist Congress?
As an official act you direct the FBI to detain a portion of congres on… let’s see… suspected treason. Then you have congres vote. Isn’t this how dictators do it?
Of course that’s not how dictators work because that’s an explicitly legal action in the most democratic society on earth. No way that could be wrong.
the most democratic society on earth
Wait… do you really think the US is the most democratic society on earth?
I’m being very sarcastic. However I hear that line in earnest from politicians on the news on both sides of the aisle.
What’s stopping him now from dissolving congress? From sending them all back home and requiring governors send new representatives. This situation is the LITERAL slippery slope Republicans have cried about for decades
Dissolving congress isn’t an executive branch power. Congress can just ignore something like that.
The president can’t just will that kind of a thing into existence.
Shooting a gun is well within the president’s power. If he can shoot a gun with no consequences, Congress doesn’t have the ability to ignore shit.
The President is also the ranking member of the military and could use the military to halt the Congress meeting, since he would be immune. It would also mean that they could not impeach or remove him because he is immune, and you cannot charge someone with immunity.
Having the FBI arrest half of them and hold them indefinitely is within his authority, he just has to argue they’re terrorists. He could say every member of congress who made statements defending the January 6 insurrection is a terrorist and send them to gitmo. He’s more likely to come after the squad though.
Every member of congress that was part of the attempt to overthrow rhe election is an insurrectionist and should be detained or in jail by now.
Reminder that CPAC proudly declared “we are all domestic terrorists”.
The thing is that they would just not dissolve and say he has no power to do so. Biden is immune from prosecution for this, but he doesn’t have power to dissolve congress and would ignore him.
What he could do is say that congress (or Trump or SCOTUS for that matter) are a threat to the nation and then have them assassinated or imprisoned. Based on this ruling, he’d be immune from prosecution for this act and would effectively dissolve them by force.
The fact that it almost incentives the president to take the most extreme and authoritarian action is the scariest part of this ruling to me.
They doubt that Biden is willing to be a murderer, and hope that Trump will be.
So what you are saying is that biden needs to pull the trigger on an assassination?
For legal reasons my answer is no.
First day of the next Supreme Court term is the first Monday in October, well before election day.
Let’s have Biden call for a giant mob to show up in Washington and have them raid the place. He can promise to keep the police away, and sign a blanket pardon for all acts.
See how fast the Congress changes that law.
If I were in Biden’s position, the first thing I’d do would be to [comment cannot legally be completed].