At a crucial crossroads for American democracy, the Supreme Court slow walks Trump’s immunity issue
With the Supreme Court granting certiorari to Donald Trump on his immunity claims regarding the January 6th trial in Washington, we have reached a historic moment. The high court will now review the lower court ruling that a former president isn’t immune from prosecution for crimes he committed in office. but not until April. If the court agrees with Trumphim, it could lead America down a dark road.
Yes, broadly exposing the president to lawsuits or prosecutions for the thousands of judgment calls a president makes in the line of duty would cripple the presidency. But no one prosecuting Trump claims presidents should be broadly exposed to liability for their official decisions. Instead, the issue is framed by the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. It held that the president is immune from damages liability “for acts within ‘the outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.” The court has never extended that limitation to the president’s responsibility for a crime. Moreover, the court has never suggested that a president who commits a crime unconnected to his official duties enjoys any immunity at all.
it’s already extremely dictator-y letting these obvious scumbags have lifetime control of the country
I always trust salon.com for my unbiased political news…
/s
If it makes you feel better, businessinsider will steal it and publish it wholesale without attribution. It’ll run next to a trump-sympathetic article. See? Both sides.
Yeah hah, probably. I just think the amount of people discussing/up-voting a tabloid article is hilarious
Marketing: 1 The people: 0
I don’t even know who salon.com is - honestly seems like they’re fear-mongering for clicks and views.
100%
Tabloids are the OG click baiters
Do you realize that this is commentary, not news? It’s supposed to be offering opinion. That’s the whole point.
Looks like they are choosing the route of pitchforks, torches and chaos.
Which is fine because they’ve allowed a police state to be built. Police officers have broad de facto immunities across the country.
Notably, they are not immune to 5.56.
Depending on their loadout. Let’s make sure to get plenty of NATO 7.62 black tip
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak. -The Art of War.
I have a feeling they’re going to find that there is immunity for acts taken as part of official duties. Which will get this kicked back down to the district court where the judge would rule these accusations have nothing to do with acts taken in his official capacity.
The issue is that this all takes time and the schedule was tight enough beforehand. I doubt there’s a chance any trial is settled before the election, especially if the Supreme Court waits until the end of the term to rule on this.
“With Jan. 6 case, the Supreme Court takes America down the dark path to dictatorship.”
FTFY
If I understand the argument correctly, a sitting president near the end of their term, like say shmoe shmiden, decided to order the death of his political rival Tonald Drump and then step down as president before getting impeached, he could cause they didn’t impeach him before leaving office for said crime. I’m I getting that correct? I mean sure, in that hypothetical we’d have our first woman president for a very short time in the dumbest way, which is also on brand for the record.
SCOTUS would do well not to seriously fuck up here.
It’s important to remember that they’d be giving Biden carte blanche to do whatever he wants, because he’ll still be in office when the ruling is made. Not that he’d actually have the balls to use the power they had given him, but if they grant blanket immunity to presidents then there’s nothing stopping Biden from simply dropping a missile on the SCOTUS, cancelling the election, and declaring himself the new POTUS-for-life.
After all, what are they going to do? Prosecute him?
After all, what are they going to do? Prosecute him?
Yes. And be bald-faced hypocritical. They don’t give a shit about the rule of law. They only care about “winning”
SCOTUS is so anti-democratic. Why the hell does the fate of our democracy rest on the whims of Nine people holding lifetime appointments? I get that they want these people outside of the transitory world of politics, but that doesn’t really seem to have prevented politics from creeping into the Court anyways. If SCOTUS rules that POTUS has immunity while in office, then Biden should just suspend the election, declare martial law, arrest Trump, and lock up all the Russian sympathizers in Congress. Protecting the country from foreign agents seems like it should fall within the scope of the President’s powers.
I’m worried their plan is to wait until after the election. If Trump is elected, they then rule he has absolute power and democracy is basically dead at that point.
It already is. The rest of us just get to fight for scraps now.
This decision is just the Supreme Court saying “let them eat cake.”
It’s a shame we didn’t even make it to 250 years, but the Christians had to force a theocracy again. They don’t feel right unless they get to murder people for being different.
Democracy died when Dubya got elected by the court almost 25 years ago.
Trump’s own lawyers said that the president could kill his political adversaries and be free from any charges.
We placed the fate of democracy on some greedy white guys who want nice motor coaches and luxury vacations
That’d be a hoot!
A SCOTUS ruling in Trump’s favor would absolutely grant him the power to do that. For better or worse, though, I just don’t see that happening as it would set a very dangerous precedent. We may avoid a dictator in the short run, but it would absolutely enable the next.
