“Trump immunity fight turns Supreme Court textualists topsy-turvy”

“The Supreme Court’s conservatives often accuse liberals of inventing provisions nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Now, the fingers are pointed in the other direction.”

“At the attention-grabbing arguments this week over Donald Trump’s claim of sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, the six-member conservative bloc seemed largely unconcerned by a key flaw in Trump’s theory: Nothing in the Constitution explicitly mentions the concept of presidential immunity.”

“On Thursday they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise where they weighed competing interests and practical consequences.”

“Writing for five conservative justices in the earth-shaking abortion case two years ago, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito referred to the notion of guaranteed access to abortion as “an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.”

“Kagan was perhaps the most insistent Thursday in highlighting the absence of any explicit immunity for presidents in the Constitution.”

“The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to. There were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They knew how to give legislative immunity. They didn’t provide immunity to the president. And, you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”
Kagan was perhaps the most insistent Thursday in highlighting the absence of any explicit immunity for presidents in the Constitution.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/27/supreme-court-trump-immunity-00154744

Was “Originalism” just a shame from the jump?

If abortion wasn’t protected because there was no mention of it in the Constitution how can Presidential immunity be inferred especially considering the Founders will surely well aware of monarchs being above the law?

Is Judicial restraint really a principle of conservatism?

 

I agree. Sitting presidents should be open to prosecution for breaking the law. Just like when Obama executed two United States citizens, without due process. Oh and there's no statute of limitations on murder.

 

I don't think a former President should get absolute immunity, but there are some good and pragmatic reasons to be very cautious and hesitant about criminally charging them for crimes.

Especially the sorts of crimes that are not altogether clear crimes, or which are based on single accusers.

As much as Democrats would like to put Trump in prison, the nature of each of all of these alleged crimes is such that these Democrats are publicly reluctant to explain the actual precise details of what he did that constitute the crime. Rather they are just relying on simple characterizations and interpretations, which are highly debatable. In other words, it's far from "simple", if it's too complicated to plainly state the key details.

 

Difference is Obama may have been prosecuted however common sense prevailed and he wasn’t, only been , and after 200+ years of history, with the rise of Trump, that it has become an issue

 

True, “caution and hesitant” prevailed due to common sense

And the details of what Trump did have been out there since Smith released the inditements, he was part of a scheme to reverse the election by creating fake electors in selective swing States, and, for stealing, lying about, and refusing to return documents he was not entitled to possess

 

Only fake in the event that the courts shut down the recount attempts by Trump. If they had been allowed to do the recounts and if by some miracle they won then all of a sudden it’s not so fake, is it?

Basically there exists an alternative universe where all of the above happened and in that universe it’s not a crime. Which is why I hesitate on calling it fraud by definition. It would be fraud if it actually defrauded the States. But I argue that the States didn’t suffer an injury

Why? Old man Yeller is POTUS as he was elected to be

 

What "common sense" are you referring to?

 

Not necessarily, but I hope that the scotus doesn’t completely discredit itself by helping trump escape justice.

The world knows what he did between November and January to keep himself in power and overturn the election results, and if a partisan scotus caves in and invents some sophist legalese to excuse trump’s actions, voters should take note of how the repubs are corrupting every American institution and tradition just to keep a seditious criminal from facing justice.

We, as voters, need to register our complete disgust of trump as a leader and his lapdogs as legitimate public servants and reject him and all his maga stooges at the election.
If Americans are foolish enough to actually make trump a contender, they will have failed in their civic duty.

And if the court fails in its duty to hold trump accountable for his actions, we should reform it and increase the number of justices or impose term limits, or both.

Maga today reminds me of the 1930s extremists who were racist hitler appeasers and tried to blame everything on the Jews and communists.
The parallels are clear and very troubling.

 

it's kinda unspoken, but it they just go away and crawl under a rock, they don't get charged, Trump pushed it, had he not done that, he would have been related the same

 

Recounts were done, and done again, and in some cases, done again, all which resulted in the same, and they were fraudulent electors because they were not the chosen electors of the State’s citizenry.

And the majority of the time no one suffers when one runs a Stop sign but the offender if ticketed still has to face the consequences

 

The understanding that Obama was acting in the best interests of the country

 

I'll add, bipartisan understanding....plus he got clearance from OLC and the DOJ AFAIK.

 

Go ahead.

Call me when you get an indictment .

 

Agree. You guys bring that up constantly, why would you not want him prosecuted? Are you FOR murdering citizens with no due process???

 

'What crime" ? He tried to subvert the EC by having Pence count the wrong slate of electors. Basically Trump said "only count electors favorable to me". THAT is illegal. "Election Fraud" is a crime. Not sure why the right in this country keeps saying "there is no crime" when their clearly is !

Election fraud becomes a crime when the ballot includes one or more federal candidates

But I have to ask this question because we know for a fact that Trump did ask that, Pence clearly stated that he did, would you have been OK with that if Biden asked Kamala to do that ? I wouldn't

 

He made a phone call to a state official asking if there was any way he could "find more votes".

While that may be unethical, I think it is a big stretch to say that should be prosecuted as a crime.


(We can also point out, of course, that state officials do not work for the federal government and are not under the orders or direct influence of the President)

We can also put Trump's request into additional context, by remembering that the election results in the state were very close, and Trump had reason to suspect that fraud was involved. So it's possible Trump was simply trying to buy time and delay things, to allow for time to carry out an investigation and convince state officials, rather than actually trying to use fraud to win the election.

The legal advisors advising Trump would point to the 1960 precedent in Hawaii, where Democrats did the same thing, successfully. Used blatantly fake electors to buy some time (a few days), were able to obtain a recount, and the state decided to change its mind about the election results.

It could be argued there is a fundamental flaw in the current Presidential election system. There is not enough time to contest or investigate election results between the time it is counted and certified by the state and the time they send their electors to the Electoral College to carry out the final vote.

 

The fake electors were obviously fake, and it would have been obvious to everyone.
In my opinion, it's difficult to argue that should be a real crime. Deception or fraud on the government officials in charge of certifying the results would have been impossible.
At the very most, it would have given government officials in charge a very flimsy legal excuse to be able to commit fraud. But more likely it was to give Pence an excuse to delay certification.

 

The call to Georgia is but one part of the whole thing, Trump worked with surrogates to construct fake electors, Trump made calls to various State supporters in several swing States to assemble bogus electors. It was a designed scheme to invalidate the 2020 election, with the end goal being to present Pence a means to stop the transfer of power and eventually get the election thrown over to the House where the GOP had the majority 26 votes

And there was no “proof” of fraud at any time, as I noted, States counted, recounted, and in some instances, recounted again, even Trump’s own advisors told him it was over

 

Does he have immunity?

 

You're proving my point. Thanks.

 

SCOTUS is deciding.

 

Obama doesn't have immunity?

 

I never assumed he did.

 

Per Mike Pence, Trump asked him to count the wrong slate of electors to give him the votes needed to become president.

THAT is a crime. Now the defense that “well it didnt work so, no harm no foul” is disingenuous to the debate.

There is no “flaw” in the process because the states send the certified electros to the EC. The certification process accounts for that. Trump asked pence to not count come of them, or to “find more trump electors”. THAT is illegal.

Tony Saprano never killed people, he told people to do it, so could he be guilty of murder ?