Anand is a brilliant writer and thinker who blogs at The Ink. Consider subscribing.
Here is his take on the Supreme Court’s decision to delay judgment on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity for criminal actions while he was president.
Yesterday the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court decided to step in and rescue Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, agreeing to hear his claim of broad immunity and to delay his federal trial on charges of election interference stemming from his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. But it’s much worse than that. We agree with Timothy Snyder that this is no simple stalling tactic. By taking up the question of whether a single American citizen is above the law — simply by entertaining a question that shouldn’t be — the right-wing justices are undermining the legitimacy of the Court itself, and the very notion of a nation of laws.
The Supreme Court is attempting to end its own life as an institution above politics. If it has been doing moving in this direction for some time, this week it came to a head.
This can only be read as a blow to democracy itself. With this stay now in place, it’s unlikely that any trial could be concluded by (and even more likely that it will be delayed entirely until after) Election Day. Of course, at that point, should Trump win re-election, the case would not move forward at all: the Justice Department would be unlikely to pursue a case against a newly elected president, and of course in his second term Trump could stop the proceedings entirely. Which, of course, is the plan.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
By taking up the question of whether a single American citizen is above the law — simply by entertaining a question that shouldn’t be — the right-wing justices are undermining the legitimacy of the Court itself, and the very notion of a nation of laws.
Exactly so.
Just taking this case undermines the whole idea of democratic government. It’s revolting in the extreme. They should have just let the lower court decision stand.
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This issue was decided in 1215 CE at Runnymede.
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Good point, Bob!
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“…revolting in the extreme.”
When does all this cause a rise of leftist revolt that will not consider a ballot box, but will take to arms.
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I have said many times that the rich in America will keep pushing their toy until it breaks.
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It is a very dicey thing to try and figure out what the Court is up to.
This may be right; it may be totally wrong.
One thing I seriously doubt is that ANY of the justices feel beholden to Trump. They are not fools.
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What ever you are smoking pass some over to the rest of us.
You told as weeks ago that they would not take the case. They are not beholden to Trump but are very much enamored with the Right Wing Authoritarian agenda only Trump can deliver. Including several retiring with the knowledge that another member of the Taliban will take their place.
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You are right. I got something wrong.
The world should disregard anything I say ever again.
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I so enjoy your perspectives, jsr!
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jsrtheta
It is not what you say, it is the pedantic manner in which you say it.
“You are right. I got something wrong.
The world should disregard anything I say ever again. ”
In tone you would have us believe this is the only thing you ever got wrong.
In this case the question was would the court follow law or pursue a political goal. You were so certain that the court was above politics (because of your limited experience ) in spite of everything we have seen from the court since the 2000 election. Would you like the list?
The Courts may always have been political. There is no Civil Service test for Federal Judgeships.
I have no problem with that except that in 30 years the majority of the American people have voted for center Left Presidents all but once. As the court has moved in the opposite direction. In fact since Nixon the Court has had a Conservative majority.
Of course the party of White grievance will say not conservative enough. This decision to delay and delay and delay since Jack Smith asked the Court to step in back in December is an attempt to placate that party of grievance. That party that appointed these purely political right wing hacks.
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I will endeavor in future to address you with the deep and abiding respect you so obviously deserve.
I do appreciate your swift discounting of decades of legal practice as somehow imbuing knowledge of, erm, the law.
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You should have those powers of mind reading tested. They are awesome. And so precise.
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About 10 years ago, I did a study of who had selected judges since WW2. 75% Republicans. All that time there was the continuing refrain from the right: Leftist judges.
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I generally have a higher opinion of the Justices than people who see the Court as a purely political institution. Partly that’s because I clerked for federal judges on both sides of the political spectrum, and I saw that neither used their office to impose their own political agendas.
That said, I have a hard time believing that Justice Thomas isn’t watching newsmax 24/7 with his crazy wife.
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Joel, excellent points.
It’s one thing to have an opinion, but it’s another thing to have an opinion that discounts everything that has been going on right before your eyes for the last 5 or 10 years.
I grew up thinking it was impossible that Jews in Nazi Germany didn’t leave when they saw what was going on, but living in America at this time makes me realize how fast people have normalized the things that would have been rejected as outrageous 20 years ago.
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FLERP!
Here is the way I see it. Every Federal judge is a political appointee nominated by a President and ratified by the Senate. But the process becomes far more political as you move from Circuit Courts to Appellate courts. And extremely political for the Supreme Court.
So is it just Thomas? How about Bret the rapist Kavanaugh who set the perjury trap for Clinton and was a political operative till appointed to the Court of Appeals.
And Alito who takes 100k fishing trips with Paul Singer who was the largest bundler of Republican money. Nothing to see here folks. Was it only about the graft ? For the cases singer brought before the Court.
Although politics may permeate all levels of the Court System. It is probably less evident at the Circuit Court level. With fewer cases being expressly political. When we say politics lets not confuse that with as Sanders would say the political “horse race”. Is Politics broadly speaking not about “the economy stupid” from race and equal rights ,to abortion, to labor and Public School issues.
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jsrtheta
In your thirty years of ambulance chasing how many cases did you bring to the SCOTUS? How many to any Court of Appeals. How many cases were of a political nature.
Feel free to post the cases.
You really are wasting the credentials that you feel the constant need to tell us about. You should be a talking head on one of the Cable Networks. Instead of the second best of two lawyers on Diane’s blog.
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Why this animosity? Given his experience and training, he has a lot of knowledge of these matters. He’s worth listening to, as you are, Joel, on matters related to workers and the economy, workers’ rights, unions, and so on.
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Bob Shepherd
The question is not a legal question it is a political one. The question: are the Courts inherently political? I think the answer to that is absolutely yes and by design. As I said there is not a Civil Service test for Federal judgeships. Appointed by the President a Politician, with the consent of the Senate 100 Politicians. Did Libertarian Charles and David Koch nurture the Federalist Society because of social issues ?
Politics “is not about the horse race.”
“Politics is who determines who gets what what when and how ” I keep repeating that, as do introductory Political Science and Economics Courses . Given to my son in an Econ Course 40 years after It was given to me in a 101 Political Science course. Every Republican Judge from Circuit to SCOTUS is on the Federalist Society List. Certainly above Politics no?
It is a pretty low bar to say that Federal Judges refused to end American Democracy in 2020. After all there was no saying they would not be the victims in the ensuing Civil War.
This SCOTUS is not willing to come right out and rule for Trump. When there clearly is no basis in law. As you say back to 1215. But the delays since December when they refused to expedite the case gives plausible deniability. By delaying they wont have to rule for Trump who is merely a means to an end if he gets reelected.
If there was a question of Law I would defer to a lawyer. But to hear someone toss their credentials on every subject from the origins of the Second Amendment through politicization of SCOTUS as if that makes him an authority is a bit annoying.
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You seem almost obsessed.
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As almost always, I learn from you, Joel. But I repeat my defense of jsr. He’s a learned person about legal matters.
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Courts are inherently political but that is a very low bar for institutions created by politics. I think the question has to be more specific than “are courts inherently political”?
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FLERP!
I think the answer is most cases are not “inherently political” and even when some are “Political”, lower Court Judges are not invested in most issues enough for it to interfere with their sense of Justice. But those cases that are moderately to highly political from Economic to Social issues, I would bet that you can pretty much predict their outcomes, as they work their way up the chain from District Court to Appellate to SCOTUS. Predict their outcomes by who appointed the Judges and the vote in the Senate which has become far more partisan in the last 3 decades.
Would I be wrong to say that on highly “political” cases interest groups shop for Courts and even the Appellate Court the District Court is in, to bring a case?
Trump made it easy in 2020 the cases he brought (Like this one ) were so baseless and bat sh-t crazy that it was revolting to even Right Wing Jurists. Whose careers long pre date Trump even if he picked their name from a Federalist Society list and nominated them. Judges not willing to toss the Constitution down the drain.
The “Princeton Study “starting in 2004 did an analysis of Legislation to see how Legislation fared based on who was supporting it and who it benefited . I assume you remember the study and the conclusions. I would be curious to see a similar study on “Political ” cases as they work the way through the courts. By the way the actual name of the Princeton study was similar to Laswell’s 1936 definition of Politics I keep quoting.
“Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness:
Who Gets What They Want from Government?*”
There have been studies of the issue just none have received the notoriety of the Princeton Study.
As Ruth Marcus points out
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/20/judge-political-party-president-trump-marcus/
If our attorneys can point to another study that has different conclusions please do. I think we can admit that personal anecdotes are very limited. Which is why Medicine Science try to use double blind studies.
(And in a completely off topic issue.
Last years Murders in NYC were lower than any Year from Bloomberg’s next to last (2012) to every year back to 1960. This year so far murders (and shootings) are 26% lower. Putting this year on pace to have the lowest murders on record since they started keeping records in 1948. Must be the influx of immigrants )
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Yes, the election lawsuits were insane. They also demonstrated the risks inherent in representing Trump, because Trump makes up his own reality, forcing the lawyers to argue fantasy facts.
It seemed to me that the judges, pretty much unanimously, were dumbfounded that none of the cases had anything approaching reliable evidence, combined with totally unsupported assumptions.
The destruction wrought by Trump and his minions will continue.
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Bob Shepherd
See my response to Flerp. If I need a lawyer I would gladly look up either of our blogs resident lawyers. The questions we are discussing are Historical ie. the origins of the Second amendment or Political the Politicization of the courts. Not Legal.
As much as we criticize data on this blog the problem is in the interpretation of the Data not the collection. So NAPE a blind assessment that no one preps for can be useful. Unfortunately how one interprets its meaning is often troublesome. As we should have found out during Covid anything other than double blind studies one of which I am enrolled in are worthless.
A few weeks ago I decided that a glass of Red wine a day might be heart healthy with a large 2 decade old study to prove it. Then just when I started pouring a glass with dinner. A much larger multi National Study was released . The conclusion wealthier people tend to have a glass of wine with dinner. Wealthier people tend to be more health conscious and have better access to medical care. Damn it there is no benefit to Red Wine. So studies with millions of Participants get negated by larger studies with hundreds of millions. So much for individual anecdotes. I am sure my assessment of labor issues differs tremendously from those of a non union Electrical Contractor. If you want advice from me on Electrical Instillation I am a pro.
If you want an assessment of Labor issues I think we have to look for the preponderance of the evidence not an individual assessment.
And you save me a lot of typing because we agree on most issues giving me more time to confront Trumptards on other forums.
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Magna Carta
1215 – 2024?
hey, we had a good run
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Yes. R.I.P.
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I’m actually not sure what they’ll do. It depends on whether they recognize the consequences. See next post.
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It is disturbing that the US Supreme Court is doing this.
Still, that may not keep Traitor Trump out of prison before the election.
A case I’m not hearing much about in social media is supposed to start this month that comes (that I’ve read) with a potential four year prison sentence if the traitor is found guilty again.
Let’s not forget, the traitor has already been found guilty of rape and fraud in three different trials. Every guilty verdict deserves to repeated more than he and MAGA repeats the traitors biggest lies about election fraud in 2020. There are millions of voters on the extreme right that still do not know the details of those three trials.
So far, Traitor Trump’s lawyers haven’t been able to stop the hush money case.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trumps-alleged-hush-money-payments-path-criminal-charges-2023-03-30/
“NEW YORK — A judge ruled Thursday that jury selection for Donald Trump’s hush money trial would begin March 25, setting a date with history for what would be the first criminal prosecution of an ex-president — one who also leads the Republican field of 2024 candidates for the White House. Feb 15, 2024”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/prosecutors-hush-money-case-plan-quotes-trumps-books/story?id=107648232
Manhattan DA asks judge for a gag order in Trump’s hush-money case ahead of next month’s trial
https://whyy.org/articles/trump-nyc-hush-money-case-manhattan-da-asks-judge-for-a-gag-order/
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Let me try to do the thing where I say something that is both outside the mainstream view on this blog and reasonable.
I don’t know if I have an opinion about the Court’s decision to grant cert here. I’m still thinking it over and I probably will be for a while. (I’m mainly disappointed by the schedule they set. I think they could have set a hearing date in March, as Jack Smith requested, based on the emergency nature of the appeal.)
But . . . while most of the commentary about this appeal has focused on the Trump appellate team’s insane response to the hypothetical posed at oral argument about whether a President would be immune from criminal prosecution for assassinating a political rival, there is still the fundamental question about the scope of immunity, if any, for acts committed within the scope of a president’s official duties (or at least their “outer scope”). This is very important stuff and having a clear holding from the highest court about what kind of conduct is clearly outside the realm of immunity would be a good thing. And hopefully SCOTUS can provide a rule that’s broader than “the specific conduct Trump is accused of is not within the scope of immunity,” because unfortunately I fear this may not be the last time we see a former President indicted.
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To be clear, my first sentence there was aspirational, not descriptive.
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Repeating Bob’s first comment:
“By taking up the question of whether a single American citizen is above the law — simply by entertaining a question that shouldn’t be — the right-wing justices are undermining the legitimacy of the Court itself, and the very notion of a nation of laws.
Exactly so.
Just taking this case undermines the whole idea of democratic government. It’s revolting in the extreme. They should have just let the lower court decision stand.”
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Yes, I saw Bob’s comment. There is certainly a respectable argument that the Court should have denied cert.
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Trying to understand your point.
You think it is still up in the air as to whether Biden as sitting president should be able to assassinate Trump, his political rival, and the Supreme Court taking this up is important?
If anything, taking this up as if the question itself is still unclear speaks to this Supreme Court’s disdain for democracy.
There was a time when normal folks thought it was absurd that Trump could say he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would agree it was fine.
And now we are at a place where normal folks say that Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether that might be okay.
The last gasps of democracy.
And truly, if the name Trump was replaced with Biden in all these scenarios, is there any doubt that no one would legitimize the idea that it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide if that might be okay?
Normalizing an insurrection. Normalizing murder. Handing over unchecked power to a corrupt Supreme Court that has shown that they will make one law for Biden and find a way to legitimize fascism when Trump is president?
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None of any of that was my point.
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Shorter version:
This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents (although they usually made some deal). Some got convicted, some did not.
No one is above the law. Asking the Supreme Court to decide that a president might “sometimes” be above the law is absurd.
There have been plenty of independent prosecutors, and all of their reports have been based on the common agreed upon truth that presidents are not immune from prosecution.
That’s what a trial is about.
What actually has happened when Republican independent prosecutors try to take things to trial, is that they have no credible evidence.
What actually happens when Democratic prosecutors try to take things to trial and are winning prosecutions, is their sex lives get examined.
The fact we have reached a point where some believe it is “important” that a Supreme Court decide whether a president CAN be prosecuted for murdering his political rival shows how far our democracy has fallen.
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“ This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents (although they usually made some deal). Some got convicted, some did not.”
I’m not aware of any former President who has been “tried” or even indicted besides Trump. But you’ve obviously done some research on this and know more than I do. So tell me, which presidents have been tried for alleged wrongdoing that occurred when they were in office?
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You do realize that Bill Clinton made a deal with various legal authorities to avoid indictment, right? The same kind of deals that all people accused of crimes make.
I’m sorry that slipped your mind.
Did you also recall that Gerald Ford PARDONED Nixon? Why would he bother when the Supreme Court had left open the question of whether a president could commit crimes while in office or not!
Do you remember back in the old days before a far right Supreme Court and right wing media convinced us that it was an OPEN QUESTION that needed to be decided by the Supreme Court as to whether presidents could commit crimes in office and get immunity?
The subtle brainwashing where we are normalizing things that are not normal.
Presidents can be tried for crimes. They could ALWAYS be tried for crimes. There was a question of whether they could be indicted BEFORE they left office.
But suddenly, the Supreme Court is legitimizing that maybe they can’t be indicted at all!
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Sorry, I thought you said that former presidents had been tried. I must have misread that. My apologies.
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Thank you for the apology.
Do you agree with my point that presidents have been investigated at various times and there has never been a question as to whether the Constitution gave a president immunity from prosecution?
Why would anyone be discussing whether one could indict a sitting president before he left office, when that would be a completely irrelevant matter if the real open question is whether a president has total immunity?
I do remember when Nixon said “if the president does it, it’s legal.”
Back in those pro-democracy days, people were shocked.
Nowadays, apparently half the country believes if a Republican president does it, it’s legal.
And we have all come to accept that if a right wing Supreme Court whose justices receive lavish gifts from right wing billionaires decide that a Republican president is immune from consequences if he breaks the law, it is a perfectly legitimate interpretation of our Constitution.
Trump could win in court. But there is a vast amount of credible, unimpeachable evidence supports a guilty verdict. And no evidence to support Trump’s corrupt acts.
So Trump and his cronies have to suborn perjury about a prosecutors’ sex life to stop a trial. They have to have the Supreme Court delay any consequences until Trump wins again.
They don’t want to go to trial because they committed crimes. They don’t have to go to trial because so many Republican judges have been corrupted.
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Wait, I just looked again and it turns out you actually did say that former presidents have been tried. This is so confusing!
I don’t know whether anyone (whether legal scholars or attorneys on their staffs) questioned whether the Constitution gave Clinton or Nixon immunity against criminal indictment. It’s possible but I’m not aware of it.
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flerp!,
Again you are putting words in mouth instead of having a discussion of the issues. Check your reading comprehension. I did not say “former presidents have been tried” and I hope you will retract that falsehood.
Please feel free to quote where I said “former presidents have been tried”.
Not sure why you are trying to distract by putting words in my mouth that I never said.
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Oh I’m sorry, I was just looking at this, where you said “This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents (although they usually made some deal).”
I read the grammar there as saying that “this country never had a problem with trying former presidents (although they usually made some deal).” I.E., that the U.S. had no problem trying presidents, although the presidents who were tried “usually” made some deal. Which of course raises the question of what former presidents were tried and did not “make some deal.”
But now I see that what you actually wrote was that the only presidents who faced the prospect of an indictment “made some deal” to avoid indictment. My bad as usual!
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flerp!,
If you know of a time when this country DID have a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents, please tell when it is that you believe this country had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing, including presidents.
I have no idea why you would misquote me instead of addressing the point of my comment.
The public did NOT believe the president was immune. That’s why Ford pardoned Nixon. That’s why Clinton made a deal and accepted punishment – to avoid indictment just like regular Americans do.
That’s why Robert Mueller’s report was predicated on whether a SITTING president could be indicted, not whether a FORMER president could be indicted.
Because this country did NOT have a problem with trying former presidents and no one (except Nixon) could suggest a president had permanent immunity from his criminal behavior once he left office. And those who did suggest that were looked on as neo-fascists whose views were the opposite of everything the Constitution was about.
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I don’t know what “this country has a problem with” or what “this country doesn’t have a problem with” because I don’t know how to evaluate whether “a country” “has a problem” with something.
Clinton agreed to acknowledge that he gave false testimony in exchange for not being indicted for perjury. From that, we can infer that Clinton believed he could be indicted. We also can infer that the special prosecutor believed Clinton could be indicted. Can we also infer that such an indictment would have constitutional? Maybe. This is what courts refer to as “a matter of first impression.”
If you think I have been saying that Trump should be immune from prosecution, I would ask you to re-read my original comment again, because I have not been saying that.
Oh and I am so sorry for misunderstanding your very clear prose. Please forgive me.
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flerp!
You seem to be saying that it is an UNDECIDED Constitutional question as to whether a sitting president can be indicted for a crime after the president leaves office. And until the right wing Supreme Court decides, we cannot know what the Constitution says about that, or what the intent of the framers was.
I get that the right wing Republicans and Trump have decided in the last year or two that this is an open, undecided Constitutional question that only the Supreme Court can decide.
But it has never been an open or undecided question in the past, and I have no idea why you are arguing with me even though you seem to agree with me and haven’t offered up any evidence to support the right wing view that this is a valid Constitutional issue that no one in the past 200 years even realized was actually still open to interpretation!
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For better or worse, this is how Constitutional law works.
If you’re disappointed that I haven’t advanced arguments to support the idea that Trump should be immune from prosecution, it’s because I don’t believe he should be.
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flerp!,
Why would I be “disappointed” at you? That’s such a strange comment.
We aren’t debating what the Supreme Court “should” decide. We already agree.
Where we disagree is whether there is or has ever been an undecided Constitutional question about whether presidents are immune from ever being prosecuted for crimes committed while in office that needed Supreme Court review.
There hasn’t been. You seem to want to attack me without providing any evidence to support your belief that this is a valid question that no one thought to ask for 200+ years.
No one thought to ask it because the premise of the question is contrary to the very nature of democracy and the Constitution itself.
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Oh I’m so sorry I never meant for you to feel attacked and I feel terrible about that, especially since your initial replies to me were so friendly!
Please let’s do continue this discussion. I’m learning a lot.
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flerp!,
This isn’t a discussion. I wrote a perfectly normal response – I didn’t insult you personally at all.
And you responded by misrepresenting what I said and nitpicking my responses.
I have the same position as Bob, and I responded to your comment defending the Supreme Court review.
Let’s agree to disagree. You do not have a problem with the Supreme Court choosing to take on this case, and you keep arguing with me when I say that this is NOT an issue that is “undecided” or “unknown”, and your position seems to be based entirely on the fact that the right wing Supreme Court DID choose to review it.
Maybe back in the late 1990s you were thinking that Clinton should challenge his right to commit crimes in office because there “could” be a Constitutional right that a president is immune from prosecution from crimes he committed in office. But not even the most rabid Clinton defenders thought that was an “undecided” issue.
The review itself legitimizes a Supreme Court decision that Trump is immune. Whether it happens this session, or when Trump is president again and gets a couple more right wing justices to support him, it is a huge problem. But no doubt we disagree about that as well.
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Are presidents immune from prosecution? Well, our law sits atop English law, and in both our law and in English law, there is long, long precedent that even a sovereign IS NOT ABOVE THE LAW. But then we have the undeniable fact that presidents have been breaking the law with impunity for a long, long time [insert long, long list of historical examples here]. Barack Obama carried out extra-judicial killings of American citizens (arguably very bad guys) under cover of opinions written by his DOJ. Talk about a slippery slope!!!! Reagan trades arms for hostages and continued to carry out his wars in Central America under his own authority though he needed authorization from Congress and was specifically forbidden to do so by Congress. Trump illegally withheld military aid for Ukraine in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. And so on. Nonetheless, only complete crazies like Dark Lord Dick Cheney have imagined that Presidents are somehow immune from prosecution for breaking the law in these ways.
NB: Almost all presidents in the modern era have conducted extra-legal black ops. My own opinion about that is that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. This is an area where it behooves us to profess one thing and do another. I know that there are those here who will find my opinion in this respect shocking, but there are times when we need to act in the interest of the greater good, whatever the law.
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I completely agree.
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My complete agreement was directed to NYCPSP, not Bob.
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“My complete agreement was directed to NYCPSP, not Bob.”
WHAT!?!?!?! “Respect my authoritaaay.” –Cartman
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“This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents”
You and I are in complete agreement, NYC PSP, that presidents do not enjoy immunity from prosecution for acts taken while in office.
However, that sentence of yours CLEARLY SAYS that the country has never had a problem with trying former presidents with wrongdoing while they were in office. So I am not understanding why you would deny having said it. There it is in black and white.
That said, your argument that the Nixon and Clinton cases indicate a presumption of lack of immunity makes total sense to me.
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“You do not have a problem with the Supreme Court choosing to take on this case”
NYCPSP, among the very first words in my original comment I said that I don’t have a firm opinion of the Court’s decision to grant cert.
What a silly misunderstanding we’ve had!
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Bob,
I am certain flerp! will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe flerp! understood that I was not referring to trying presidents while in office. Read my comment again — a FORMER president by definition is no longer a current president! (ok, well maybe Trump will be, but I think flerp! understood what I meant).
flerp! stated clearly what he objected to:
“I’m not aware of any former President who has been “tried” or even indicted besides Trump. But you’ve obviously done some research on this and know more than I do. So tell me, which presidents have been tried for alleged wrongdoing that occurred when they were in office?”
Again, flerp! and I were both referring to FORMER presidents even though flerp!’s last sentence left out “former”, but that was clearly understood from “that occurred when they were in office”.
flerp! thought I was implying that former presidents had been tried and convicted, and flerp! is correct that no former presidents have ever been indicted, tried or convicted of a crime after they left office.
But I didn’t say that former presidents had been tried and convicted. I said that the public and the entire legal establishment pretty much accepted that THEY COULD BE. There was never ANY question that they would have immunity.
As far as I could find, even right wingers weren’t saying that presidents had immunity for crimes committed in office BEFORE Trump and his cronies started saying it.
I agree with you, Bob, that often presidents have committed crimes that weren’t prosecuted. But I never heard the rationale that presidents were immune from prosecution! Even from their supporters.
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I never thought you meant that they were tried while in office, and I never said that.
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Quite correct. Not even Nixon had the big ones to claim immunity.
No one previously suggested this that I’m aware of.
And THIS should be a HUGE campaign issue: “If Trump gets what he wants, he will be untouchable, even if he commits treason. Even if he commits murder.”
Why is NO one using this in campaign ads? Do I have to do EVERYTHING???
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I agree with you entirely, jsr. I think that the DNC is entirely incompetent. They have all this material that they can use, Trump making the case against Trump, and they are such idiots that they aren’t using it.
Why aren’t they running 24/7 clips of Trump saying that he thinks that all women who have abortions have to be punished with jail time?
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Another excellent question.
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The DNC should run clips of 1/6/2021, with traitors attacking cops.
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They should run clips of Trump saying that stealth airplanes are invisible.
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They should run clips of him saying that we should send astronauts to the sun.
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They should run the clip of Trump saying that he started sleeping with Marla because Ivana had “ruined her body” having his children.
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They should run a compilation of clips of Trump praising Putin.
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That would actually be cool with Republicans.
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unfortunately
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They should run the clips of Trump’s son’s saying that the Trump organization gets all the money it needs from Russia.
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Or of third parties recounting the Trump sons saying that to them.
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They should run the clip of Trump saying, “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
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This is what kills me – the guy is such an obvious dick. Why would anyone even cross the street to listen? Let alone vote for him?
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They should run clips of Trump saying of HIS DAUGHTER, “”Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father. . .”
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Or of Trump saying that he made Israel the capital of Israel.
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flerp! said:
“I don’t have a firm opinion of the Court’s decision to grant cert.”
As a very smart therapist once told me, sometimes professing neutrality between two sides when one side is right and one is wrong is actually taking a side.
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This is a situation where we don’t know who’s wrong or who’s right. It is somewhat amazing to me is that on the internet, people are assuming what’s going on here.
They don’t know. We don’t know.
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There are many things we know. That this was a big win for Trump, for example.
I stand my ground, that it is insane that we are even considering the question of whether presidents have absolute immunity for crimes committed in office and that it is equally insane for the court even to consider this. The decisions of the lower courts, including the UNANIMOUS Appellate Court decision, do not need meddling with.
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You and I are in complete agreement, NYC PSP, that presidents do not have immunity from prosecution, that that never appears in the Constitution, that that is not supported by legal precedent, that that is anathema to anyone who holds democratic principles. That this is even a question is symptomatic of a truly disturbing and precipitous slide toward Fascism.
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Sorry!
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“ flerp! thought I was implying that former presidents had been tried and convicted”
No, I didn’t think you were implying anything. I thought you were stating outright that former presidents had been “tried” because it appeared to me that that was exactly what you wrote. But as we’ve already agreed I was wildly misinterpreting your words.
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It was what she wrote. No one ever claimed that NYC said that they were tried while in office. I don’t have any clue where she came up with that. You didn’t say it. I didn’t say it. No one missed the word “former” in her statement.
NYC, the issue with regard to Trump is that there has yet to be a case where a president, once out of office, was tried for a crime committed while he or she was in office. You said, you clearly said, that there had been such cases, though most of them ended in a deal. Not my words, not Flerp’s words. Yours.
Again, your words, which both Flerp and I have quoted to you:
This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents (although they usually made some deal).
You clearly said that former presidents had been tried once they were out of office. Flerp pointed this out to you and quoted to you your exact words, and you still denied that you said this. Then you came up with this odd notion that flerp and I had both claimed that you had said that presidents were tried wile they were in office, that we had missed the word “former.” Again, not true. Neither of us made that claim, and neither of us thought we or you were talking about anything other than trying ex-presidents for crimes committed while in office.
If you are going to carry on such conversations as these, you must start reading more carefully and not making these odd claims a) that you didn’t say what you said and that b) others said what they didn’t
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Bob, If you are going to carry on such conversations as these, you must start reading more carefully and not making these odd claims a) that you didn’t say what you said and that b) others said what they didn’t.
“This country has never had a problem with trying former government officials with wrongdoing when they were in office, including presidents…” is absolutely not the same as saying “This country DID try former presidents for wrongdoing.”
Bob is wrong when he says I “CLEARLY said that former presidents had been tried when they were out of office” when I clearly did NOT say that former presidents had been tried when they were out of office.
I made a statement about this country’s VIEWS about immunity and government officials, including presidents. I did NOT say that former presidents had been tried for their crimes. And I supported my comment about THIS COUNTRY’S VIEWS about whether a president could or could not be tried for a crime with specific examples that demonstrate that this country never had any objections with trying former presidents for their crimes while in office. Not because there were actual trials, but because there were pardons and pleas made.
I am bending over backward to be fair and therefore I concede that it is possible to read my original comment two ways, but it is absurd to have someone man-splain to me that the comment can ONLY be read the way Bob read it, especially when Bob is claiming that the sentence “clearly” said something that it did not “clearly” say. Furthermore, I explained exactly what I meant, and people should have the grace to accept it. Even flerp! seemed to finally demonstrate that grace, but perhaps I misunderstood and there was some snark intended.
Why not stop discussing this and get back to the more important issue?
Bob, we both agree with the subject of this post, and I am glad you wrote this:
“That this is even a question is symptomatic of a truly disturbing and precipitous slide toward Fascism.”
Exactly. How could this possibly be a question?
Sometimes there are not two sides to an issue.
And there are not two sides to whether – in a democracy – the president must follow the law.
People break laws all the time, including presidents. They sometimes get away with it. Nonetheless, the right of a president to break laws with lifetime immunity has never ever been enshrined in the Constitution and in the past, such a far right neo-fascist suggestion would not be legitimized as debatable. But we live in scary times.
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Down the freaking rabbit hole AGAIN. I am extremely sorry that I engaged at all. I will not make this mistake again. It’s a complete waste of time.
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NYCPSP and Bob,
Please do not address one another in your comments. Talk about the topic instead of the other person.
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I have no intention of responding to NYC PSP ever again.
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It’s tough, Bob, because she will respond to your comments, and no matter how many times she’s told not to make her comments about other commenters, she will continue to do it. Of course, I’m breaking that rule in this very comment. It’s a delicate business.
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I only intervened to try to stop this going on and on. But of course that just opened another abusive floodgate.
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Diane,
I hope you consider how the comments of flerp! and Bob AFTER you asked us not to respond to one another were gratuitously insulting to me. flerp!’s reply was particularly disrespectful to you since he chose to insert himself to support Bob’s insult.
Diane, Roy Turrentine made a perfectly reasonable comment below @February 29, 2024 at 6:26 pm. And these are what a few “regulars” now believe substitutes as discussion:
“jsrtheta
March 1, 2024 at 11:11 am
It must be wonderful to know exactly what the Supreme Court is doing.
It’s a gift.
FLERP!
March 1, 2024 at 11:22 am
If you don’t have a firm, strident opinion of any current event almost immediately after it happens—no matter how little you know about what you don’t know—then you are a bad person. That’s what I’ve learned.”
I noticed that Joel tried to call this out in a thread above. Instead of engaging with the content of the comment, there is just snark. I generally like to engage in discussions with people who disagree with me, but I like to engage on the content. The difference between trolling and not trolling is having a discussion. It is possible to disagree and have a discussion where both sides explain their views when they are challenged. Not just respond snarkily.
Instead, too often the responses from a couple regulars are like those above. Snark. Insults. Joel called it out above, the way he often calls me out for being far too wordy (guilty, as in this post).
I know we should just ignore the snark, and I salute Roy for doing so, but I have seen more and more snark and insults lately, and ignoring it seems to have normalized it.
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JUST STOP IT, PLEASE. STOP.
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Will Roberts and Barrett save the nation? Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch are Bush v Gore revisited.. hopefully a Biden victory will result in sweeping away the trash
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The supermajority on the court will wait two months to hear this case. Then they will kick it back down to the lower court and so stall it until after the election. My prognostication.
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Well, they have to kick it back to the lower court. A trial has to happen.
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They could decide it once and for all.
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Yes. Thanks, Flerp.
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The Supreme Court can’t decide that Trump is guilty of the charges in the indictment in the D.C. court. Only a jury in the trial court can do that.
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It can decide whether a president has immunity.
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Oh, for sure. Maybe I misunderstood your comment. I took you to mean that Court would kick the case back to the lower court as part of some strategy to stall the case. So I noted that they have no choice but to kick the case back to the lower court, for trial. But yes, SCOTUS can resolve the immunity issue completely and I expect they will. Sorry if I’m still misunderstanding what you were saying.
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They could have decided to hear this immediately, but instead they have set a time frame that seems chosen for the purpose of delaying a trial until after the election. Two months, plus time for the lower court trial to take place–after November.
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If SCOTUS rules Presidents have Absolute Immunity then Biden could order the Summary Execution of Trump.
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They won’t rule that presidents have absolute immunity. If they do, I will jump off the Staten Island ferry like Spalding Gray.
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If a Prez can lead an insurrection against Congress then a Prez could lead an insurrection against SCOTUS.
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I really am mystified at what you imagine the Supreme Court doing. Somehow making a list of illegal actions a president CAN take, and those a president CANNOT take? “You can use your position to incite a riot where people get killed, for the sole purpose of staying in office after the Republican courts and judges have bent over backward to give you every opportunity to present evidence to support your charges that the election was stolen, but you can’t just murder your political rival.” “You can withhold foreign aid to extort a foreign leader to smear your political rival, but you can’t incite a riot.”
Is the Supreme Court going to decide whether a sitting president can say “who will rid me of this meddlesome politician?” Will the Supreme Court make a ruling that a president gets immunity if he says that, as long as he does not immediately pardon the guy who shoots the meddlesome politician?
It certainly seems to me that those are exactly the kinds of issues that are decided based on sworn testimony and evidence before a jury in a trial!
The reason this idea has always been considered absurd is that it is impossible for a Supreme Court to make a list of “possible crimes a sitting president may commit that he will be immune from prosecution.”
The fact that the absurd is now presented as if it was logical and right is frightening to me. Maybe no one else sees it.
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The court itself, in its decision to take the case, has hinted that it might address the scope of the president’s powers to do exactly that–what actions might be covered by immunity. I agree with you that that’s bizarre. Here: a list of illegal actions you can take with impunity. Bizarro.
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Is the Supreme Court going to decide whether a sitting president can say, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome politician?”
Exactly. Well said, NYC.
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Yep.
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What is the difference between “absolute” immunity from being prosecuted for crimes committed and immunity from being prosecuted for crimes committed?
Is this delay because the Supreme Court will be making their list of crimes the president CAN commit (immunity) and crimes the president CANNOT commit (no immunity)?
Have we really entered that twilight zone?
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We have been in the twilight zone at least since we allowed the Supreme Court to decide the outcome of the 2000 election. That was never the constitution’s intent. The irony is that the court that rendered the decision sur-rendered the court to partisan political activity.
There have always been political pressures on the high court. The result of these pressures have been good and bad. Arguably, the court that struck down New Deal legislation, then bowed to political pressure from a then dominant Democratic Party under FDR made a good choice. Plessy v Ferguson bowed in another direction a generation before that, a very bad choice.
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If a Prez can lead an insurrection against Congress then a Prez could lead an insurrection against SCOTUS.
Exactly
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“In December, 1807, at Jefferson’s insistence, Congress passed the Embargo Act, a drastic—and absurdly self-destructive—attempt to punish Britain for seizing American merchant ships; the act cut off all U.S. exports to any nation. In the Mississippi Territory, produce rotted in barns; in New England, dockworkers and sailors sat idle. Then, six months later, a Jefferson appointee to the Supreme Court, William Johnson, ruled that the President had exceeded his authority. To Jefferson, this marked a bitter betrayal. He took the extraordinary step of soliciting a dissenting opinion from his Attorney General, Caesar A. Rodney, distributing it to the press, and sending it to the customs agents who continued to enforce the embargo.” –Jeff Shesol, The New Yorker
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Jon Awbrey “If SCOTUS rules Presidents have Absolute Immunity then Biden could order the Summary Execution of Trump.”
If ex-presidents keep their immunity, then Obama could step in if Biden refused to execute Trump.
On another point, remember when the silence of ALL Republicans was such a head-banger during the Mueller investigation? Then Romney steps in and finally says that a good number of them were intimidated into their silence by death threats to their families (he says in his book that they told him so).
Is anyone investigating the possibility of some SCOTUS judges and Congresspeople are, again, succumbing to threats? Is such thought just another conspiracy theory IF it actually happened before? CBK
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Just spitballing here, but wouldn’t the framers have mentioned this when drafting the Constitution?
I do.
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jsrtherta I wrote: Is anyone investigating the possibility of some SCOTUS judges and Congresspeople are, again, succumbing to threats? Is such thought just another conspiracy theory IF it actually happened before? CBK”
YOU wrote: Just spitballing here, but wouldn’t the framers have mentioned this when drafting the Constitution? I do.
I reply: If you mean by “this” . . . Trump’s thugs making threats to lawmakers’ families and so holding them hostage to his vacuous and hateful personality, then I don’t know, and neither to you. The Founders couldn’t think of everything and perhaps they couldn’t imagine what we know to be true anyway; and maybe they thought leaders hundreds of years later might know better . . . neither of us knows for sure.
But me-thinks you are pressing the points I made earlier: If we have to have a law for everything, or everything needs to be written in the Constitution (see Governor Santis setting out laws in Florida) and cannot rely on our own interior guardrails; and we expect to have to detail every-little-thing to others, as if someone is actually listening, and if we think others (MAGA) will be bad actors if they don’t hear you, then I’ll wave bye-bye to you as we all slide down the slope to fascism. CBK
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Quite so. The framers were certainly not in a forgiving mood when it came to kings. And they were wary of human nature. It seems unthinkable that they would recognize such immunity.
Trump, of course, knows none of this.
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Of course he doesn’t.
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jsrtheta “Unthinkable” is just another manifestation of one’s already installed guardrails. The problem with such thinking, after decades of habit, is one’s penchant to project such guardrails onto others . . . a kind of reverse bias insofar as one initially likes to trust and to think well of others and, indeed, civilization happens to depend on the normalization of such thinking. (We can call it a weakness, but only [in my view] if one is unaware, and so I think that idea needs more thought?)
However, I would say that such unconscious projection, in part, is why it took so long for so many to get a grip on what Trump et al are up to. . . “SHOCKING” the rest of us into numbness and, ultimately and potentially, into the death of guardrail normality in a dying democratic culture. CBK
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I think that by unthinkable, in this context, jsr meant irrational, illogical, contradictory. The founders had laid out the structure for a democratic government of equals. To have buried in the Constitution some presumption of sovereign immunity on the part of the president would have contradicted everything else they did. It would have been “unthinkable” in the sense that a round square is unthinkable. Self-contradictory.
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Bob Yes, “unthinkable” is exactly that. You are not contradicting anything I said, that I can see? Such that,
. . .human beings develop; that development can include all kinds of situations, apparently unlike Trump, one of which is to learn early and in deeply affective ways, the “guardrails” that come in the cultural “air” one was born into and lived with and in for years. As early learned, they become “attached” and grown into our responsive sensitivities. One learns to expect them when they have been present for so long in our experience–so much so that we forget we learned them, and so it becomes difficult to understand what so obviously conflicts with them and is thrown against them.
With that in mind, I think it was out of some elements of that cultural experience of basic reasonability (from the enlightenment) that the Constitution was written.
That is NOT TO SAY that Jefferson et al were naive-optimistic dummies. Jefferson read lots of old history in the original languages. He knew about “irrational, illogical, contradictory” . . . and immunity from the law, . . . and other human foibles and possibilities, as did so many other writers of quasi-legal documents at the time, not to mention the Federalist Papers. They might not have been as specific as we might like, but I think they also were working with the general nature of a transfer of political power from above (in the king/in blood relations, etc.), to the democratic-below of each person’s developmental capacity and so they deliberately wrote hope into the Constitution by leaving to “the people” what was not deliberative of the Constitution.
Yes, endorsing immunity would have been contradictory of the whole idea of democracy. On the other hand, people who live in a democracy can still choose authoritarianism and fascism, and judges can still dis-interpret and ignore their oaths of office.
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION, of the people. CBK
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Well said, Catherine.
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If I were talking about guardrails, I’d have said so. I didn’t.
The bases for my opinions are The Federalist Papers, the proceedings of the constitutional convention, Madison’s writings, and accounts of the opinions and understandings of others of the Framers’ intent and other commentators. (Jefferson, of course, had a LOT to say.)
“Presidential immunity” would really be an American version of “sovereign immunity”, which still exists today. Try suing your local government, and you’ll learn all about it.
The Framers acted in a time where most governments were headed by royalty. Hence the name “sovereign”. “Sovereignty” was a very well-understood term throughout the world. And there was no intention to make the president a personal “sovereign”, else they would have called him a king.
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Well said, JSR!
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jsrtheta Perhaps I should have clarified that I put “threatening families of lawmakers” as opposed to anything that looks and acts like a political or moral “guardrail.” If you care to say what exactly you meant, however, please do. CBK
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Yes, if there’s one thing this mess is lacking, it’s a conspiracy theory…
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BTW Jsrtheta: One can easily “construe” that Article IX of the Constitution hints at your spit-balled question:
“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” CBK
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This decision reminded me that democracy is a frail child. The Supreme Court is going down the same partisan path it went down in 2000, choosing Bush2 in a decision that subverted the constitution. The makeup of this once august body is now born of Mitch McConnell’s rabid love of power. I have no doubt they will rule as Republicans rather than jurists.
The Democrats should begin today to campaign on a platform of court expansion for the prevention of fascism by these people. They should tell the public that the only way to prevent a modern Caesar from arising to ruin our republic is to vote down the party of oppression.
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Roy If the past is prologue, then, if Biden wins, Trump will insist the election was stolen “again.” He won’t quit until he dies or takes over the asylum he has had a big hand in creating.
We are also headed for fascism for another reason: Democratic institutions depend on reasonable, and reasonably accepted, guardrails that most follow without being told . . . like don’t even think about killing your political opponent . . . rather than force and/or the heavy hand of the law.
I guess that’s considered a “weakness” by some. But when reasonable guardrails break down, more laws need to be written and forcibly invoked. And the crush of laws governing every detail of one’s life, even if well-meaning as some try to hold broken things together, defines part of the same slippery slope to fascism. CBK
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Catherine: wisdom, you speak.
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Addendum: This below is why PUBLIC EDUCATION is so very important and why I lay a good amount of our present problems with the mentality of MAGA (such as it is) at its door, and at the door of the people who let it slide or deliberately guided it into the problems that inspired Diane to start this blog in the first place. A solid liberal education is the equivalent of growing natural guardrails.
“We are also headed for fascism for another reason: Democratic institutions depend on reasonable, and reasonably accepted, guardrails that most follow without being told . . . like don’t even think about killing your political opponent . . . rather than force and/or the heavy hand of the law.” The center of responsible action is in each person and groups they belong to, and not in written law, which then only exists as reference to help us order ourselves rightly.
I guess that’s considered a “weakness by some. But political freedom can only exist when “the people” have natural guardrails written into their educational/developmental DNA.
Also, I think that, after WWII, everyone understood what fascism and authoritarianism meant–how could they not? But over generations, that knowledge washed away and the responsibility for conveying that understanding shifted to our institutions of education.
But in too many cases, children sat through 12 years of schooled boredom. Things have changed and are changing, of course, and many teachers “get it” and teach it. But I think many MAGA people are of those boredom decades. So many that I have experienced are either getting paid off in some selfish way and don’t care about or have a vision of integrity or of our national place in the world. But many constantly show themselves as just plain ignorant (while thinking they are just fine) and have the political savvy of a bag of hair.
CBK
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It must be wonderful to know exactly what the Supreme Court is doing.
It’s a gift.
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If you don’t have a firm, strident opinion of any current event almost immediately after it happens—no matter how little you know about what you don’t know—then you are a bad person. That’s what I’ve learned.
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I am mystified at the view by some that for more than 200 years, there has been an open, unknown Constitutional question: Does a president have permanent immunity from the crimes he commits while president or not?
We have reached high level propaganda danger when folks present this as if the answer has been unknown for 200+ years! When folks present this as if is still unknown and will continue to be unknown until a right wing Supreme Court tells us whether or not a president has permanent immunity, because none of us know whether the Constitution does say that a president has permanent immunity from crimes committed while in office. No one has known the answer for 200 years! We need those 9 Justices to tell us!
The truly crazy thing is that they seem to believe that the Supreme Court can make a distinction between “absolute” immunity and some other vague immunity from prosecution.
Can anyone explain how 9 people can pre-decide which crimes a president should freely commit knowing they are immune for life, and which crimes a president may be prosecuted for after leaving office?
What do people who keep defending and normalizing this believe will happen? Is this right wing Supreme Court going to make a list of illegal actions a president CAN take, and those a president CANNOT take? “You can use your position to incite a riot where people get killed, for the sole purpose of staying in office after the Republican courts and judges have bent over backward to give you every opportunity to present evidence to support your charges that the election was stolen, but you can’t just murder your political rival.” “You can withhold foreign aid to extort a foreign leader to smear your political rival, but you can’t incite a riot.”
Is the Supreme Court going to decide whether a sitting president can say “who will rid me of this meddlesome politician?” knowing they have full immunity when a supporter murders the rival? Will the Supreme Court make a ruling that a president gets immunity for suggesting a rival gets murdered, as long as he does not immediately pardon the guy who murders the meddlesome politician?
Will the Supreme Court give presidents the unlimited right to commit perjury because until now, it’s been unknowable and we need those right wing Justices to correctly interpret for us? Will the Supremes recognize the Constitutional right to commit perjury about ones sex life and get immunity but there is no immunity from committing perjury about whether a foreign country has nuclear weapons? Or perhaps the Supremes will do the opposite, say that the Constitution says a president is not immune from prosecution of he lies about his sex life, but it immune for all other perjury.
It certainly seems to me that those are exactly the kinds of issues that are decided based on sworn testimony and evidence before a jury in a trial!
The reason this idea has always been considered absurd is that it is impossible for a Supreme Court to make a list of “possible crimes a sitting president may commit that he will be immune from prosecution.”
The fact that the absurd is now presented as if it was logical and right is frightening to me. Maybe no one else sees it.
This is the point of a trial. To have a jury decide AFTER hearing the evidence!
Not to have a Supreme Court saying that the president is immune from committing some crimes but not others, and as long as it is one of the crimes for which the president is immune, the president should go right ahead and commit them!
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I apologize for mystifying you!
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Don’t do that! It simply increases your mystique! You international man of mystery you!
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flerp!,
I didn’t want an apology and you don’t need to give one.
It would be nice if you explained how you imagine the Supreme Court pre-deciding which crimes are okay for a president to commit because that president will have lifetime immunity for committing those crimes.
Or perhaps you agree with me and Bob that it is “bizarro”.
Which is why Bob and I see the huge problem in the Supreme Court legitimizing that lifetime immunity for presidential crimes is an undecided Constitutional issue.
Either presidents have blanket immunity, or the SC believes it can carve out and list some crimes that the Constitution supposedly allows a president to commit with full immunity.
Bizarro.
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This really can go on forever, it seems.
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Everyone who matters in this debate knows damned well what the creators of the Constitution would have said. “Have you not been paying attention? Do you think the end of all of this that we intended is another King?”
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I think we are brought here by recent pardons for illicit presidential activity. Ford pardoned Nixon because “we needed to heal.” The same rationalization led to pardons for those involved in Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton was able to escape another way. As Bob says, “Just us” always prevails.
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Clinton had to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and surrender his law license. As a result of an investigation that never should have occurred.
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Thank you!
True! “ The Supreme Court is attempting to end its own life as an institution above politics. If it has been doing moving in this direction for some time, this week it came to a head.”
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Well said, Yvonne!!!
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After taking two weeks to decide to hear the immunity case, which should have been settled law, the U.S. Extreme Court and Massachusetts Bay Colony Council of Magistrates Cosplayers set the date for the hearing for two months later, at which time (my prognostication), they will kick it down to the lower courts again, effectively delaying it until after the election.
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Apologies if this has been said but I was on my phone at the dentist’s office and WP’s recent system mutations keep making it harder to follow all threads.
At any rate. a lot of the discussion I see seems to assume there is some prior process which says what’s legal or not for a POTUS to do. But here’s the thing (Monk says) — If SCOTUS drowns Magna Carta in its infinite wisdom bathtub, as it were, and belches forth any version of Divine Right Of Presidents then we can DROP any notion of a prior process. Presidential Privilege (= private law) means an act becomes legal for the President BECAUSE the President does it.
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The Supreme Court clearly wants to avoid making a decision before the election. It will issue some mushy statement that lets Trump run.
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They will kick it back down to the lower court and so delay this immunity decision AND TRUMP’S TRIAL FOR SEDITION until after the election.
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So, I think you nailed it.
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I guess I am old, because I remember the good old days of democracy, before pre-fascism was normalized and even defended by so-called “liberals” (especially those in the “liberal” media) when the undecided question about presidential immunity was whether a SITTING president could be indicted for his crimes, or did prosecutors have to wait until a president was no longer in office to indict him.
And even then, the idea that you could not indict a sitting president was based entirely on “tradition”. Because in fact, there is nothing in the Constitution that actual says “a sitting president cannot be indicted until after he leaves office”.
Back when I assumed the one thing both parties agreed upon was that the Constitution was pro-democracy and not pro-fascist, I thought it was possible that the Supreme Court might some day take up the issue of whether a SITTING president could be indicted. I could see a strict Constitutional Originalist challenging a justice department policy not to indict sitting presidents.
What I never thought possible is that anyone would normalize a fascist Constitutional challenge to a president EVER being indicted or tried for crimes committed, let alone a corrupt Supreme Court legitimizing such a challenge by taking up the case and implicitly sending a message to the public that the question is not at all easy to decide (presumably because both sides offer such valid arguments) and they will need a few months to ponder what has supposedly been unknown for 200+ years.
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The Framers were born into English colonies, and were legally “Englishmen”. As Englishmen they were very aware of sovereign immunity. It’s highly unlikely, indeed impossible, that they thought ANY president should receive such immunity. They didn’t create a new government in order to replicate England’s.
Hadn’t we fought a Revolution over this?
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Yes.
That’s why I thought there could be a Constitutional challenge to the “tradition” of not indicting a sitting president until his term was over. Does a president have immunity from prosecution while still in office?
But this is the direct opposite! It makes the other question completely moot!
jsrtheta, I am not a lawyer so I have no idea what would take the Supreme Court months to decide it. The lower court already set it out. Are the right wingers hoping to come up with new research to show that the Constitution intended the president to have immunity?
I find the whole notion that the Supreme Court needs the time to decide what criminal actions the Constitution supposedly allows president to commit with impunity, and what criminal actions the Constitution does not allow the president to commit to be not just absurd, but frightening.
I know it’s just speculation, but I can come up ONLY with corrupt reasons for the delay – all to help Trump and continue to help him when he is elected, but without empowering Biden to do anything at all remotely criminal to stay in power.
The delay is an implicit (or perhaps explicit) message to the public that the issue of presidential immunity is still up in the air, and no one in the public should assume that Trump does not have immunity until the ruling. And the longer that remains up in the air, the better for Trump.
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We have to remember that the Supreme Court “speaks” only through its cases. Roberts can’t issue a memo to everyone saying what the law is on immunity. It must come from the Court as a body, as the third (and weakest) branch of government.
Further, every one of the trial judges needs to know. There is no point in going to trial against someone who is immune, because the case will be reversed.
I suspect, and to be clear I base this on NOTHING, that one or two justices believe some sort of immunity should exist. If Roberts is facing the threat of open revolt, maybe his solution is to get a real opinion. I’m likely completely wrong about this.
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7-2 seems to be the conventional wisdom. Hope that’s right.
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That way it could delimit how these trials progress. But I can’t think of any form of immunity that makes sense.
Which scares the crap out of me.
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In Bush v. Gore, the court heard arguments and issued its opinion within four days.
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George Conway wrote today that the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Trump’s demand for absolute immunity may work against his interest. If the Court releases its decision in June, the trial might occur in August or September, which will be a bad time to remind the public of Trump’s crimes.
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If the decision is 7-2, why grant cert at all?
Most people, including you, assumed they wouldn’t.
At least four justices wanted to delay a decision and I find it impossible to come up with any motivation that doesn’t boil down to their putting the interests of influential Republicans above their duty to the Constitution.
Shocking that we now accept the reality that 2 Justices thumb their nose at the Constitution, with another 2 or 3 simply trying to put their finger on the scale to empower Republicans who thumb their nose at the Constitution.
I don’t think CBK’s conspiracy theory is that far off. The Republican justices act fearful the way Republicans like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio do. I get the feeling that there are more Republicans who would show integrity if the price they paid when they showed it was not so freakin’ high.
Scary times.
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There will be no trial of Trump before the election.
As Bob pointed out, the Supreme Court did a quick decision in Bush V. Gore. That’s because the REPUBLICANS wanted a quick decision.
There is absolutely no reason that the Supreme Court did not come out with the same quick decision on the immunity question, which frankly is far LESS controversial! Who the heck believes presidents have immunity? The lower courts essentially spoke as one!
If this court had even a modicum of integrity, this would already be decided.
The bar for integrity in Republicans is so, so, low that we now think that a Republican Justice who “only” agrees to grant cert and delay a decision to benefit Republicans, but who “probably” won’t actually say presidents have immunity — at least until a Republican president is in office — is considered to be principled.
In some ways, Clarence Thomas and Alito have more principles than the other Republican justices. After all, those two will probably say a president has immunity even when that president is Biden. The others will do everything they can to help Trump delay any trials until trials become moot, while making a delayed ruling against immunity that they will “revisit” once a Republican president is installed.
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