The President is Above the Law

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guys. This is a feature of the constitution. Not a bug. Prosecuting current and former presidents is not a good thing.

Where in the Constitution does it say this?

It doesn’t say it but it offers a specifically remedy to remove for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. And then the subsequent case law has ultimate concluded that qualified immunity is insufficient. Absolutely immunity for decisions related to doing the job is what the Supreme Court found.

You are incorrectly reading into that clause that this is the only process and remedy for a President who commits a crime. That is a process for removing him from office. At issue here are separate proceeding seeking different relief: 1) criminal; 2) some civil matters; and 3) is whether he is eligible to run again.

This is ALL about number 3. This is all a blatant attempt to keep him off the ballot. If he weren’t running again, I don’t think this would be happening at all.

Yes, if he just retired and stopped trying to run again, they would not be pursuing this.

But he can't stop himself. So he will be be found ineligible. And in criminal trouble.

Not true. He is not above the law and would still be prosecuted for his crimes, including fomenting an insurrection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Passion is a valuable political resource. President Trump has passionate supporters; Biden doesn’t. President Trump has armed supporters; Biden doesn’t.

If we had been so worried about political violence back in 1776, we would be paying taxes to London. The Patriots realized that their political passion was their most valuable resource against the British Empire.

So too does President Trump. Each supporter carrying an AR-15 outside a Black urban polling place is worth a 100 votes minimum, for the count of people who get out of line and walk home.

So why wouldn’t President Trump harvest that passion?

He tried to in 2020 and failed, because he is mostly an incompetent loser who surrounds himself with incompetence.

And most of the people weilding the AK-15's are not the best and brightest.

However, look at the voting in Alabama this past fall for an example where votes were, in fact, curtailed, costing the Dems a win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No one would impeach a president because a miltary strike in another land did that. A president organizing an American coup is not part of his job.

The House is trying to impeach Biden for... apparently nothing at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if it comes out after he left office that the president was selling pardons, there is no remedy?

According to Trump, correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 13:year old saw the thread title and said, Haven't these people heard of the rule of law? We learned about it in school. No, the president isn't above the law. Of course not.

Did you explain to your 13 year old that the constitution specified impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors and that President Trump was impeached and not convicted?

DP and then her 13 year might reply but what if a president resigns before impeachment and conviction take place, that means he's above the law if he commits High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Maybe. But that isn’t what happened. Trump WAS impeached and was found not guilty. That is the situation.

He wasn't found "not guilty" - a majority of senators voted to disbar Trump from running again, but not the 60 needed to prevent it outright. More than 10 said they would not vote against Trump because he was out of office, so voting for removal was unnecessary and further, that the DOJ would have jursidiction.

So now we have the DOJ arguing in court and team trump citing the lack of removal by the Senate as the get out of jail free card...IOW playing both sides.

Actually the threshold is 67 votes in the senate to convict, which is impossibly high. Trump could easily come up with any BS excuse for any crime whatsoever and get 34 Republican senators to cover for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guys. This is a feature of the constitution. Not a bug. Prosecuting current and former presidents is not a good thing.

Where in the Constitution does it say this?

It doesn’t say it but it offers a specifically remedy to remove for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. And then the subsequent case law has ultimate concluded that qualified immunity is insufficient. Absolutely immunity for decisions related to doing the job is what the Supreme Court found.

Yeah, that never happened

[Anonymous]

Omg Trump is going to deliver closing arguments in the NY case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump’s lawyers argued in court today that a President could order Seal Team 6 to murder a political opponent and he would be immune from criminal prosecution.

What type of argument is this? Didn’t we fight a war with Britain to get away from a king?

It's called executive immunity. Do you want every president from here on out looking over their shoulders for actions they took whilst in office?

You would get to a point of a feckless presidency that can't act in many cases. Would you like Biden to be prosecuted for killing 13 children in Kabul, Afghanistan in a missile strike that Biden concurred to? The precedent you would be setting is MADNESS.

Killing people in an authorized military action isn’t a crime. Notice that prosecutors aren’t charging the thousands of military members who killed people in Iraq and Afghanistan even though they don’t have “absolute immunity.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Passion is a valuable political resource. President Trump has passionate supporters; Biden doesn’t. President Trump has armed supporters; Biden doesn’t.

If we had been so worried about political violence back in 1776, we would be paying taxes to London. The Patriots realized that their political passion was their most valuable resource against the British Empire.

So too does President Trump. Each supporter carrying an AR-15 outside a Black urban polling place is worth a 100 votes minimum, for the count of people who get out of line and walk home.

So why wouldn’t President Trump harvest that passion?

He tried to in 2020 and failed, because he is mostly an incompetent loser who surrounds himself with incompetence.

And most of the people weilding the AK-15's are not the best and brightest.

However, look at the voting in Alabama this past fall for an example where votes were, in fact, curtailed, costing the Dems a win.

AK-15s?

[Anonymous]

Excerpt from historian news analyst Heather Cox Richardson blog for yesterday … some historical - pleased to see 19 former Republican Congress people stepping up to the plate to hold Trump accountable before the law …

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-9-2024?r=1urel1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

On the docket today in front of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was the question of whether former presidents can be prosecuted for things they did while in office. The issue at hand is whether Trump can be tried for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but Trump has also been charged in three other criminal cases: a national case over his mishandling of national security documents, a state case in Georgia for interfering with the 2020 election there, and a state case in New York for paying hush money to adult film actress Stormy

While presidential immunity is a crucially important question, it seems unlikely that any court will conclude that a U.S. president can act however they wish without any accountability before the law. Certainly the framers of the Constitution never intended such a thing (if you listen closely, you can hear them spinning in their graves). More recently, in 1974, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon ruled unanimously that President Richard Nixon could not use claims of executive privilege to withhold evidence from a criminal prosecution. Even more recently, on December 29, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Trump does not have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits.
 
But the more pressing immediate question is when the court can resume progress on the case, which is stalled during appeals. The case is scheduled for trial on March 4, and Trump has been trying to drag it out—as he has all his trials—with the evident hope that it can be delayed until after the election. When Trump appealed the decision of the district court that he was not immune, Special Counsel Smith tried to move things along by taking the case directly to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to take it at that point. The case will almost certainly end up there again, at which time the justices could let the appeals court decision stand or agree to take it up. If they take it up, they could decide it quickly or delay it until after the election.

Today, in The Bulwark, nineteen former Republican members of Congress called on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to move the case forward as quickly as possible. Calling out “Trump’s gambit to escape accountability altogether: assert an unprecedented claim of absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution and use the appellate process to delay the trial until after the November election,” they defended the public’s right to have “critical information they need before they cast their ballots in November.”

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:I'm no Trump defender, but that was not exactly the argument. The lawyer contended that in such a blatant case of lawlessness, the House would immediately impeach the president and the Senate would convict. At that point, the President would be eligible for prosecution.

The problem with this theory is that today's Congress would be unlikely to impeach Trump for anything, including ordering Seal Team Six to kill a political opponent.

The risk for Trump, of course, is that Biden will order Seal Team Six to murder him. But, I suspect that the Democrats in the Senate will not act with the same cultish behavior of House Republicans.

That's exactly the point, though.

If Congress is controlled by MAGA sycophants, they would not impeach or convict Trump. They've already shown that they would help him with an insurrection. IMO, murdering isn't far behind, and they would justify it as "saving the union", which is ironic given Trump's stance on another insurrection that took place in the 1860s.

So, then yes, Trump would get away with murdering his political opponents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That argument is a bit of a red herring. Killing a political foe with a seal team would violate a ton of laws and in no way could it be considered within the job of a president. Trump’s argument is that it is within his role as president to ensure that the election was fair blah blah. It’s totally true but whether what he did actually was for that purpose etc is a fact question. But on its face it’s not a ridiculous position to say that a president cannot be charged criminally for doing the things he is required to do under his oath of office. The oath could never be stretched to justify ordering murder or using the military agains US citizens on US solid so I think the judge’s question was for clickbait but not really an apt analogy.

Disagree. If he deemed as POTUS that his political rival was a threat to our democracy, the could order the hit and get away with it, especially if he had the backing of a MAGA controlled Congress. What office would nay say him?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 13:year old saw the thread title and said, Haven't these people heard of the rule of law? We learned about it in school. No, the president isn't above the law. Of course not.

Did you explain to your 13 year old that the constitution specified impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors and that President Trump was impeached and not convicted?

DP and then her 13 year might reply but what if a president resigns before impeachment and conviction take place, that means he's above the law if he commits High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Maybe. But that isn’t what happened. Trump WAS impeached and was found not guilty. That is the situation.

He wasn't found "not guilty" - a majority of senators voted to disbar Trump from running again, but not the 60 needed to prevent it outright. More than 10 said they would not vote against Trump because he was out of office, so voting for removal was unnecessary and further, that the DOJ would have jursidiction.

So now we have the DOJ arguing in court and team trump citing the lack of removal by the Senate as the get out of jail free card...IOW playing both sides.

I would say this is circular reasoning, and anyone with an ounce of brain cells can see that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump’s lawyers argued in court today that a President could order Seal Team 6 to murder a political opponent and he would be immune from criminal prosecution.

What type of argument is this? Didn’t we fight a war with Britain to get away from a king?

It's called executive immunity. Do you want every president from here on out looking over their shoulders for actions they took whilst in office?

You would get to a point of a feckless presidency that can't act in many cases. Would you like Biden to be prosecuted for killing 13 children in Kabul, Afghanistan in a missile strike that Biden concurred to? The precedent you would be setting is MADNESS.

The precedent of a sitting POTUS supporting insurrection is the MADNESS here, not holding POTUS accountable for supporting an insurrection. It would be madess to NOT hold a POTUS accountable for an insurrection.

I'm sure Abraham Lincoln did not plunge the union into civil war just to allow an insurrectionist to rip the union apart.

If Trump is such a great negotiator, why isn't he "negotiating" to keep the union from fracturing? He's either a terrible negotiator, or he cares more about his ego and getting back at people for a perception of being done wrong than loving this country... it's actually both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Excerpt from historian news analyst Heather Cox Richardson blog for yesterday … some historical - pleased to see 19 former Republican Congress people stepping up to the plate to hold Trump accountable before the law …

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-9-2024?r=1urel1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

On the docket today in front of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was the question of whether former presidents can be prosecuted for things they did while in office. The issue at hand is whether Trump can be tried for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but Trump has also been charged in three other criminal cases: a national case over his mishandling of national security documents, a state case in Georgia for interfering with the 2020 election there, and a state case in New York for paying hush money to adult film actress Stormy

While presidential immunity is a crucially important question, it seems unlikely that any court will conclude that a U.S. president can act however they wish without any accountability before the law. Certainly the framers of the Constitution never intended such a thing (if you listen closely, you can hear them spinning in their graves). More recently, in 1974, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon ruled unanimously that President Richard Nixon could not use claims of executive privilege to withhold evidence from a criminal prosecution. Even more recently, on December 29, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Trump does not have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits.
 
But the more pressing immediate question is when the court can resume progress on the case, which is stalled during appeals. The case is scheduled for trial on March 4, and Trump has been trying to drag it out—as he has all his trials—with the evident hope that it can be delayed until after the election. When Trump appealed the decision of the district court that he was not immune, Special Counsel Smith tried to move things along by taking the case directly to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to take it at that point. The case will almost certainly end up there again, at which time the justices could let the appeals court decision stand or agree to take it up. If they take it up, they could decide it quickly or delay it until after the election.

Today, in The Bulwark, nineteen former Republican members of Congress called on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to move the case forward as quickly as possible. Calling out “Trump’s gambit to escape accountability altogether: assert an unprecedented claim of absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution and use the appellate process to delay the trial until after the November election,” they defended the public’s right to have “critical information they need before they cast their ballots in November.”

Here's the most important part of your post:

former Republican members of Congress

No sitting R member of Congress will go against Trump in this. And that is the danger of allowing blanket presidential immunity when there is a sycophantic Congress supporting a deranged POTUS.