SCOTUS: TRUMP IMMUNE FROM CRIMINAL PROSECUTION FOR OFFICIAL ACTS

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Impeach Both-Sides Roberts. Impeach Coke Can Clarence. Impeach MAGA Sam. Impeach (reluctantly) Native Law Neil. Impeach Beer Brett.

Simp

Barrett gives me the creeps, like many heterosexual Catholics. But she did not join the most jawdroppingly absurd parts of this decision.

[CookieDamage]

What if Trump wins and then "suspends" the 2028 elections as an official act?

Of course it's not constitutional and would be challenged, but sold this scotus even do anything?

[Tekken_Guy]

What if Trump wins and then "suspends" the 2028 elections as an official act?

Of course it's not constitutional and would be challenged, but sold this scotus even do anything?

Given that elections aren’t run directly at the federal level, I doubt any election officials will comply.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Fair decision as long as this is applied equally to Democratic presidents.

[HisGrace]

To get the obvious out of the way, I don't see how this impacts the Georgia election case. The President has no Constitutional authority over Georgia's election so his asking them to "find" votes for example is not an official act. Nor were his actions in the Ukraine obstruction of justice case.

On the other hand, this is still completely insane. If Biden has the Secret Service assassinate the entire Supreme Court tomorrow, are they honestly saying he shouldn't be prosecuted for that because the Secret Service serves at the pleasure of the president so it's an "official act". Would soliciting bribes be ok as long as you did it through some kind of official channel? Would anything in Watergate be considered a crime under this ruling? Feels like Roberts  is trying to social engineer some kind of resolution to the Trump gridlock (and the other five are partisan hacks) but this makes it a million times worse and doesn't actually resolve the election case as I noted above.

[HisGrace]

Lawfare fail.

Yeah, now presidents can just have their political opponents killed whenever they feel like it, so much better.

[HisGrace]

Also have to say all those pseudointellectual Federalist Society types handwringing about executive authority while Obama was president and then presumably cheering this on is hilarious in hindsight.

[Green Line]

Lawfare fail.

Yeah, now presidents can just have their political opponents killed whenever they feel like it, so much better.

They can’t.  Murder is not a core constitutional act, no matter how many podcasts you and Sonia Sotomayor listen to that say otherwise.

[BlueSwan]

Lawfare fail.

Yeah, now presidents can just have their political opponents killed whenever they feel like it, so much better.

They can’t.  Murder is not a core constitutional act, no matter how many podcasts you and Sonia Sotomayor listen to that say otherwise.

It is though. Commanding the military is like THE constitutional power the president has. If Obama ordering the killing of Osama Bin Laden is constitutional, then taking out *any* deemed threat is the same. Remember that this is not about courts deciding whether or not the president made the "right" decision in the exercise of his constitutional powers, it is simply about whether or not he was "officially" exercising his constitutional powers, and in this case he would be.

[HisGrace]

Lawfare fail.

Yeah, now presidents can just have their political opponents killed whenever they feel like it, so much better.

They can’t.  Murder is not a core constitutional act, no matter how many podcasts you and Sonia Sotomayor listen to that say otherwise.

Tell that to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The president is the commander in chief of the military and has the constitutional authority to order them to perform whatever strike he wants. The issue is previously the legality of that strike could be evaluated separate from his authority to order it, now it can't.

Same deal with bribery.  Giving pardons, signing or vetoing a bill, exc, are legal powers of the president so he can't be prosecuted for doing them even if it's with corrupt intent, Roberts even specifically noted in the decision that the motivation of the official act was not relevant (i.e, pardoning someone in exchange for money).

Just a horrible, horrible decision independent of anything to do with Trump, and it doesn't even resolve that since Trump doesn't have any legal authority over how Georgia conducts its elections anyway. I never want to hear any handwringing about excessive executive authority or checks and balances from Republicans ever again if you're going to defend this.

[BlueSwan]

To get the obvious out of the way, I don't see how this impacts the Georgia election case. The President has no Constitutional authority over Georgia's election so his asking them to "find" votes for example is not an official act. Nor were his actions in the Ukraine obstruction of justice case.

But the presidents records cannot be used as evidence, which I assume would include the smoking gun - i.e. the phone call that everybody has already heard. Frankly absurd.

[HisGrace]

To get the obvious out of the way, I don't see how this impacts the Georgia election case. The President has no Constitutional authority over Georgia's election so his asking them to "find" votes for example is not an official act. Nor were his actions in the Ukraine obstruction of justice case.

But the presidents records cannot be used as evidence, which I assume would include the smoking gun - i.e. the phone call that everybody has already heard. Frankly absurd.

Depends, if it's the state of Georgia turning it over it would be a grey area what the standard is.

That definitely is important for the bribery example though, even if you're going to say he's being prosecuted for the money and not the official act, if the official act performed in exchange for the bribery can't be admitted as evidence IDK how you can get a conviction. Just a completely unhinged ruling. I've never heard any conservatives even attempt to explain why these things couldn't happen other than just being like "LOL, calm down doomer" probably because they can't.

[Middle-aged Europe]

[morgieb]

[Yoda]

This insanity should be tested properly. President Biden could officially order the justice department to designate Trump an enemy of the country and then order the military to eliminate that threat. And maybe while they are at it also take out the conservative members of the supreme court. All very officially of course.

I mean, trump was caught red-handed on an audio recording sharing top-secret classified national security documents with people with no f***ing business seeing said material, after he was no longer President and therefore did not have the right to possess said documents, and his lackeys are on camera footage moving said materials to try to hide them from the government. Oh, and he shared sensitive national security info about our nuclear submarine capability with an Australian national who paid money to belong to his club.

Any reasonable judge would find that DoJ designating trump an enemy of the state is totally within the norm. Of course, we're not dealing with a reasonable SCOTUS. They will always rule in favor of trump.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk/status/1807822432419422638

[Hindsight was 2020]

To get the obvious out of the way, I don't see how this impacts the Georgia election case. The President has no Constitutional authority over Georgia's election so his asking them to "find" votes for example is not an official act. Nor were his actions in the Ukraine obstruction of justice case.

But the presidents records cannot be used as evidence, which I assume would include the smoking gun - i.e. the phone call that everybody has already heard. Frankly absurd.

Depends, if it's the state of Georgia turning it over it would be a grey area what the standard is.

That definitely is important for the bribery example though, even if you're going to say he's being prosecuted for the money and not the official act, if the official act performed in exchange for the bribery can't be admitted as evidence IDK how you can get a conviction. Just a completely unhinged ruling. I've never heard any conservatives even attempt to explain why these things couldn't happen other than just being like "LOL, calm down doomer" probably because they can't.

Because they’re trolls that support Trump being a dictator but want to gaslight you about it as well. Like before you were also talking about rw complaining about executive overreach and how they should never complain about it again but if we somehow come out of this mess with being able to have free and fair elections and a democrat gets back in they’ll totally complain about the new powers that the president would have because politics to them is just a bad faith game about obtaining power nothing more or less

[HisGrace]

Important thing to address-

Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law

Straight from the decision on page 4. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

I think this eliminates the "can something illegal be official" question. The decision itself specifically acknowledges that an action can be official and in violation of a law (like murder or bribery in the common examples). Let's stop with the obscurations but of course the usual suspects won't. 

[HisGrace]

Also we're all arguing the merits of this but I've never once heard anyone articulate the constitutional basis for this. Nothing in the constitution implies the president has any kind of immunity from criminal prosecution. That's just the Justice Department internal policy, but the Supreme Court has no role in enforcing that, they exist to interpret statutory law. Even aside from that nothing in the Constitution gives presidents immunity after they've left office either and the Justice Department is silent on that. This is completely made up out of thin air. I thought "constitutional conservatives" and "textualists" didn't like that but I guess they're more interested in being rent boys for Trump now.

[BlueSwan]

Important thing to address-

Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law

Straight from the decision on page 4. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

I think this eliminates the "can something illegal be official" question. The decision itself specifically acknowledges that an action can be official and in violation of a law (like murder or bribery in the common examples). Let's stop with the obscurations but of course the usual suspects won't. 

Yup, it really seems pretty clear that this is carte blanche for the president/king, regardless of what Roberts is saying.

[HisGrace]

Important thing to address-

Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law

Straight from the decision on page 4. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

I think this eliminates the "can something illegal be official" question. The decision itself specifically acknowledges that an action can be official and in violation of a law (like murder or bribery in the common examples). Let's stop with the obscurations but of course the usual suspects won't. 

Yup, it really seems pretty clear that this is carte blanche for the president/king, regardless of what Roberts is saying.

Well Roberts wrote the thing, more talking about media figures just stonewalling and being like "no it doesn't" without explaining when people suggest this gives presidents free reign to assassinate anyone.

[Sir Mohamed]

Related:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1808119399372452265

[SWE]

Also we're all arguing the merits of this but I've never once heard anyone articulate the constitutional basis for this. Nothing in the constitution implies the president has any kind of immunity from criminal prosecution. That's just the Justice Department internal policy, but the Supreme Court has no role in enforcing that, they exist to interpret statutory law. Even aside from that nothing in the Constitution gives presidents immunity after they've left office either and the Justice Department is silent on that. This is completely made up out of thin air. I thought "constitutional conservatives" and "textualists" didn't like that but I guess they're more interested in being rent boys for Trump now.

Most of the opinion is just "you can't prosecute the president in this way, because it would be bad " and very little substance beyond that. When working backwards to get to his preferred conclusion, Roberts came up with only 4 coherent, constitutional/historical claims that I could identify to support it.

1. The Separation of Powers between the three branches implies that neither the legislative branch or judicial branch can have any sort of real oversight over the president, for reasons that are apparently too self-evident to be worth including in the opinion
2. The Founders really wanted a strong executive, and they wouldn't want to expose him to the risk of prosecution. Something interesting about this argument though: you would expect to see quotes from some Founding Fathers to back it up. That isn't what Roberts does. Instead he quotes two other people who notably were not of the Founding generation: Stephen Breyer and himself. Now, to be fair, he was quoting himself quoting Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 70. Finally, something, a Federalist Paper! What did Mr. Hamilton have to say about prosecuting presidents in Federalist No. 70? According to Roberts, not a whole lot - he just quotes him as saying that a strong executive is necessary for ‘the protection of the community against foreign attacks,’ ‘the steady administration of the laws,’ ‘the protection of property,’ and ‘the security of liberty.’

You might be thinking "oh, that doesn't have a whole lot to do with presidential immunity, that's a real stretch." If you're like me, you might have assumed that this Federalist Paper doesn't touch on the question of presidential immunity, and Roberts is just grasping at straws because the Founders didn't anticipate this situation. Turns out, you and I were wrong. Federalist 70 is hugely relevant to this question and addresses it head on. You see, that particular paper is mainly advocating for a singular executive over having multiple people fill that role. Hamilton has a number of reasons for advancing that position, among them among them that that having multiple executives would make it harder to punish them for misconduct.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp

[T]he plurality of the Executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power, first, the restraints of public opinion, which lose their efficacy, as well on account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among a number, as on account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall; and, secondly, the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to their removal from office or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it.

(Emphasis mine)
Wow! According to Roberts only source from a Founder, imposing criminal punishment on a president isn't just allowed, but as important a check on the executive branch as popular opinion and impeachment. Seems like kind of a smoking gun to me. But wait, Hamilton isn't done! He goes on to say that in Britain, the monarch is above the law and that we absolutely cannot have anything like that in a Republic

In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the pub lic peace, that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to the king a constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the advice they give. Without this, there would be no responsibility whatever in the executive department an idea inadmissible in a free government. But even there the king is not bound by the resolutions of his council, though they are answerable for the advice they give. He is the absolute master of his own conduct in the exercise of his office, and may observe or disregard the counsel given to him at his sole discretion.

But in a republic, where every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office the reason which in the British Constitution dictates the propriety of a council, not only ceases to apply, but turns against the institution. In the monarchy of Great Britain, it furnishes a substitute for the prohibited responsibility of the chief magistrate, which serves in some degree as a hostage to the national justice for his good behavior. In the American republic, it would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminish, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself.

Again, emphasis mine.

To be clear, this isn't comprehensive of what the Founders thought, it's just one source that blatantly contradicts Roberts. And it was the best source Roberts came up with. That being said, there are other Founders in the mix worth looking at. The dissent notes that, finding Hamilton expressing similar sentiments in Federalist No. 68, as well as other framers and their contemporaries, including Charles Pinckney, James Wilson, and Joseph Story. Roberts addresses this in a hilarious way: Pinckney's opinion doesn't matter, because Pinckney, despite being a Constitutional signatory, said it was a mistake to give the executive the ability to appoint justices. This shows a sub-Fifth grade understanding of the Constitution's history. The entire document was a series of compromises over compromises, nobody involved walked away entirely satisfied. If Pinckney's disapproval of one of those compromises means he can't be taken as credible to interpreting the document that he was involved in crafting, then nobody can be taken as credible. James Madison certainly wouldn't - he thought that having all states being equally represented in the Senate regardless of population was asinine, for instance. John Roberts doesn't really bother engaging with any other arguments by the dissent on this topic, which is to the strength of his argument. The less he tells us about his thought process, the smarter he looks.

3. In Nixon v Fitzgerald, the court found absolute civil immunity for presidents from lawsuits for their official acts. This is only of limited usefulness, given civil and criminal processes differ from each other in fundamental ways, as criminal processes is meant to address a harm to the public, not an individual, and so the public has a greater interest in prosecuting a corrupt president than it does in allowing some guy to sue the president, as the majority in Fitzgerald acknowledges. Still, it is the best precedent that Roberts has, although you're not going to find much support there for some of the more bizarre and extreme conclusions Roberts made, like that a president's motive is irrelevant in distinguishing if an act is within his official duties. For that, Roberts engaged on something more akin to creative writing than legal analysis

4. In two cases involving subpoening a president, Burr v US and Nixon v US, the Court in both cases allowed the subpoena but clarified that there may be some instances in which national security concerns could outweigh the public need for a fair judicial process involving the president. Roberts took "some instances" to mean "always" in the context of presidential prosecution because **** you that's the outcome the Republican party wanted the Court to come up with and Roberts will be damned if he let's anything silly like the law, Constitution, history, English language, logic, or common sense thwart that.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Trump is immune for official acts but can inspiring to get electors, having sex and CRT documents case are private

Time before Prez  is clearly not an official act 34 counts alone is the lifetime in prison

If convicted in one of these cases is 20 yrs

[HisGrace]

1. The Separation of Powers between the three branches implies that neither the legislative branch or judicial branch can have any sort of real oversight over the president, for reasons that are apparently too self-evident to be worth including in the opinion

This is extremely weak, vetoes can be overridden, the Senate has to approve appointments and treaties, then obviously judicial review can strike down laws signed by the president, which I'm assuming no one on the supreme court wants to get rid of.

Also assumed prosecution of presidents wasn't addressed because it seems like it should be obvious, and the Founders naively took the "if we don't talk about it no one will do it" approach to a lot of things (thank god they budged on the Bill of Rights though). But that seems pretty clear, Hamilton obviously supports criminal prosecutions for presidents and he doesn't make any caveats about whether the crime was within the official sphere or not.

Was giving Roberts the benefit of the doubt and assuming he was trying to carve out some "moderate hero" decision to settle Trump's legal issues and just failed miserably. Sounds like he's unfortunately all the way into the partisan hack camp now though to cherry pick Federalist 70 like that to make the opposite point.