Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assasinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?
“That could well be an official act,” Trump lawyer John Sauer says
Sotomayor should have asked about assassinating “corrupt” Supreme Court justices, in case some of her colleagues need help connecting the dots.
The argument has been that the president can be charged, but only after they’re impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. And in the meantime, they’re still president. So theoretically they could continue to have House members assassinated until there isn’t enough votes to impeach. And theoretically they could also assassinate Senators until there aren’t enough votes to convict. And I really don’t understand why no one’s making that argument to the Court, because that’s exactly where the “they can kill anyone who disagrees with me because they’re obviously a political rival” argument leads.
And I really don’t understand why no one’s making that argument to the Court
The argument has been made from the beginning. It’s the whole “Seal Team 6” argument. They may not be saying it outright, but I think everybody understands that everybody on both sides of the argument knows that the argument would also cover a President ordering the assassination of rivals en masse.
Project 2025 anyone…
Rooting out political enemies from within government being a core part of it?
No? Anyone? Bueller?
Or, they could do one assassination and then step down, thereby dodging any impeachment and being immune to any further litigation.
“The most powerful person in the world could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Hard to make any disincentive when the ones running for office are in the twilight of their lives. If only there were any choice to the matter.
If I’m Biden, as soon as this is okayed, Trump is dead. Right? I mean, fuck.
You know as well as I do that we’ll sit on that high horse of morality, sniffing our own farts, while we get sniped right the fuck off that horse by a Republican who has no issues whatsoever with abusing that power.
The bad part is that a normal person wouldn’t order that, and Biden is quite normal. Only the radical MAGAts or worse would.
Biden doesn’t have the balls for that…Trump, unfortunetely does (or he’s just too fucking stupid to realize the ramifications of it).
Obviously, why wouldn’t he? This is potentially the dumbest argument ever heard in a court room and we’re all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility. What a joke.
we’re all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility.
We’re all here because more than one of these judges is entertaining its plausibility. Listening to some of the questions coming from a couple of these judges, there is a very real possibility that they actually declare Trump at least partially immune, leading to the lower courts having to re-litigate the issues again (which would delay Trump’s trials by years), or outright giving him enough immunity to make his current cases go away.
It’s important to note that this would include the state cases. If Trump were to return to office, he could in theory pardon himself and make the federal cases go away but can’t do anything about the state ones. If the SC were to rule he’s immune, the state courts can’t touch him either.
Honestly, I think the judges are just trying to figure out how they can rule narrowly enough to make sure Trump walks away scot-free while also ensuring that Biden and other future presidents don’t get the same treatment.
Why not have Biden just assassinate Trump then? He likely wouldn’t have to deal with a long drawn out court decision. He can be done with it and move on. It’s horrible to consider, but I’m so so so so so so so so so sick of Trump. Everyday I’m bombarded with orange pulp. 😆
Just put them in a jail. And put enough Republican congresspeople in jail to have the majority. And then declare they can leave as soon as a bill is passed making the stupid “immunity” shit illegal.
You can demonstrate the issues without killing anyone.
The kicker for the immunity is that he can be impeached and convicted by congress…
So you’re only immune if you’re a republican and you have enough votes in the senate… Lord knows Democrats would convict each other but republicans will toe the line.
But you can just remove the members that don’t support you. No impeachment after that.
So he orders him killed just before leaving office
4 justices have to vote to hear a case at the Supreme Court. I don’t understand why they’d ever choose to.
Trump was not president for the crimes in NY or the retention of documents AFTER he was president. Of course it’ll be delayed and litigated, but “president is immune” does not make trumps problems go away unless they go “president is immune for the rest of their lives” which is even more insane.
unless they go “president is immune for the rest of their lives” which is even more insane.
Alito pretty much did argue that.
He said presidents won’t leave office peacefully if they aren’t able to retire to security without threats of prosecution.
Trump? He’s just the start. I’m cleaning House, and Senate!
And SCotUS.
I know that’s what I would do.
If the Supreme Court were to greenlight this, it becomes the only logical choice in terms of preservation of the self and the state…
My opponent will use this power for great evil, so I must use it first to circumvent that.
I’m not even American so I can’t be president, I just want to the fucking Cheeto dead and his family.
I’m sure they’ll frame it in a way where this only applies to Trump, and no former or future presidents will have that ability.
Same as Bush v Gore
Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances
They’ll stick that in their opinion and say that this case isn’t binding on future cases therefore it doesn’t set precedent.
That’s a paradox. The only precedent it set was that a decision could withhold setting a precedent.
If this is okayed then the next government will presumably be the last. So if that’s not Biden then he is comfortable handing over the torch to whomever wins. That doesn’t seem like a particularly nice choice to have to make.
So Biden could kill Trump?
You know, I’m honestly not sure why everyone’s thinking this is part of some plan for the future they have. Fuckhead was already president. Given this guy’s track record, it’s far more likely that he didn’t get to finish covering his ass for something the first time around.
Any likely candidates that disappeared 2016-2020?
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein springs immediately to mind. But they definitely have a plan for the future, anyhow.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In another hypothetical, Justice Elena Kagan asked if the president would be immune from prosecution if he sold nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.
In February, D.C.’s Federal Court of Appeals summarily rejected the arguments made by Trump’s attorneys — including that the president would be protected from prosecution even if he had his political opponents assassinated.
The three-judge panel unanimously determined that Trump is not shielded from prosecution for potential crimes committed in office related to the subversion of the 2020 election.
Trump has long been ranting about the matter in his public statements and on social media, effectively making the immunity issue a plank of his presidential campaign.
Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land.
“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
You know. If I was an asshole puppeteer who held trump’s strings….
I’d get myself a new puppet, then make this argument, maybe then do a false flag and have the trump-puppet executed in a manner that looks like Biden had it done….
Something to think about.
What in the fuck is going on down there?
- A very, very concerned neighbor
Fascists
Bad shit. Send help.
We’re IVing stupidity!
… I have so much hate in my heart. Not as much as these people, though.
Right now, it’s looking like the Supreme Court is going to say “that’s not allowed” but do it in a way that prevents Trump from being tried before the election. This lets them say “we’re good and ethical” while protecting Trump from the consequences of his criminality:
The Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Donald Trump’s sweeping claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election, but in a way that is likely to significantly delay his stalled election-interference trial in D.C.
Well before this hearing I had the impression this SC is looking for ways to stack delay on delay without taking too much flak themselves. It showed in the weird narrow beam wording of their restrictions when they took on this case. It showed in the extra weeks they took to plan this hearing. And it is now showing in the questions they ask …
I will not be surprised if they proclaim “a president has no total immunity, and only immunity in presidential matters, but the lower courts need to figure out if Trump’s actions were (for) personal (gain) or presidential.”
And with that the ball is dropped and it rolled in a sewage drain where it’s hard to reach before the elections are in the rear view mirror.
It even includes another time loop for when it eventually does resurface back on the SC’s lap for them to decide if his actions were presidential.
But by that time there will be a “Year one Dictator”, proclaiming himself to be America’s first great dictator, while ordering his rivals to be imprisoned, indicted and or shot.
And the people will loudly wonder, “Who is there to stop him? Where are the checks and balances?” But loudly will turn into a whimper then a whisper until it is a small voice in an empty room.
removed by mod
If _____ happens, I’ll do ______ is generally defendable legally, but I would still be careful with stating things like this publicly.
I can’t be forced to care when child labor is back on the menu and women are second class citizens. Don’t be draconian fascists and your citizens won’t be thinking of murdering you.
I mean for your own legal protection.
No you aren’t.
The right question to ask is whether the president can decide to assassinate a supreme court justice. Then it becomes plenty clear to the supreme court fucks how obviously insane the rationale is.
Thing is, they are asking the questions and I rather suspect that they don’t want to put that out there.
Feel like theyre trying to setup as a given that “official presidential acts” are immune from prosecution.
Like “alright assassinating a political rival is a step too far but now we’re discussing a much more tame action as president.”
No go back a step, there is no law granting the president immunity from the law. It doesnt matter what is or isnt an “official act”
Watching from an outside of the U.S. perspective, it leaves me speechless seeing how staggering the transition was from ‘bastion of democracy and the free world’ to ‘increasingly malfunctioning society with russian-like values’
It’s almost as if hostile nation states are manipulating public opinion to destabilize western democracies and alliances.
Hey! They are against universal education. And universal healthcare. These are most anti-russian values I ever seen. I know what I am talking about.
Oh this place hasn’t ever been a bastion of democracy. There’s so much inequity, vote surprising, gerrymandering, racial oppression, and straight up lying going on that even we have a hard time figuring out how much of our own history is a thick-ass layer of sugar.
vote surprising
I know it was probably a typo for suppressing, but vote surprising sounds like a jab at the electoral college.
“Surprise! Your vote doesn’t really matter due to the electoral college.”
The US has always been a hive of scum and villainy.
The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.
What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.
As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn’t help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.
It’s a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they’re hard to see until you’re living with them.
America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that “Bastion of Democracy and Free World” veneer gets.
We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have “sheriff’s gangs” in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they’re supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we’re functionally at war with, who we can’t put on trial because we broke their brains but we can’t let go because we’re still scared of them.
Dig into the history and you find out about Nixon’s CIA sending arms to the Khmer Rouge. You learn about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s sex trafficking island. You learn about our century of atrocities in Haiti and Guatemala and Panama. You learn about the Tuskegee Experiments. You learn about that time George Bush Sr set up an teenager to sell a DEA agent crack directly outside the White House for the purpose of inflating fears of a drug epidemic.
Just really ugly despicable stuff. And its been happening for a long while.
Don’t forget, a lot of the early free trade, free press rhetoric was because the US stood to benefit the most from it. Of course the country with mass printing technology wants everyone to be able to buy their printed propaganda. Do they want to share the technology? Not so much.
Propaganda works. Always has, always will.
Orangefucks lawyer is as stupid and evil as he is
The best one is that he argues only the senate/congress can rule he’s broken the law, and only while he’s president. So in his world he could assassinate someone, leave the presidency and then get away Scott free.
