SkyBlue Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 8 minutes ago, chasfh said: I don't know if I agree it makes sense. I would opt for a stricter view of what a president is immune from, basically, just about nothing, under the idea that a president is a 24/7/365 job and that no action he takes in public that has any consequence can be divorced from that. I don't think he can be prosecuted for governmental actions he enacts that are strictly within the realm of service to the public, but I do think he should be held liable for governmental actions he enacts that can be shown to have enriched him personally. It sounds like this, whether the acts he is being accused of were or were not official acts, should have been addressed early on and was not thus sending it back. "The concerns we noted at the outset—the expedition of this case, the lack of actual analysis by the lower courts, and the absence of pertinent briefing by the parties—thus become more prominent. We accordingly remand to the District Court to determine in the first instance—with the benefit of briefing we lack—whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiger337 Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 31 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: I don’t know, it seems like they opened up an avenue to commit crimes and Trump will exploit it. Correct, but he's always going to find a way to commit crimes anyway and he'll either get away with them or get the legal system to kick the can down the road. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkyBlue Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 3 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: That, tried prior to the election, was one of the purposes of these charges which was done in haste and poorly so. Then again Jack Smith is in charge so that actually makes sense. Trump wasn't cleared in today's ruling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 I have real concerns that even if Biden wins the Supreme Court could still hand the presidency to Trump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 19 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said: I have real concerns that even if Biden wins the Supreme Court could still hand the presidency to Trump. I think seven of the nine would be offended by this notion. Should definitely be nine of nine, but I don't think Roberts, ACB, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh would participate in an outright coup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 From ACB's concurrence: Quote Properly conceived, the President’s constitutional protection from prosecution is narrow. The Court leaves open the possibility that the Constitution forbids prosecuting the President for any official conduct, instructing the lower courts to address that question in the first instance. See ante, at 14. I would have answered it now. Though I agree that a President cannot be held criminally liable for conduct within his “conclusive and preclusive” authority and closely related acts, ante, at 8–9, the Constitution does not vest every exercise of executive power in the President’s sole discretion, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 637 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring).1 Congress has concurrent authority over many Government functions, and it may sometimes use that authority to regulate the President’s official conduct, including by criminal statute. Article II poses no barrier to prosecution in such cases. She goes on to say that she would not have vacated the judgement but instead declared the acts at issue here not official acts based off the present record, and that the case could therefore go to trial. That means at least four already agree that Trump should be able to be prosecuted in at least this case. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 If I understand the ruling correctly, if Biden wakes up tomorrow and calls one of his Scranton or Delaware “friends” and Trump has an “accident” while golfing, he can be charged. If he makes a “passing comment” to one of his shady generals he should have immunity, outside of possible impeachment. If he resigns the presidency after Trumps “accident”….. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 21 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said: If I understand the ruling correctly, if Biden wakes up tomorrow and calls one of his Scranton or Delaware “friends” and Trump has an “accident” while golfing, he can be charged. If he makes a “passing comment” to one of his shady generals he should have immunity, outside of possible impeachment. If he resigns the presidency after Trumps “accident”….. The closest I can see the majority getting to actually defining "official act" is where that say that "[w]hen the President acts pursuant to 'constitutional and statutory authority,' he takes official action to perform the functions of his office... Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s authority to take that action." I would argue that POTUS has constitutional authority to be the commander in chief, but that does not equate to a free license to kill. I think in such a case, the Court would - and should - more narrowly define "official act" to include only actions naturally associated with the execution of his duties as POTUS. Commanding the bombing of a village in the Middle East against DOD advice because you illogically think a terrorist is there, and it results in dozens of innocent deaths? Probably immune. Commanding the bombing of the home of a political opponent because you want to win an election? Probably not immune. They definitely could have been more clear, but this is what SCOTUS loves to do. Send it down to the lower court, have them guess what SCOTUS wants to be the line between official and unofficial, have the case slowly trickle back upstream, have the Court of Appeals take a stab at it too, and then finally tell everyone a year or two later what they actually wanted all along. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMRivdogs Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 21 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said: The closest I can see the majority getting to actually defining "official act" is where that say that "[w]hen the President acts pursuant to 'constitutional and statutory authority,' he takes official action to perform the functions of his office... Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s authority to take that action." I would argue that POTUS has constitutional authority to be the commander in chief, but that does not equate to a free license to kill. I think in such a case, the Court would - and should - more narrowly define "official act" to include only actions naturally associated with the execution of his duties as POTUS. Commanding the bombing of a village in the Middle East against DOD advice because you illogically think a terrorist is there, and it results in dozens of innocent deaths? Probably immune. Commanding the bombing of the home of a political opponent because you want to win an election? Probably not immune. They definitely could have been more clear, but this is what SCOTUS loves to do. Send it down to the lower court, have them guess what SCOTUS wants to be the line between official and unofficial, have the case slowly trickle back upstream, have the Court of Appeals take a stab at it too, and then finally tell everyone a year or two later what they actually wanted all along. Makes sense. Just hope you and others realize I was being a bit sarcastic. (Even though I have tin foil hat questions about wife #1’s encounter with stairs and bigger issues with her resting place. It all seems too convenient for me 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said: Makes sense. Just hope you and others realize I was being a bit sarcastic. (Even though I have tin foil hat questions about wife #1’s encounter with stairs and bigger issues with her resting place. It all seems too convenient for me I'm right there with you. It helps me understand it better when those kinds of questions are posed, even if they are hyperbolic in nature. Because those are the kind of questions that the District Court now has to tackle in weighing this out. Where do you draw the line? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motor City Sonics Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 July 4, 1776 - July 1, 2024 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 48 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said: I'm right there with you. It helps me understand it better when those kinds of questions are posed, even if they are hyperbolic in nature. Because those are the kind of questions that the District Court now has to tackle in weighing this out. Where do you draw the line? It’s kind of like pornography and the way the SC defined it… “I know it when I see it” Would this ruling absolve Reagan from any of his potential crimes for Iran Contra? it also absolves Biden from the GOP wanting to go after him “for Afghanistan”. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smr-nj Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 Today was a day that initially left me feeling dismal….….…. ….. but then I remembered that Steve Bannon spends his first night in lockup this evening. So, there’s that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 17 minutes ago, oblong said: It’s kind of like pornography and the way the SC defined it… “I know it when I see it” Would this ruling absolve Reagan from any of his potential crimes for Iran Contra? it also absolves Biden from the GOP wanting to go after him “for Afghanistan”. I think this is right, but I think it's even harder than pornography, because while there are probably hundreds of thousands of pornographic images out there (...... or so I'm told), there have been four criminal cases brought on former Presidents ever. If you could have ten people each sort the same 200 images into piles of pornography and not pornography (now there's a job for the interns), you could probably teach a machine to run that algorithm for you in 2024, at least into three categories of "porn", "not porn", and "close call". Categorizing criminal indictments - let alone pieces of evidence - into "official acts" and "unofficial acts" of a President requires a case-by-case analysis under any scenario. There is no one rule that SCOTUS could announce that is going to capture every possible criminal indictment. That said, they could have decided on the one at issue here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 22 minutes ago, smr-nj said: Today was a day that initially left me feeling dismal….….…. ….. but then I remembered that Steve Bannon spends his first night in lockup this evening. So, there’s that. I envision Bannon breaking like the fat guy in Shawshank Redemption. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiger337 Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 19 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said: I think this is right, but I think it's even harder than pornography, because while there are probably hundreds of thousands of pornographic images out there (...... or so I'm told), there have been four criminal cases brought on former Presidents ever. Probably more like a 100 million. It is a bigger industry than all the professional sports put together. Or so I'm told. 😀 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pfife Posted July 2 Author Share Posted July 2 So like 0% of this ruling is in the words of the constitution, no? More textual healing from the Federalist society Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pfife Posted July 2 Author Share Posted July 2 Getting less ok with this decision than I was earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pfife Posted July 2 Author Share Posted July 2 If I'm understanding Biden correctly he says he's going to voluntarily limit his own power. For some reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 Expand the court. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 also this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkyBlue Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 This ruling allows for the case to go forward in areas and allows for Smith to show that his indictment has more behind it than just words on paper in others. There was never an evidentiary hearing and that was always, always, going to be a problem for Smith and this. That, imo, is what led this to be sent back to the lower court. The haste to get this done prior to the election is coming through loud and clear and also is getting to the point that many others refused to try Trump on some of these cases. This ruling confirms that there is no king and, all brilliant tweets from AOC Rupar and others aside which are worth a chuckle or three, makes sure that the rule of law is being followed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 Was it ever believed that Presidents didn't have immunity for official acts? That's where I keep getting hung up... like you can't prosecute W because of the Iraq War, you can't prosecute Obama for Drone Strikes. You can't prosecute Clinton for hitting the wrong targets when going after Bin Laden. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichiganCardinal Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 24 minutes ago, romad1 said: also this This is some Kellyanne Conway level of nonsense. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.