US supreme court rules Trump has ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts
- Thread starter Piscian
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Where did either federal law, the constitution, or a previous legal ruling convey absolute immunity for acts taken in the course of the President's job?
Well, that's not true.
The status quo indicates that there was a status in the first place. If something has gone from no status to any form of status, then something has changed.
Ballsy of them to make a decision that legalizes having them assassinated. Being in contact with the CIA is definitely an official act after all, as is writing pardons if the agents "retiring" the Justices are caught.
I actually agree with you on that - this decision just plain shouldn't apply to either that case or the documents case. You can't do official acts as President before you take office or after you leave it.
At the same time, do you believe that any contact with the DOJ or VP regardless of content is sufficiently "doing the job of the president" to not just be absolutely immune from prosecution, but also barred from being used as evidence (since the "official acts" in question were trying to use the DOJ to oppose the election and asking Pence not to certify the results)? To use my above hypothetical, if Biden asked the CIA director to "retire" half a dozen SCOTUS justices would that be official enough to bar even considering that conversation as evidence?
Also, imagine the president says "Anyone with a criminal record, give me $1 million and I pardon you". This might be naked corruption and bribery, but under the SCOTUS ruling it seems to me would also qualify as immune, as pardoning is an official act. The only legal recourse would be with Congress - impeachment - but this merely removes a public servant from office, and potentially also from assuming office again. For an outgoing president issuing their midnight pardons, impeachment would be meaningless (except in terms of reputation).
Also, as far as I can see, Congress could not prevent this. Pardoning is a Constitutional right of the executive so I doubt Congress could outlaw the practice. It would require a Constitutional amendment to resolve. The only other tactic would be for someone to bring a case, and then have it referred up to SCOTUS again in the hope they might reconsider it - but many judges would presumably throw the case out on the basis of SCOTUS's existing ruling.
I can only imagine you write this with the same look in your eyes as a first-year criminal justice major who accidentally wandered into a con law class, on the day the professor gives the "everything you think about American jurisprudence is actually bullshit" lecture about Marbury v. Madison.
Always has been, always will be. Doesn't matter who's in office. It's sad it took Bad Orange Man for liberals to finally figure it out, even sadder they'll cheer it as soon as it "neoliberal with slightly better optics" benefits. Like I keep saying, no sitting president, their administration, their supporters, or appointees are going to put their own heads on the chopping block to throw a previous administration under the bus.
Pretty much bog-standard to my eyes. It was pretty much the only way SCROTUS could rule while preserving its own facade of power, and granting cert put the best-case outcome for Bad Orange Man haters (rejecting it as a political question) off the table.
Again as I keep saying, be careful what you wish for as you just might get it.
It didn't, and this was already obvious. Criticising an extention of malpractice doesn't imply prior obliviousness.
Yeah, it really isn't malpractice either. It's the only way the Court could realistically rule on this. The court couldn't simply refuse cert on the grounds of the case being a political question, because lower courts already ruled on the question (and therefore, SCROTUS would have to vacate those earlier rulings). And yes, the case is absolutely a political question as its core is to block Trump from running for office again; otherwise, it's moot (as Trump is already out of office, the election was certified properly, and Biden was inaugurated regardless).
Either way, it's not justiciable. The courts can't just overturn executive immunity. Even if the judiciary had its own enforcement mechanism (and it doesn't), it oversteps separation of powers as remedying the misdeeds of sitting presidents is the sole and exclusive enumerated power of Congress, not the judiciary.
Blame rabid anti-Trump justices with outstandingly poor jurisprudential records for this outcome.
I think my only real comment is that this is the nail in the coffin of me quitting "the news". It just stresses me out and there's nothing I can do about it. At this point there's nothing that would realistically change my vote because the sides now diametrically opposed. I'm out, life is already too full of anxiety inducers.
Question: Who decides what counts as "unofficial conduct"? We have heard Trump arguing that just thinking about it being official makes it official (like declassifying documents). And seeing where the classified documents were stashed, can going to the bathroom be considered part of Trump's official duties?
Blue team wants a quick and easy way to delegitimize red team and distract from their own failings, and red team wants the same against blue team, but both want to keep attention and accountability away from oligarchs who fund (and represent through for-profit media) both sides by any means necessary. If we still abided by the rule of law and had bare minimum expectations for legal and virtuous presidential behavior, at least all seven presidents since Carter would be behind bars (or died behind them) because every last one of them have committed some pretty heinous crimes in office.
Trump's in-office criminality isn't remotely comparable to Reagan's or Clinton's. Let alone those of George W. "PATRIOT Act, torture, and two foreign wars under false pretense" Bush, or Barack "if they're brown, drone 'em down" Obama. If Trump can be held criminally liable for criminal acts he committed while president, so can Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, and neither side will allow that to happen, because it creates precedent the next president can be held liable as well for the crimes he or she will commit.
The easiest way to make sure your guys face no accountability for their crimes in office, is to make sure their guys face no accountability in office either, but make a very good showing of appearing as if you're holding them accountable (whilst doing everything in your power to advance the unitary executive). That means none of this can ever be codified, and stop by any means necessary attempts to codify them.
Welcome to postmodern politics-by-kayfabe, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Pretty much, the crazy part is the SCOTUS has just elevated itself above the constitution since they get final say on whether something is an official act, so the president could do something directly against the constitution, say prevent american from owning gun and so long as the SCOTUS say that was an official act, everything is good.
At the end of the day, the law is just a social construct and it comes down to whether or not people are willing to enforce the law or president order, if the SCOTUS said something was not okay but literally everyone was okay with it, there's not much they could do. Problem is, one side is very vocal about restructuring the government and every agency to prioritize loyalty above all else, so I'm sure that'll end really well.
Can't believe the dem are really just going to sit there and do nothing, Biden been given a get out of jail free card and can't bothered to use it to stop the guy who's going to get it next and has been very vocal about wanting to target his political opponent and bringing back capital punishment. He does realize that when he lose him and his son are going to be on the fast lane to death row, right?
There wouldn't be anything overturned had the court ruled otherwise, because absolute immunity from criminal prosecution is not laid out anywhere in the constitution, federal law, or any previous ruling.
A) This ruling does not say that.
B) No president has ever been prosecuted before for acts taken in the course of the President's job.
Something implied has become stated, but the content is unchanged.
No, but if I understand correctly, that isn't what they ruled. They laid out 3 possibilities:
1) Absolute immunity for actions proscribed by law, you can't be prosecuted for doing what the constitution says your job is.
2) Presumed immunity for actions done in the course of the job of president, talking to the VP would fall in this category, but that presumed immunity can be overcome by circumstance or the weight of the crime.
3) No immunity for personal actions.
In the decision, they called out the interactions with the DOJ as immune not regardless of content, but specifically because of the content, stating that investigating potential crimes is the job of the Justice Department, the President can order them to investigate crimes, that is doing the job of President whether people find the investigations agreeable or not. If he had demanded they do something outside their authority, he would no longer have absolute immunity from criminal charges. The conversation with Pence falls in this category, as he was allegedly telling Pence to do something neither of them had any constitutional authority to do. There may be presumed immunity as a conversation between President and Vice President, but the courts can decide to overrule that presumption.
This is an admittedly potentially questionable circumstance, where this decision might seem to allow a President to abuse legal gray areas. That being said, there have been nakedly corrupt pardons before and certainly will be in the future, that is a concession made in the very idea of pardon power, and the only legal recourse ever was impeachment. Hence, Bill Clinton pardoning 140 people, including his half-brother, on his last day in office.
I'm not saying the status quo is perfect in every conceivable way, just that it hasn't changed here.
Emphasis mine. You know damn well there's 150 years' worth of precedent for presidential absolute immunity in civil court, hence your not-so-well-disguised disclaimer attempting to divert the discussion as far from civil case law as possible. 150 years' worth of precedent which was used as the guiding principle to apply the same to criminal court, because the Constitution is quite clear the remedial procedure for criminal acts committed by a president while in office is impeachment -- after which (upon conviction by the Senate) the case is then remanded to criminal court for further action.
And indeed, had the Court ruled differently it very much would have impacted pending and ongoing civil suits against Trump (as well as other criminal trials), because the inverse is also true.
There's no standing precedent for this, because no Court -- of original jurisdiction or appellate -- in the 235 years since the enactment of the Constitution has been so singularly idiotic as to attempt ruling on it despite ample opportunity, as to do so would ignite a full-blown Constitutional crisis which the judiciary is predestined to lose by design (see Federalist 81, as written by ya boi Alexander Hamilton). The judiciary would be attempting to seize enumerated legislative power for itself whilst possessing absolutely no mechanism for enforcing its own rulings, proving itself once again a paper tiger as both other branches are simply free to ignore the court at their leisure -- just as it had against Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, the 40th Congress, and Franklin Roosevelt before.
That moron circuit court judge wrote a check the judiciary couldn't cash, and she's lucky SCOTUS voided it on her behalf before Trump could take it to the bank.
Struggling how else to interpret sentences directly from the ruling such as "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority".
Irrelevant. No President took such actions before. And no, feeble false equivalences with Clinton don't really cut it.
I do indeed know that damn well. That disclaimer wasn't hidden at all-- I knew someone(s) would try to point to the existing civil immunity as precedent. Yet this ruling specifically covered criminal prosecution and specifically addressed (and overturned) a criminal indictment. You acknowledge this afterwards but try to handwave it away as an immaterial distinction, but it damn well isn't. An inferred "guiding principle" isn't a legal precedent, and nothing would've been overturned had the court ruled any other way.
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