Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted review of the presidential immunity question, but set an expedited schedule for the review of the question with oral argument scheduled for April. Former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Legal Scholars are extremely thankful for the Supreme Court’s Decision today to take up Presidential Immunity.” As I mentioned last night in the coverage, legal scholars are hardly doing a conga line in celebration. Indeed, this morning had the usual voices attacking the Court as “craven” and partisan for granting review in the case. Despite the Court (including three Trump appointees) repeatedly ruling against Trump and conservative causes in past cases, the same voices declared that the Court was a cabal of politically compromised lickspittles.
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was outraged on the air and denounced “the cravenness of the court.” She noted that the Court took a whole two weeks to consider the question, ignoring the usual schedule of months of such deliberation. She added:
“Obviously, pushing all of the cases that they can push to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of those cases. Got it. It is the timing…This is BS, and you are doing this as a tactic to help for political friend, partisan patron. For you to say that this is something the court needs to decide because it is unclear in the law is fragrant bullpucky and they know it and don’t care that we know it. That is disturbing about the future legitimacy of the court.”
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner dismissed the review as a political effort to do Trump “an enormous favor.” Kirschner also said that it was “clear” the court “sold American democracy down the river” to help Trump.
Mary Trump, the niece of the former president, declared that “the Supreme Court of the United States just reminded us with this corrupt decision that the insurrection did not fail–it never ended.”
In other words, the Supreme Court itself is now part of the “insurrection.” It is that easy. Once you start to remove people from the ballot by declaring a riot an insurrection, even courts become insurrectionists by allowing for a review of lower court rulings.
This is the type of rhetoric that enrage viewers, particularly when they hear no alternative views.
For years, liberal law professors and pundits have filled the media with dire predictions that the Supreme Court was about to carry out a long-planned “coup” and “power grab” — one even wrote that the court could be on the brink of establishing “one-party rule” in the United States. These commentators often ignore the countervailing cases where conservative justices voted against conservative causes and immediately return to these sensational claims whenever the Court is seen as a hinderance of their agenda, even in the simple act of granting review of a long-debated constitutional question.
Just in case you wanted to read this insurrectionist order, here it is:
The application for a stay presented to The Chief Justice is referred by him to the Court. The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.
The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Respondent’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Monday, April 8, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, April 15, 2024.
There are a variety of reasons why the Court could have put this on the calendar for further argument. While I still believe that Trump will not be able to secure a majority on his sweeping immunity theory, some justices may be concerned over the D.C. Circuit opinion and the lack of clarity on when a president is protected for actions taken in office. It is possible to uphold the lower court in its outcome but change the rationale or analysis.
The Court has not been particularly eager to reenter this area of constitutional law, but it may now be prepared to lay down new precedent and bring greater clarity for future presidents.
Voters Must Know The Outcome Of Trump’s Case
Republicans have known since January of 2021 that Trump stood a very good chance of facing multiple charges for fomenting the siege at the U.S. Capitol. Therefore this talking point that prosecutors are ‘interfering with the election’ is geared for the very stupid.
The idea seems to be that billionaires can’t be held accountable. That message encourages a cancerous form of cynicism. We don’t want BLM pointing to Trump and saying, “He attempted a coup and never stood trial”.
The voters of America need to know the outcome of Trump’s trial BEFORE the election. We can’t have an election with the prospect of Trump’s trial just dangling in the wind. Such a possibility would set the whole country on a path of grave uncertainty.
Another feckless Anonymous Soviet Democrat coward tried this line:
“Therefore this talking point that prosecutors are ‘interfering with the election’ is geared for the very stupid.”
Anyone old enough to remember when Hillary Clinton was saying that prosecutors were interfering with the election when they investigated her while she was destroying subpoenaed evidence and lying to both Congress and the FBI?
The idea seems to be that billionaires can’t be held accountable… The voters of America need to know the outcome of Trump’s trial BEFORE the election.
Which is different than the idea that Bribery Biden and his cashier, The Bagman Formerly Known As The Crackhead kid, won’t be held accountable by that same justice system?
The one that refused to investigate Biden bribery, 150+ Suspicious Activity Reports concerning Bidens laundering money from adversarial nations, income tax fraud, statute of limitations deliberately allowed to expire, sweetheart universal immunity deals with the criminal offering nothing in return, etc. Oh – and Comey and now Hur saying that Clinton and now Biden shouldn’t be indicted because they have decided what the outcome would be.
Tell us, feckless Anonymous coward… share your views on whether the voters of American deserve to know the full extent of Biden criminality prior to the next election. Something different than the coverup the FBI ran before the last election when they censored the voters knowing about the content of the Biden laptop they’d been hiding and avoiding investigating for years.
Dog’s endless series of what abouts.
Another feckless Anonymous cowardly Soviet Democrat attempted this defense of the DoJ shielding Bidens from prosecution
“Dog’s endless series of what abouts.”
Whataboutism? Another Soviet Democrat sock puppet parroting a party line who doesn’t have a clue – or is cosplaying ignorance of the meaning of whataboutism.
Such a rebuttal, Anonymous coward! How many here expected you would instead expound on why Biden’s aren’t being held legally accountable through three successive elections? You were flexing and posing about people not being held accountable – what happened when it’s Biden instead of Trump? The Big Democrat Difference?
Any particular defense you want to offer regarding your belief American voters don’t deserve to know all the facts about Biden White House Crime LLC before the next election? Instead of this election’s version of hiding the laptop belonging to The Big Guy’s cashier son prior to the 2020 election? Only a Trump trial?
Whataboutism, for the Soviet Democrat sockpuppets and retards posting here, is when you excuse malfeasance by one person you support by pointing out where the malfeasance of somebody on the other side was given a pass. You, cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat, want to redefine what whataboutism is.
Feel free to explain how the Biden’s are getting the exact same legal treatment and accountability as Trump is getting, you cowardly Anonymous sock puppet.
Anyone with a functioning brain has known since 1/6/21 that the deep state would use the protest that day to persecute Trump and interfere with the 2024 election. The anonymous commenter above wants to argue that because we knew the deep state would exploit this opportunity to undermine actual democracy, the fact that they are now doing so is proper. That quite simply makes no logical sense.
As for the claim that Americans simply must know the outcome of the deep state’s election interference campaign, all other rules of law and due process be damned, well of course that’s what the deep state is going to say. To them it’s all about power, not the rule of law. Don’t let them gaslight you.
There is no deep state, much less a “deep state election interference campaign.”
Trump is not being persecuted.
He’s been indicted because there’s sufficient evidence that he committed crimes, and he’s getting due process.
A.N.D.
If you really think there is no deep state, you’re in a state of denial of reality and let’s just talk about sports.
I’m not interested in discussing sports with you.
Either you’re willing to have an evidence-based discussion about it or you aren’t. There is a career civil servant workforce. They are not the deep state. Why don’t you name some of the people you consider to be part of the deep state and say what makes them part of the deep state, and say what would convince you that you’re wrong.
Anonymous – You are quibbling about words. Who has been after Trump since he started his campaign for President? Answer: important people at the top of the FBI, like James Comey; important people associated with the CIA, esp. John Brennan; important people in the military, including Mark Milley and Alexander Vindman; important people in the DOJ, like AG Merrick Garland and Andrew Weissman; the White House, including Joe Biden and whoever is the real President. Floating around these government actors are powerful Democrats who permanently infest Washington DC without having any office, e.g., Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama; John Podesta. In addition to these Out-there figures, there are thousands of government employees in every department of government who are sympathetic to the Democratic Party and would do anything to defeat Trump. Then there are the politicians who spend their entire lives in government and have come to see Trump as the enemy of their perquesites and self-esteem. Then there is the entrenched MSM, which functions as part of the Democratic Party. It is fair to call this constellation of knaves “the Deep State”. If you want to suggest a different word, that does not change the fact that there is a real constellation of like-minded anti-Trump conspirators who constantly plot his destruction. Even trolls have their role to play.
I can’t take you seriously when you say things like “Joe Biden and whoever is the real President.”
And people who think Trump was a terrible President and are working against his reelection are not a “deep state” any more than the people who think Biden is a terrible President and are working against *his* reelection.
Notably, you didn’t say what would convince you that you’re wrong. Is the answer “nothing”?
The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. “What I’m describing is military rule,” says Mike Benz. “It’s the inversion of democracy.”
Many names and motives are within this video.
https://tuckercarlson.com/uncensored-the-national-security-state-the-inversion-of-democracy/
Another feckless Anonymous cowardly Soviet Democrat tried this dodge:
Oooohhhh… a Soviet Democrat engaged in Sea Lioning – instead of sock puppet gaslighting! Needs proof!
There is a career civil servant workforce. They are not the deep state. Why don’t you name some of the people you consider to be part of the deep state and say what makes them part of the deep state”
Where to start!
Every career civil servant in the FBI from Comey on down who, after telling Obama and Biden that the “Russia Dossier” the Democrats commissioned and paid for was nothing but their party’s paid for BS, then willingly went and repeatedly perjured themselves to FISA judges that it was all true, in order to get fraudulent counterespionage warrants to investigate Trump as a supposed Russian stooge. While dropping four ongoing criminal investigations of Clinton at the same time they were committing felonies to get fraudulent warrants.
Both of Obama’s career civil servants turned Obama Attorney Generals who both committed the same felonies of perjury and uttering false documents to the same FISA courts to get those counterespionage warrants to go hunting Trump.
Any of them charged with perjury or uttering false documents yet, BTW, sea lion?
Here’s an easy one: every career civil servant in the FBI, State Department, and other bureaucracies who worked to get social media to censor and prevent news media from publishing the contents of the laptop belonging to Bribery Biden’s cashier son before the 2020 election. Polling after the election found that between 10% to 17% of Democrat voters would not have voted for Biden if they’d seen those news stories… looks like the deep state that got that news media story suppressed worked.
Another easy one: every single career civil servant involved in creating and signing the fraudulent letter from intelligence agency career civil servants, claiming that the Biden laptop was just “Russian Election Disinformation”.
BTW, that would include Biden’s now Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who pushed that just before the 2020 election. And Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan – whose previous assignment was the creation and pushing the Clinton/Biden/DNC’s “Russia Dossier” before and after the 2016 election.
Are actions like that deep state: or professional, unbiased career civil servants without political animosity and designs?
Everybody in Mueller’s Dream Crime Team who also signed those perjured warrant applications like Mueller did, while at the same time uttering false documents to those FISA court judges.
Same Mueller Dream Crime Team members who obsessively looked for anything to charge anyone associated with Trump with some kind of crime, while at the same time deliberately ignoring the crimes committed by those who commissioned, wrote, paid for, and pushed the “Russia Dossier”. Weird how the best investigative professionals in the FBI and DoJ could actually investigate that document without taking a look at the specific people behind commissioning it, paying for it, hiring those who wrote it, etc!
Oh wait… how’s that go???? “Not in my pervue”.
Let’s see who they ignored while using the “Russia Dossier” to hunt Trump: Senator and then Secretary of State Clinton, proud career civil servant, who started the Russia Dossier, lying under oath to Congress that she never sent classified emails over her private servers. Given a pass on perjury, destroying subpoenaed evidence, etc – by career civil servants in the FBI and DoJ who later joined Mueller to hunt Trump using the Russia Dossier they knew she created.
Clinton and DNC party lawyer Marc Elias, who falsified records and claimed the six million dollars he money laundered to foreign nationals to pay for the creation and pushing of the Russia Dossier was supposedly “legal fees”. Mueller’s team of career civil servants, the best the FBI and Obama DoJ had to offer, investigating that “Russia Dossier” somehow or other missed those fraudulent expense claims.
Clinton, Obama, and her lawyer, who violated the law in hiring foreign nationals from England and Russia to create and push that election “Russia Dossier” and present and spread it as supposedly being verified intelligence agency product. Mueller’s team of career civil servants, the best the FBI and Obama DoJ had to offer, investigating that “Russia Dossier” somehow or other missed those election law felonies that were committed by those who hired and/or authorized the payment of those foreign nationals.
Jack Smith, career civil servant and his Democrat lawfare version of Lavarentiy Beria’s “Show me the man and I’ll find you his crimes”. First working for the Obama/Biden DoJ telling Louis Lerner she could use the excuse of investigating GOP get-out-the-vote groups to shut them down during the re-election campaign. While at the same time rewriting the law to take out the potential re-election opponent that Obama/Biden feared the most, Bob McDonnell.
AFTER Obama was re-elected against a weaker candidate, taxpayers paid out millions in punitive damages to those GOP groups for their First Amendment rights being deliberately violated by Louis Lerner and Jack Smith. And SCOTUS in a rare unanimous 9-0 decision didn’t just return McDonnell’s case to the previous court for retrial, they completely set aside Jack Smith’s indictments and convictions – while excoriating Smith for rewriting some laws and inventing new laws to indict McDonnell.
Jack Smith, proud professional career civil servant? Must be: after all, the DC bar didn’t disbarr him after the SCOTUS reversal of his fraudulent indictment of Bob McDonnell while working for Obama.
And now, after successfully eliminating the most dangerous opponent to Obama’s re-election, Smith has been back to take out Biden’s most feared opponent to re-election, Trump. And we’re supposed to believe Jack Smith’s record means he he’s not just a professional career civil servant, but he also meets the higher standards of Special Counsel requirements of a record of objectivity, impartiality, and no ties to either the DoJ or a political party.
Yeah, none of the career civil servant workforce engaged in any of this could be considered to be deep state deciding they get to use the power they have to attempt to change elections.
Once again, Soviet Democrat apparatchiks are here throwing Soviet Democrat BS in the faces of normal Americans and telling them that what they see and smell is just pixie dust.
Yep… “Please don’t believe your lying eyes”…
OldManFromKS,
Well said and spot on.
The text messages between Stzok and Page are a good example.
Anonymous – Your desperation is showing. Democrats have placed all their eggs in the Lawfare basket. Now that it seems to be failing, they are beside themselves in rage and confusion.
They aren’t failing. The NYC case (stormy daniels) will result in Trump being convicted and put in Rikers immediately.
He certainly won’t be put in Riker’s immediately. Assuming he’s convicted, he’ll remain out on bail pending an appeal.
This is your favorite wet dream.
There’s no desperation on my part, maybe you had a different Anon. in mind.
And of course the court cases won’t save us, nor was that ever the case. This lies with the electorate, not the courts.
What you mean to say is that the Obama Coup D’etat in America was perpetrated AGAINST Real President Donald J. Trump and that Obama is still pursuing it.
You mean to say that Barack “The Ineligible” is persisting in the crime of “fundamentally transforming” which constitutes insurrection and treason, right, comrade?
The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and America need absolutely no “transforming,” fundamental or otherwise; certainly not from the son of a citizen of a foreign country.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
– Barack Obama
______________
“We will stop him.”
– Peter Strzok to FBI paramour Lisa Page
___________________________________
“[Obama] wants to know everything we’re doing.”
– Lisa Page to FBI paramour Peter Strzok
___________________________________
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.”
– Peter Strzok to FBI parmour Lisa Page
_________________________________
“People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this [Trump] server.”
– Bill Priestap
___________
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious crime in American political history. The co-conspirators are:
Kevin Clinesmith, Bill Taylor, Eric Ciaramella, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Andrew Weissmann,
James Comey, Christopher Wray, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Laycock, Kadzic, Sally Yates,
James Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove,
Christopher Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper,
Azra Turk, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Gina Haspel, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power,
Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Holder, Brazile, Sessions (patsy), Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Obama,
Joe Biden, James E. Boasberg, Emmet Sullivan, Gen. Milley, George Soros, John McCain,
Marc Elias, Igor Danchenko, Fiona Hill, Charles H. Dolan, Jake Sullivan, Strobe Talbot,
Cody Shear, Victoria Nuland, Ray “Red Hat” Epps, Don Berlin, Kathy Ruemmler, Rodney Joffe,
Paul Vixie, L. Jean Camp, Andrew Whitney, Lisa O. Monaco et al.
George, you’re becoming senile and forgetting to sign your name (yes, your daily copypasta makes it clear that it’s you).
Yes Republicans have known for a long time that Trump and others could face charges – but we hoped and prayed that those of you on the left would not be that stupid.
Yes, this is election interferance.
Had you actually had a good case you would have brought it years ago.
There was no insurrection, there was no incitement,.
There was actual election fraud – both legal and illegal.
And it is prefectly legitimat to protest, assemble, petition government, and speak out against election fraud.
It is perfectly legitimate to do so if you are right.
It is also perfectly legitimate to do so if you are wrong.
Democrats should be very thankful that being right is not a condition for free speech – or you all would be in jail right now.
Billionaires can be held accountable. But they very rarely commit crimes. There is both absolutely no reason to do so.
People commit crimes to acheive what they can not do without force.
This was always one of the great stupidities of the collusion delusion nonsense.
Why exactly is it that you beleive Trump would collude with Russia to get a few really bad political adds on Facebook – when he could have just bought whatever adds he wanted directly and avoided the risk associated with colluding with a foreign power ?
The FACT is that crime rates are inversely proportionate to class for multiple reasons.
Like it or not success in a free society – as opposed to the socialist h311 holes the left seeks to create depends on TRUST.
No one is obligated to buy from you, no one is obligated to sell to you.
The free market only operates where there is trust.
As a result success is a direct measure of the extent to which people trust the person who is successful
You can not fool all the people all the time – Trust is like virginity – once you lose it it is impossible to get back.
But this is bidirectional – people succeed by earning the trust of others.
At the same time those of us who do succeed are generally better at earning the trust of others.
There are successful liars – but they are rare and that success tends to be shortlived. insurection
Further the more successful one is the more trustworthy one must be.
You rant about Trump is a liar – but we just had Deutche bank – one of the most prestigious and conservative banks in the world say they loaned Trump a fortune. They would have done so if he was worth half as much. And that he paid them back in full.
Trump made DB a great deal of money, and he made himself a great deal of money.
That is how free markets work.
Billionsaires do not face criminal prosecutions – because it is very very very rare that they committ crimes – they do not need to.
Nor do they have the character traits desparation of motivation to do so.
Trump is neither above the law nor below the law.
But if you want to charge him with a crime – make it a REAL crime – one that nearly all people will understand.
Alleging that it is a crime to rant and rave about a stolen election – when you beleive the election was not stolen is not a crime – even if you are right. It most certainly not a crime when time and time again the left, democrats, … are outed as corrupt liars willing to do anything to gain or hold power.
We have seen democrats use govenrment to spy on political opponents to hold power.
We have seen them weaponize govenrment to attempt to foist the collusion delusion hoax on us to regain power.
We have seen them corrup[t the media to regain power.
We have seen them engage in morally bankrupt but legal private censorship to regain power.
We have seen them engage in unconstitutional and illegal censorship to gain power.
Right now in GA we have one of the few left wing prosecutors loony enough to push this idiotic nonsense regarding Trump get caught not merely doing what she claims Trump did, but doing far worse than she claims Trump did. She has lied under oath and in court filings.
She has abused her office for personal gain, She has stolen govenrment funds for political gain.
And you ask us all to beleive that she and her cronies would not participate in election fraud too ?
I doubt Carrol will see 90M dollars. I doubt Engoron will see half a billion.
But it does not matter – because whether Trump is forced to pay or not, far from weakening him – your attacks have made him Stronger,
or more accurately they have made YOU smaller and weaker.
People know what bullying actually is.
Trump is an overweight out of shape 77yr old – not the superman character in the Trump memes.
At the same time – the Meme of Trump is a cage match with the left taking every single blow that the “bad guys” dish out and still standing rings true.
Trump did not create that – YOU did.
You have made a martyr out of home – and he is relishing that and will do so all the way to the WH.
\18months ago the odds of Trump getting reelected were pretty low – now it is near a sure thing.
Trump did not do that – YOU did.
Americans do not like sore losers. Had you been smart enough to let go, Trump would likely have faded into history.
Americans LOVE underdogs. YOU have transformed Trump from a sore loser into an underdog.
Even now – 2pts up in the RCP poll of polls. almost 10pts up in nearly all the swing states, Trump still looks to most people like the underdog.
You have gone after him with Kyrptonite – and he has shrugged it off.
But let me remind you again
YOU DID THIS.
“The United States cannot have a presidential election where one of the major candidates is facing a felonies in Federal Court. It’s a prescription for disaster! Especially if Trump wins another Electoral College-only victory.”
Strange you rail against the Electoral College, The Constitution, in you baseless rants agWhainst President Trump. Who at this time is more popular than Biden.
Yes. And it often takes rules of evidence under adversarial probing to bring out “the whole truth”. Voters deserve the whole truth when making their decision in November. We need a full account of Hunter Biden’s business income from foreign sources, too. Cover-ups go to Court to be blasted open. The court of public opinion has become a cesspool of deceitful infowarfare. Let the trial go forward before the election.
If Trump is found guilty, the Judge should delay sentencing until 2025, and let the voters decide Trump’s fate having been given the whole truth to weigh and consider. It’s time to trust the People, instead of entitled elites, to make the big decisions.
“It’s time to trust the people.” So, stop censoring information and voices available to them.
Edward Mahl,
But when they do it, it is to save democracy.
If anyone else does it, it is some how linked to Russia.
“We need a full account of Hunter Biden’s business income from foreign sources, too. Cover-ups go to Court to be blasted open. ”
PbinCA, don’t we also need a complete account of President Biden? Shouldn’t all the records be sent immediately to Congress? After all, the election is coming up, and the administration is withholding information that would indict President Biden. If it wouldn’t indict him or otherwise cause problems, why not release the data?
In any event, the history of abuse of power is being traced, and information regarding the family dealings in Moscow started in 2010. I suspect in a few more days, there will be more incriminating evidence of President Biden.
But you are interested in the dozens of indictments against Trump where some of the prosecutors were in the White House before indicting Trump, probably indicating Biden’s complicity. You don’t understand that so many coincidences at the same crucial time don’t occur usually. The rule of law makes the law act in the same fashion for both sides, but you seem only interested in a rule of law that favors your particular party. That is not a person who believes in our type of republic.
pbpinCA tried this schtick:
“Yes. And it often takes rules of evidence under adversarial probing to bring out “the whole truth”.
How’d that work out with Hillary Clinton’s trial after Comey found she’s perjured herself to Congress, violated Espionage Act laws, and destroyed subpoenaed evidence?
How’d that work out for Obama’s AG Eric Holder after he was referred for prosecution by Congress, long before Trump was in politics and Navarro and Bannon working for him were referred for prosecution by Congress?
How’d that work out for Obama’s two Attorney Generals, Mueller, and every FBI Director and agent who committed perjury to the DC FISA courts while at the same time uttering false documents to that court? Were they convicted after adversarial probing, or found innocent?
How’d that rules of evidence and adversarial probing turn out for Clinton, Obama, Marc Elias and every single person involved in both hiring and authorizing payment to foreign nationals from Britain and Russia to write the party’s election campaign “Russia Dossier”? Those are election law felonies… any of them convicted after a trial with those rules of evidence and adversarial probing? When did Obama go on trial for that? Clinton? Marc Elias?
Voters deserve the whole truth when making their decision in November.
I’ll state the obvious because you won’t: DC courtrooms, prosecutors, and the Biden DoJ and FBI are going to continue ensuring voters get as little truth as possible about Biden before this election. Just as they ensured that didn’t happen prior to the 2020 election.
Oh wait… “Don’t believe your lying eyes… and… BUBUBBUUUUTTTTT…. MUH TRUMP!”
Republicans have known since January of 2021 that Trump stood a very good chance of facing multiple charges for fomenting the siege
Regardless of your impressive mind reading skills, you are stuck with the facts.
Obama/Garland waited 31 months to indict.
Instead of lying about SCOTUS, did into why they waited 31 months to bring the case
OT: the Hunter Biden deposition transcript is out —
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Hunter-Biden-Transcript_Redacted.pdf
it appears the United States is slouching towards a Nazi state under Biden’s Handlers. I never thought I would see the “land of the free and the home of the brave” morph into state sponsored anti-semitism yet here we are. That Univ of California at Berkeley finances this, yet pleads incapable of Nazi-like activities, preceded by Ivy league universities, is frankly distressing, yet predictable to most of us.
Berkeley Lets Loose an Antisemitic Mob
Antisemitism took a frightening turn Monday at the University of California, Berkeley, where a pro-Palestinian mob surrounded a campus auditorium, broke a window, and harassed Jewish students trying to enter the building…..In a statement after the event, Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ and executive vice chancellor Benjamin Hermalin wrote that the incident “violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.” The letter notes that the university took precautions to add security, including campus police. They said the goal was to keep students safe and let the event go forward, but “it was not possible to do both given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”
– Wall Street Journal
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinion-berkeley-lets-loose-an-antisemitic-mob/ar-BB1j4iG5
per Wiki:
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California.
Motto Fiat lux (Latin)
Motto in English “Let there be light”
Endowment $6.9 billion (2022)
Maybe Crist is learning – we shall see.
I noted recently that the Seattle City counsel went nearly full nazi on the very people they were fawning over in 2020.
Homeless and defund the police protestors in Seattle seem to have lost their luster as the Citty counsel first threw them out of counsel chambers for disrupting them and then called the police to arrest them because as they pounded on the glass from the outside – counsel members felt Threatened.
These were the same counsel members who a few years ago were spouting the same nonsense as the protestors.
I am guessing that Seattle may have learned that the police are a necescity.
Estovir,
First, welcome back good friend!
Second, here is The Free Press view on the Berkeley incident: https://www.thefp.com/p/expel-berkeley-rioters
Thanks. The world is on fire and the evangelist in me can not ignore the blaze.
Turley Never Mentions Timetable
It would have been far better for the court to have taken up the issue back in December, when special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court. Now, two and a half months have gone by. It took the justices two weeks after Trump sought their intervention to announce that they would hear the case. Worse, they set oral argument for the week of April 22, a delay that means a decision could easily take until May or even linger until the term finishes at the end of June.
Worst of all, especially given this timetable, the justices could have allowed trial preparations to go forward while the case was briefed, argued and decided. That would have prevented Trump from accomplishing what has been his aim all along: to use the immunity claim as a ploy to delay his trial until after the election.
In any event, the bottom line is that pretrial proceedings remain frozen. And because U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has estimated the parties need 88 days to get ready for trial, that means it will take months after the justices finally rule for a trial to begin. That means a trial isn’t likely to begin until September — at the earliest. And you can bet that Trump, if that happens, will be insisting that the trial be postponed so he can be free to campaign, not confined to sitting in the federal courthouse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/29/supreme-court-trump-immunity/
………………………………….
Professor Turley presents this development as something of a formality. “Some justices just want clarity”, he writes, as though that is only reasonable.
But Turley never mentions how this development pushes back the timetable regarding Trump’s U.S. District Court trial before Judge Chutkan.
So now no one has any idea when Trump’s case might actually come to trial. This creates considerable suspense as to whether Trump will ‘ever’ be tried. That’s not clarity!
You aren’t fooling anyone. You give away that you’re a hack in just so many ways.
when special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court.
Uh, yeah, Scotus doesn’t do that. They wait for the appeals court to weigh in. Same for every state supreme court in the nation. Trying to cast this as somehow a strategic move by Scotus to delay hearing the case is patently absurd.
It took the justices two weeks after Trump sought their intervention to announce that they would hear the case. Worse, they set oral argument for the week of April 22, a delay that means . . .
Again, you’re not fooling anyone. This is an incredibly expedited schedule compared to the norm for Scotus. You’re just so full of sh-t.
In any event, the bottom line is that pretrial proceedings remain frozen. And because U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has estimated the parties need 88 days to get ready for trial, that means it will take months after the justices finally rule for a trial to begin.
Oh I can hear all those violins. Cry me a river. You and your evil cohorts are trying to use lawfare to interfere in an election. Whenever you don’t get your way and the legal system operates in the ordinary course, you just cry, and cry, and cry.
Estovir, your ‘election interference’ claim is NONSENSE!!!
Trump’s legal problems go back to January 6th. In a normal America no major party would think of nominating a candidate facing 91 felonies. Republicans were totally derelict in their duties.
Nope, election interference is EXACTLY what this despicable lawfare is all about. You can deny that but then you’re just a denier living in a fantasy world.
Another feckless police state fascist Soviet Democrat Anonymous Coward attempted this line:
“Trump’s legal problems go back to January 6th.”
It’s kind of insulting that Soviet Democrat apparatchiks think normal Americans don’t believe Trump’s legal problems don’t go eight years back to when the FBI was lying to FISA courts during the 2016 election to get fraudulent FISA spy warrants to hunt Trump.
That they think Trump can be prosecuted for the three hour January 6th riot. But not Bribery Biden or VP Skanky Ho who were cheering on the Soviet Democrats street thugs in Pantifa and Black Liars & Marxists who assaulted the White House just a few months earlier.
Where Bribery Biden and then Senator Skanky Ho didn’t say “go patriotically and peacefully protest” as Trump did, but instead Biden cheered them on publicly calling them ‘courageous American patriots’, while Skanky Ho went even further saying “they shouldn’t stop, and nor will they”. All while helping raise funds to bail out the ones who were arrested of course.
No complaints about the Soviet Democrat protesters long before January 6th that stormed in to interrupt the confirmation of SCOTUS Associate Justice Kavanaugh? Any of them end up rotting and waiting in the Washington jails the January 6th defendants have been in the last three years?
In a normal America no major party would think of nominating a candidate facing 91 felonies.
In a normal America where there was once a normal Democrat party, no party would continue supporting a president bragging on tape of how as vice president he used a quid pro quo to get a prosecutor investigating his cashier son fired. Gloating that special prosecutors and the FBI hid and ignored the felonies of that cashier son three three successive elections.
In a normal America with a normal Democrat party, there would not be continuing support for a president who had over 150 Suspicious Activity Reports filed by banks with his administration concerning money laundering from foreign adversarial nations to his family. A candidate who had news about that laptop censored and prevented from being published before an election to keep voters in the dark. A candidate who engineered a fraudulent letter stating the laptop was just “Russian reelection misinformation”.
And in America, normal parties and the now dead Democrat party wouldn’t celebrate Lavarentiy Beria style “show me the man and I’ll find you his crimes” prosecutions of their party’s most dangerous opponent. Whether that was Jack Smith first taking out Obama/Biden’s most dangerous opponent Bob McDonnell with a fraudulent prosecution, or Black brought back once again to take out Trump this time, as a supposedly ‘independent, unbiased Special Counsel with no ties to a political party or the DoJ’.
Of course, this is the very same Soviet Democrats and their online cowardly Anonymous apparatchiks that continue to support the longest serving racist in Washington DC, Joe Biden. And their neo-Nazis in Congress who support Arab terrorists who not only vow the genocide of Jews, but promise death to The Great Satin – the USA. While they’re once again empowering and monetizing the Mad Mullah’s of Iran as they continue murdering and attacking Americans.
I can’t say Democrats aren’t derelict in their duties – Democrats are extinct. What we now have is the police state fascists that are the Soviet Democrats, performing as the police state fascists, racists, and Nazis that they only took a short break from being before.
Anonymous: As usual, you find the soft underbelly of Turley’s column!
It took the SCOTUS a blistering 4 days to decide Bush v. Gore. And, Coney, Alito and Kavanaugh worked on Bush v. Gore. Thomas’s wife was not only directly involved in the insurrection, she was there when he called on his fans to “fight like hell or you’re not going to have a country anymore”. These need to recuse themselves, but won’t—another reason to distrust their jurisprudence.
“Thomas’s wife was not only directly involved in the insurrection, she was there when he called on his fans to “fight like hell or you’re not going to have a country anymore”. These need to recuse themselves, but won’t—another reason to distrust their jurisprudence.”
********************************
‘Cause every man always follows in lockstep with his wife’s (correct) beliefs. LOL. You oughta get married.
SCOTUS is not obligated to take up anything ever.
And why exactly would they have taken this issue up months ago ?
SCOTUS is not and does not ever seek to be the first word on onything.
They are the LAST word.
Personally I am surprised they did not remand the case back tot he DC court of appeals.
The DC decision affirmed every Trump argument for presidential immunity while claiming as a result of some vague and unexplicated balancing test that these argumnts did not apply to Trump.
It would have been simple for SCOTUS to remand to the SC court of appeals with direction to replace the vague balancing test with something clear as the balancing test was unconstitutionally vague.
It took two years for SCOTUS to decide the presidentially civil immunity case – why exactly would you think SCOTUS is in a hurry here ?
Your very argument that voters should knwo – blows up in your face.
You have been ranting this nonsense for 4 years – Voters already KNOW everything they need to know.
You are demanding that the judicial system RUSH so that you can just jump to a guilty verdict lead by a politically biased prosecutor, with a politically biased judge, and a trump hating jury.
People already see through that – you already LOST.
Absolutely Trump would lose 10% of his support if he were CREDIBLY convicted of a crime.
You have had 4 years to make your arguments – you have OBVIOUSLY not change the minds of voters.
Whether you like it or not – with every new poll – the jury has spoken – and they have pronounced YOU guilty – not Trump.
Yes, this is election interferance.
You claimed Comey’s investigation of Clinton was election interferance – despite the fact that Clinton was dead to rights guilty.
People have not forgotten your ranting about election itnerferance while defending one of the greatest crooks in US politics.
I get tired of those claiming Biden is the most corrupt – absolutely the Biden’s are corrupt.
But frankly they are coarse amateurs compared tot he Clinton’s or the Pelosi’s or …..
The Clintons received almost one hundred fifty million from Russian Oligarchs in one year.
But they are far better at laundering corruption right out in public through their foundation.
The Biden’s are inarguably corrupt – and honestly not very good at it.
But the only reason anyone left or right cars is becuse Joe Biden is president.
It would have been far better for the court to have taken up the issue back in December, when special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court.
Jack Smiths terrible math skills do not create an emergency for SCOTUS.
Justice will march forward. There is no magic time line.
Here is reality.
Obama set up the entire documents frame up. He was sure as the continued drip of information coming out would keep the scam (see Russia Hoax for template) in the news cycle. As it got worse and worse, Trumps popularity would erode, and he would be forced to give up his campaign.
But since the Obama and his cabal, have never admitted why Trump exists, their predictions keep failing spectacularly. The document scam, was beset with unanticipated problems because of all the “classified” documents.
With the documents scam actually increasing Trumps popularity, Obama decided they needed Trump up against a DC jury on the Jan 6 disturbance. This was always in the hopper, but the great minds of Obama never dreamed the persecutions would increase Trump popularity, and 2 million illegals entering the country and robbing Blacks of their free stuff, would be the problem it became.
But delaying the indictment left little calendar space for appeals, and here we sit.
In the back ground was a civil case base on an accusation of events that happened 30 years ago.
Plus a civil case of business fraud the does not provide for a jury, nor does the charge require any party suffered any damages or harm. Fraud as defined in civil law is not a required element.
Like an addict, you can never get over it, until you recognize why you are suffering. Obama’s cabal refuses to admit why Trump exists, so will never be able to rid themselves of him.
special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to leapfrog the federal appeals court.,
I have been lectured to, that the appellate process does important work of establishing fact and creating precedent.
Under what precedent should Smith hop over the appellate process?
As usual, the view of things through a polarized lens distorts reality and Truth.
I don’t think Trump’s argument that presidents have unlimited immunity for crimes committed in office, and it’s already settled that a president can be sued while in office (Paula Jones v Clinton).
But the Court is clearly looking to define the degree of immunity that the president does have for acts done while in office. People called Bush and Cheney “war criminals” for the invasion of Iraq (et al) and maybe they were. However , there’s no way that they would or could or should be tried for presidential actions that clearly fall under the president’s duties (commander in chief).
Trump’s lawyers argued that the president could order a seal team to assassinate political rivals, and that’s not going to fly with any court, and not SCOTUS.
Where it gets murky is suppose a president truly believes that an election was corrupted and sees it as his duty to investigate and right the wrong. I would argue that this does fall under the power of the executive branch – to execute the laws of the land.
I don’t think that it’s anything but a Rorschach test if he participated in an insurrection or just a riot, or what was going on between his ears (what he believed at the time).
I’m not a fan of the bad orange man, in the least. I don’t think lawfare is legitimate, that bills of attainder (get Trump for something…) are legitimate, and that we are in deep trouble without a legal system we can trust.
It is the Court’s duty to assure the courts (federal) are honest and impartial, and that all the courts obey the constitution.
@Publius
I think you’re over simplifying Trump’s argument.
If as POTUS the POTUS rapes a woman… there wouldn’t be immunity.
However if POTUS orders a strike on an enemy in the name of national security… then he would be immune.
You can think of other things that a President may do in the line of his job where he would need to do something requiring immunity.
“If as POTUS the POTUS rapes a woman… there wouldn’t be immunity.”
Why ?
“However if POTUS orders a strike on an enemy in the name of national security… then he would be immune.”
Why?
Or more accurately – how is this decided ?
SCOTUS is NOT answering the question – “Does Trump have immunity for fomenting an insurrection ?”
or even was their an insurection.
What they are deciding is “Is the president immune from criminal prosecution, and if so how is that immunity overcome ?”
I agree with the president would nto be immune for raping someone and might be for a national security driven assassination.
But there are an infinite variety of crimes a president could commit.
What is the process for deciding whether each allegation is immune or not, and how is that immunity overcome ?
The DC court of appeals recognized presidential immunity. It accepted as valie each fo the 3 major immunity arguments Trump made.
It then decided that determining whether an action was covered by immunity was up to the courts and the standard was a vague balancing of interests.
I think there is near zero chance SCOTUS accepts that.
I think there is zero doubt SCOTUS will – as the DC appeals court determined decided that presidential immunity exists.
The open question is how are they going to decide that it can be overcome ?
If the president “rapes” someone and claims immunity – does just any court decide ?
If he drones a terrorists – does just any court decide ?
You and I can go through a list of specific hypotheticals. But the issue here is NOT what are the crimes a president can committ.
But what is the process for deciding whether a specific allegation is covered by presidential immunity.
The first requirement is that it must be within the broad penumbra of the official powers of the president.
I am hard pressed to think how Rape would get through that gate.
But droning a suspected terrorist would.
As would enquires regarding election integrity.
Once you are inside that Penumbra – what is the process for overcoming immunity ?
If as POTUS the POTUS rapes a woman… there wouldn’t be immunity.
What if the only evidence of Rape is the two being alone for 1 hour and the accusation with no corroborating evidence, is made 12 months after the fact?
Your hypothetical argues from the preferred conclusion.
Under my circumstance, immunity is required for a functioning govt.
My issue, however, is that the Supreme Court rewrote the question presented by Trump in his application for a stay, which SCOTUS treated as a cert petition.
Trump’s questions were:
I. Whether the doctrine of absolute presidential immunity includes immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s official acts, i.e., those performed within the “‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.” Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 756 (1982) (quoting Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 575 (1959)).
II. Whether the Impeachment Judgment Clause, U.S. CONST. art. I, § 3, cl. 7, and principles of double jeopardy foreclose the criminal prosecution of a President who has been impeached and acquitted by the U.S. Senate for the same and/or closely related conduct that underlies the criminal charges.
The Court limited its grant of certiorari to the following:
“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
Crucially, the Court framed the issue in terms of “presidential immunity,” not “absolute immunity” as Trump had argued. This point is key – Trump never asked the Court to answer the question you pose above, namely the degree of presidential immunity that the president has for official acts; rather, he frames it in the context of ABSOLUTE immunity.
Plenty of vitally important certs have been denied for more minimal drafting issues.
How is “presidential immunity” different in substance from “absolute immunity” for things done as President that fall within the scope of his job? Aren’t those two different names for the same thing? I mean, immunity is immunity, no? If not, please explain some circumstance in which the difference between those two terms would lead to a different outcome.
This change in term is significant because it signals their willingness to entertain some form of QUALIFIED immunity rather than the requested ABSOLUTE immunity. The Court may be qualifying immunity to a subset of official acts (i.e., not every official presidential act in office gets immunity from prosecution after office).
This is bolstered by another move they made. They asked “whether” and “to what extent” a former President has immunity.
Trump essentially asked for a blank check in office. But, SCOTUS is open to debating a completely different question, namely whether something less than a blank check is appropriate.
For clarity, this is not a substantive issue but a procedural one. SCOTUS does not and should not have such unfettered discretion to craft the question presented. As previous Supreme Court cases have held, “by and large it is the petitioner himself who controls the scope of the question presented.” Yee v. City of Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, 535 (1992).
I find the “to what extent” phrase more meaningful as a distinction from the question Trump framed than the difference between presidential and absolute immunity. To me the term presidential does not suggest some of his official actions may fall outside the scope of the immunity. But you do have a valid point with “to what extent”
As for SCOTUS reframing the question, I don’t see why that’s problematic. They get to decide which legal issues they will resolve. Escondito didn’t say the Petitioner always makes that decision. There are any number of reasons the court might find it appropriate to rephrase the issue, including for sake of clarity.
This violates Rule 14.1(a), “[o]nly the questions set forth in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court.”
Rule 14.1(a) provides the respondent with notice of the grounds upon which the petitioner is seeking certiorari, and enables the respondent to sharpen the arguments as to why certiorari should not be granted.
Were the Court routinely to consider questions beyond those raised in the petition, the respondent would lack any opportunity in advance of litigation on the merits to argue that such questions are not worthy of review. Where, as is not unusual, the decision below involves issues on which the petitioner does not seek certiorari, the respondent would face the formidable task of opposing certiorari on every issue the Court might conceivably find present in the case. By forcing the petitioner to choose his questions at the outset, Rule 14.1(a) relieves the respondent of the expense of unnecessary litigation on the merits and the burden of opposing certiorari on unpresented questions.
This is all in Escondido, which is binding Supreme Court precedent. Every law student learns this in their first year. It is a basic rule of Supreme Court procedure.
And the question that SCOTUS has granted cert on is “fairly included therin”.
I would further note this case is highly unusual. Though in this case it is private Citizen Trump bringing the case.
The case is fundimentally one of presidential power – not individual rights.
You’re making a difficult argument – that you understand Rule 14.1(a) better than all nine Justices (there were no dissents on the order). The Court made the rule, and so the Court gets decide how to follow its rule . . . unlike with interpreting a statute in a merits decision, where they’re dealing with the work-product of a different branch of government. With that background, like John Say, I view the reframing of the issue as falling with the phrase “fairly included therein.”
Separately, all the fairness concerns you mention, while valid, are not nearly as pronounced in the cert-grant context as in the appeal-disposition context. The reason is that the Court states the issue to be resolved, and both parties get to brief that issue. A grant of cert is not a merits disposition, and so any perceived fairness concerns are less pronounced.
Trump only sort of asked for a Blank Check. Trump’s primary argument is that the means of overcoming presidential immunity is impeachment and removal.
It is entirely possible SCOTUS will accept that argument. It is the cleanest and easiest and most easily defended as constitutional decision. Any other decision atleast appears to conflict with alot of text in the constitution regarding impeachment.
I suspect if this case had come before SCOTUS 4 decades ago, SCOTUS MIGHT have been willing to rule that after a president has left office that the courts were free to decide whether presidential immunity applied.
But the first impeachment of Trump made it clear that ordinary process alone was not sufficient.
Lets be clear – Democrats in congress made clear with Faux impeachment I that they did not trust ordinary processes to thwart allegedly political investigations and prosecutions.
Given that democrats are now doing on steriods what the Claimed Trump was not even allowed to think about doing.
SCOTUS is likely to agree with Congress – the criminal prosecution of an ex-president requires overcoming a more significant gate than finding a judge in one of thousands of jurisdictions in the US willing to reject immunity claims.
I think you are making way too big a deal of the differneces between the question that SCOTUS asked to be briefed and what Trump petitioned.
I do not think that SCOTUS cares whether criminal immunity of presidents is labeled absolute immunity or presidential immunity.
Trump did not argue that the immunity was absolute in any way except name. Regardless the term absolute in this context means it is different from qualified immunity – which is official immunity for actually violating the civil rights of others, where the specific violation you committed has not occured within this jurisdiction before.
Absolute immunity is immunity that is not conditioned on prior specific cases of abuse of power by others.
Inarguably presidential absolute immunity can be overcome by impeachment and removal.
The question before the courts is whether it can be overcome by LESS than impeachment and removal.
This is a case of first impression. Though there is nothing Trump has done that is unusual.
The criminal prosecution for it is unusual.
With great sympathy for sexual preditor Bill Clinton’s many victims, the Jones case was decided wrongly and I beleive SCOTUS has subsequently reversed.
Trump’s lawyers did not argue that Seal Team 6 could assassinate political rivals – that was a hypothetical posed by one of the DC judges.
Regardless, the answer is that the president WOULD have immunity for such actions – Obama correctly claimed immunity for something very similar – droning a US citizen in the US, and he actually droned a US citizen in Yemen.
The FBI can not assassinate a terrorist in the US or elsewhere on their own. The execution of someone by US forces – especially the execution of a US Citizen by US forces REQUIRES the authorization of the president -because it is a crime.
The answer to the seal team 6 hypothetical is that Yes, the president can do that.
And the president would be immune from prosecution until and unless the house impeaches and the senate removes them from office.
After which they can be prosecuted.
Further it OBVIOUSLY has to be that way. All the hypotheticals discussed make assumptions – that the political rival is not also a terrorist about to nuke the country.
The difference between hypotheticals and reality is the purpose of impeachment by the house and removal by the senate.
Does anyone beleive that absent some very serious threat that everyone from the Commander of ST6 through the chairman of JCS would refuse to follow such an order absent something more than removing a political rival ?
Does anyone doubt that Biden would be impeached and removed immediately if he ordered seal team 6 to assassinate Trump if ST6 actually went forward with the order ?
At the same time does anyone beleive that the president would be impeached for ordering ST6 to take out a political rival who was demonstrably engaged in an act of terrorism that could not be stopped any other way ?
In the real world we do not get ST6 hypotheticals.
We get a president exercising constitutional powers to oversee federal elections, while at the same time unarguably benefiting personally from his own over site.
And we get a DOJ/FBI both during his term and after hell bent on breaking every possible law to Get Trump.
I would bet heavily that the Supreme courts resolution is NOT going to be – yea proscutors can do whatever they can venue shop a judge into allowing after the president has left office.
And that is the core that SCOTUS must resolve. They are not going to give Trump absolute immunity under all circumstances – and that is not what he is asking for.
But it is highly likely they will put some barrrier between zealous prosecutors of the opposing political party and weaponizing the government.
My bet would be they will require impeachment and removal. That is atleast arguably what the constitution suggests.
Elections are run by states, and the duty to investigate election irregularities belongs to law enforcement—not the President. And Trump didn’t even try to conduct anything resembling an investigation of fraud—he flatly announced that his “victory” was stolen by fraud. And it’s abundantly clear that Trump knew he didn’t win and he knew there has never been any evidence that there was widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome. There’s nothing “murky “ about that fact—as the votes were coming in and Biden’s victory became apparent, it was Giuliani’s idea to claim he won anyway, which he did at about 2:00 a.m., long before all of the votes had been counted, much less certified. But he was definitely behind when he took that victory lap, and knew he had been defeated. And he did everything possible to try to turn the lie that he won into reality, including touring the country to stir up his fans to come to Washington to” fight” for him.
“Elections are run by states”
False.
Both congress and state legislatures have constitutional authority regarding elections – read the actual text of the constitution.
One of the fundimental weaknesses of the Moore ISL case is that – regardless of what Congress or a state legislature pass as law, the executive – governor and president must enforce that law.
Pelosi recently passed a new presidential election act – are you saying that is unconstitutional ?
If not – how are the provisions of that act enforced ? By Gnomes ?
The enforcement of laws is done by the executive. The enforcement of federal election laws is by the president.
Are you saying that only the state can enforce the Voting Rights Act ?
Are you saying that only the state can enforce the 2001 Helping Americans Vote Act ?
There is myriads of federal election laws – all election records must be retained for 2 years – by federal election law.
All voting machines must be certified by the NBS – by federal election law.
There are lots and lots of federal election laws, and the enforcement of all federal laws is a power of the president of the united states.
This is a stupid argument even for you.
“Trump didn’t even try to conduct anything resembling an investigation of fraud”
You do not get to decide that, or more accurately if you wish to challenge the way a president excercises his constitutional powers, you do that through congressional oversite and through impeachment – which si precisely Trump’s claim.
“He flatly announced that his “victory” was stolen by fraud.”
He did, as have many many many democrats in the past.
“And it’s abundantly clear that Trump knew he didn’t win”
Because you are a mind reader ?
If that is the crux of your case – you have lost.
Many many many people have said that Trump has never waivered in claiming that 2020 was stolen.
“he knew there has never been any evidence that there was widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome.”
Wow, so many qualifiers ? How widespread do you need ?
Prior to 2020 there has never been a mailin election in which 5-6% of ballots did not get rejected for violations of election laws.
In 2020 with 20 times more people voting by mail than ever before the rejection rate dropped to 0.2%.
No laws changed. Almost all mailin voters were first time mailin voters – the most likely to make mistakes.
Whether you like it or not it is self evidence that the election laws that had not changed were not being followed.
When there is a factor of 30 improvement in the rejection rate – without any reason, under circumstances in which the opposite would be expected to occur – that alone is evidence of fraud.
Trump was aable to get Raffensberger to conduct a random audit of Cobb County mailin ballots.
5000 mailin ballots were examined. 300 were found to have failed the states signature matching law – that is 6% – the same as the national average for locations that had mailin voting prior to 2020. Further 30 were found to be outright fraud – that is 0.6%. Trump lost georgia by 0.25%.
Now this was a single random audit. It was a small sample size, and it was conducted in an afluent democratic county – not the poor democratic county were the real allegations of fraud were.
This was the only mailin ballot signature audit conducted in GA.
It is the only evidence that exists regarding the extent of mailin ballot acceptance/rejection and fraud.
You are free to beleive it is wrong – but Raffensberger and Democrats REFUSED to conduct further audits – so it would be YOU not Trump who is lacking evidence.
Trump Begged, cajoled and Threatened Raffensberger to try to get him to conduct further random mailin ballot audits.
Trump particularly wanted on of Fulton county – none was ever done.
I would further note the problem with mailin ballot rejections was well known by BOTH parties prior to the election – in fact for many years prior to the election. It is one of the reasons that several blue states opted for ONLY mailin voting.
Because while Mailin voting may increase voter participation – mailin ballots have a much higher rejection rate than those cast in person.
The reasons should be obvious – if you cast a ballot in person, you have the oportuntiy to correct any problems right at the poll.
If I show up at a polling place without ID – I can vote provisionally – coming back later with ID, or I can drivge home get my ID and try again.
If I screw up my ballot and it will not scan – I can request a new one.
Any mistakes made on a ballot are supposed to result in a void ballot. In person those can be corrected.
By mail they can not.
Democrats knew they had a problem in 2020 when a judge in NEwark NJ through out 250,000 mailin ballots for fraud in the May 2020 democratic primary. It was highly unlikely that the increase in voter participation from mailin voting would exceed the increased rejection rate from mailin voting. And it was clear – and remains that way even today – that Republicans are for the most part voting at the polls,
and democrats are for the most part voting by mail. In a hybrid election – with democrats voting by mail and republicans voting in person
the rejection rate of mailin ballots would give republicans a 6pt advantage.
This is why democrats spent the summer of 2020 engaged in election lawfare – challenging ballot signature requirements for mailin and absentee ballots that had been in place for decades.
That too is a form of Fraud.
” There’s nothing “murky “ about that fact—as the votes were coming in and Biden’s victory became apparent”
Actually there is a great deal of murk. It has been well known in US politics for almost two centuries that regardless of how people vote that fraud is most common in the ballots that arrive late. Democrats in PA have claimed election fraud in the boonies for decades – because in normal in person elections the red counties in PA usually come in very late on election night.
George Bush beat Dukakis in PA with votes coming in after midnight in PA. The only reason there were not screams of election fraud – is because Dukakis was Trounced – 426 to 111 and flipping PA would have made no difference.
Trump was winning in PA for DAYS after the polls closed in 2020. We KNOW that votes cast AFTER the polls closed were counted in PA – the Trump campaign had to go to court to stop Phildelphia election officials from counting mailin ballots that were postmarked AFTER the election. That is FRAUD.
Anytime you see an election going heavily one way at the start and then flip in the we hours of the night or days later – you should suspect Fraud.
“it was Giuliani’s idea to claim he won anyway, which he did at about 2:00 a.m.”
Trump was ahead at 2am. He did not actually lose until days after the election.
I can not think of any election before EVER where the candidate that was winning (heavily) at midnight had lost later.
” long before all of the votes had been counted”
Again prior to 2020 – “all the votes are counted” by midnight on election night.
It is ALWAYS suspicicious – and indication for fraud when votes are still being counted days later.
“But he was definitely behind when he took that victory lap, and knew he had been defeated.”
Alternate history. Most of us went to bed Thinking Trump had won.
Even the next day that appeared to be be case.
Whether you like it or not the actual timeline of the election – the late counting, the fact that the election was flipped in 6 states by ballot counting operations in 6 cities – where millions of ballots were being counted – mostly without oversite into the wee hours of the night and in many instances going on for days -= until finally enough Biden votes were “Found” to flip the election.
That specific process should NEVER be allowed to happen – that undermines trust in the elections.
You say Trump knew there was not widescale fraud – how did he know that ?
It is not possible to entirely prohibit election fraud. But it is possible to reduce it, and it is possible to make widespread fraud impossible.
One simple measure is to have small precincts and to NEVER allow ballots to leave the precinct.
In a precinct with 15,000 votes, a bit more than 100 fraudulent ballots is the most that election officials can get away with, without getting caught.
In an operation counting 2,000,000 ballots – 200,000 fraudulent ballots is easy. merely transporting ballots introduces the means to inject additional ballots into the election. Even today – Philadelphia has 200K more ballots in 2020 than they recorded voters.
That should never be allowed to occur.
Further if 200 instances of fraud are found in a precint with 15000 ballots – the courts could decide to reject the counts from that precinct if the fraudulent ballots can not be isolated – and fraudulaent ballots can not be distinguished from legitimate ballots once they are in the ballot boxes. No judge anywhere is going to throw out 2M votes from Philadephia even if it is proven that it is likely that 200,000 of them are fraudulent.
Most of the rest of the world does not conduct elections the way the US did in 2020 and since.
The left loves their European countries. In france voting is on paper ballots counted by hand cast only on election day at the polls.
and the counting of 80M ballots is completed – in each precinct by midnight on election day.
It is extremely rare that the french do something right when the US gets it wrong.
This is one of those.
I would further note – every single democratic wish for voting is a means to increase fraud error and problems.
While there was a mess in 2020 – 2022 in AZ and NV was an embarrassing mess.
Why ? AZ decided to impliment at precinct ballot printers in maricopa county – this is a really stupid idea for numberous reasons.
You do not ever want ballots printed by laser printers at the precinct – that is like believing that you can have money printed on a xerox and not have conterfeiting. Ballots must be printed by the state much the way currency is printed. Because we already know that the value of a ballot is about $300.
But beyond this stupidity printing ballots rather than using preprinted ballots – means that anything goes wrong – and it did big time, and many people will be unable to vote.
The next problem you had in NV and AZ is because both states had Mailin voting and absentee voting and early voting and in person voting on election day. that required counting all ballots in reverse order. Why ? Because if someone were to vote – deliberately or accidentally more than once – and in AZ in 2020 13500 people cast almost 50,000 ballots. the only way to cope with duplicates is to only count the last received ballot, That means not only do you have to process ballots in reverse, but you must verify for EVERY ballot that you count that that person did not already have a ballot counted. This is a disasterously messy and time consuming process – one that was not implimented in 2020 for the most part.
You will have this problem anytime you have more than one way to vote OR anytime you have voting at anytime other than election day.
“[T]he duty to investigate election irregularities belongs to law enforcement—*not the President*.” (Emphasis added)
Last I checked, the AG and national law enforcement are part of the Executive Branch — you know, that Branch headed by *the president*.
Then, of course, there’s that thing called the Constitution: “[The president] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.” (A2, S3)
the duty to investigate election irregularities belongs to law enforcement—not the President.
The power to investigate is the “jurisdiction” of law enforcement. The President of the United States is the nations Chief Law Enforcement Officer.
The Constitution enumerates power to Congress to make law concerning elections
The rest is just stupid spewing of ignorance
Good analysis here of Rachal Maddow’s Shallow Argument:
Ford pardoned Nixon to put everything to rest and to move forward. Maddow, never mind being outrageously biased, isn’t old enough to remember why and so just pulls crap out of thin to make shallow, incompetent arguments.
And, as Viva points out, Ford was like “I don’t know if he can be prosecuted or not.” That is hardly the stuff of legal PRECEDENT. And Maddow knows it. Like he says, and others, her $24 million per year is to buy her opinion.
And the MSNBC channel itself -do you remember George Wallace? He started out as a race-baiter, but I swear that a hundred of him could never hold a candle to Joy Reid. What kind of channel gives a program to an out-and-out race-baiter like her???
@Floyd
They do not realize they are out and out race baiters. Brains the size of sweat glands. Do not underestimate this, it is going to be a bog, big problem going forward. We are on the verge of being subsumed by generations that honestly think you sharing reasoned, historical facts makes you a fascist, and eventually, they will populate ALL professions, including law firms and benches.
*big
Bog is apropos, too.
Do they ever! I do not remember George Wallace ever saying anything directly “racist.” He believed in segregation, for sure, but heck so do a lot of blacks today. I went to look up some of his quotes to make sure – found this:
“I don’t hate blacks. The day I said ‘segregation forever,’ I never said a thing that would upset a black person unless it was segregation. I never made fun of ‘em about inequality and all that kind of stuff. But my vehemence was against the federal government folks. I didn’t make people get mad against black people. I made ‘em get mad against the courts.”
More here:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/wallace-quotes/
as far as Joy Reid,
And this, which shows the calculating nature of her rants. I guess Joy Reid’s opinion can be bought, just like Rachel Maddow’s.
Rachel Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar, WROTE A BOOK ABOUT IT. Didn’t NewsMax or Fox mention this inconvenient fact?
Bill Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, had a pizza delivery girl blowing him on a regular basis in the Oval Office, and then lying about it.
corey booker is a (cecil) Rhodes scholar, so what?
@Gigi
That you cite ‘Rhodes Scholar’ in the 21st century is self-explanatory. But you go, Gigi girl. If you had an original thought your head would explode and we’d be ickily picking up the pieces. Definitely one that left to their own devices, deprived of their overlords, would start eating toilet paper just to have something in their tummy. Stop wasting our time, and spare your gastrointestinal system. 🙄
Wow! Now THAT’S an intelligent response to the points I raised. In point of fact, it proves that you don’t have a substantive response, so you try to insult me instead.
Isn’t it also true that trying to strengthen your point by referring to someone else as a Rhodes scholar is just avoiding the substance of the discussion? It’s a form of ad hominem.
Exactly! Like Addison Verecundiam said!
My comment was in response to the statement that Maddow doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She WROTE a book about Nixon and his crimes. AND , to boot, she is a Rhodes scholar, something the liars on pro-Trump media can’t claim—nor, for that matter, Turley.
” … she is a Rhodes scholar, something the liars on pro-Trump media can’t claim ….”
***************************
And Stalin was a divinity student. What’s your point?
“She WROTE a book about Nixon and his crimes.”
No, she did not. She wrote a book about *Agnew* and his crimes. The Left can’t even get straight the CV of their own darlings.
Incidentally, the title of that book is _Bag Man_. Perhaps there will be a sequel: _Joe Biden and His Son: The Bag Man_.
Do you know who the Rhodes Scholarships are name after??? Dusty Rhodes, a professional wrestler, for heaven’s sakes! What an ignoramus you are! No wonder you wrestle with facts!
Floyd — No, oh ignorant one.
But that was amusing. 🙂
Gigi, apprentice Soviet Democrat apparatchik, channeling Lyin’ Like A Proud Biden, attempted this:
“Rachel Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar, WROTE A BOOK ABOUT IT. Didn’t NewsMax or Fox mention this inconvenient fact?”
Oh look! Another ‘BBBUBUBUUUUTTTT…. MUH FOX!’ desperate diversion.
Question, Gigi: Did or did not CNN and MSNBS order you not to mention that a few years ago a trial judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against Rachael Mad Cow and MSNBC? And why that California judge let Mad Cow and MSNBC off the hook?
Dismissing the case because the judge ruled that her Soviet Democrat viewers (like Birthing Person Gigi) were supposedly smart enough to know she was lying her skinny Alphabet Sex ass off when she told those viewers a competitor network was a Putin funded Russian disinformation campaign that was part of Putin and Trump conspiring to steal the election.
Any reason why this Soviet Democrat birthing person, Gigi didn’t mention that other network information concerning MSNBS and Rachael Mad Cow’s pathological serial lying continuing on that network? Only mention Fox and NewsMax?
Let’s try this, is there a rational explanation of why an honest Rhodes Scholar like Rachael Mad Cow (or that other Rhodes Scholar and serial liar, Bill Blowjob Clinton) could be such an intellectual and still be pushing the Clinton/Obama/Biden/DNC “Russia Dossier” not just for four years – but still pushing it to this day, despite the findings of the Mueller Cartel, House and Senate committees who determined it was a Soviet Democrat fabrication, etc?
Absent a rational explanation, normal Americans would conclude that Rachael Mad Cow is a pathological serial liar no different than The Big Guy, Bribery Biden both before and since he went to the White House.
Other fun Democrat Rhodes Scholar similarities: Bill Blowjob Clinton got a pass for committing perjury to a judge with only a civil penalty instead of a felony charge. Rachael Mad Cow got a pass by the judge claiming that Soviet Democrat viewers like Gigi were allegedly smart enough to know The Mad Cow is a serial pathological liar and wouldn’t take her seriously.
And yet… Gigi apparently does believe The Mad Cow, despite the judge claiming she’s smart enough to know The Mad Cow is lying.
“Rachel Maddow, a Rhodes Scholar, WROTE A BOOK ABOUT IT.”
Really? She wrote a book about *Nixon*?
Perhaps you have inside access to her unpublished manuscripts.
Natasha,
Lots of Rhodes Scholars are idiots.
Maddow proves it whenever she opens her mouth.
There can be no pardon unless a crime has been committed. If there is immunity, then there would be no crime to pardon Nixon for. Ford’s pardon of Nixon presupposes that Nixon committed a crime. And pardoning Nixon was a mistake because after he skunked off to his home and licked his wounds for awhile, he began feeling sorry for himself started claiming he was a victim, forgetting that Barry Goldwater told him he would have been removed from office because the votes were there—so he should spare the country from having to be the first president forced from office.
The maddow argument is garbage.
It is not necescary for a person to be guilty to be pardoned.
It is not necescary for their to be a crime to be pardoned.
it is not necescary for their to be a prosecution to be pardoned.
It is not necescary for the person to request or accept the pardon – the pardon is still effective.
Ford’s pardon accomplished exactly what he intended, and it was the best presidential act of Gerald Ford.
It ended the national nightmare of WaterGate.
I expect that whatever the outcome of 2024 that whoever is the next president, they are going to issue sweeping pardons.
Both republicans and democrats should be clear – the efforts to investigate Biden by the house – though prerfectly legitimate are also purely political Biden is unlikely to be impeached and even less likely to be removed. But it is likelyt hat his corruption will cost him votes – and that is as it should be.
The efforts to prosecute Trump are also purely to influence the election – Democrats ARE free to use allegations against Trump to win the election. They are free to conduct investigations in the house or senate. But because they do not control the house they can not conduct impeachment investigations. What they are NOT free to do is to weaponize DOJ to convert political efforts to persuade voters into criminal prosecutions.
“A SITTING PRESIDENT IS CONSTITUTIONALLY IMMUNE FROM INDICTMENT AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The president, in a position of high office, is subject to prosecution related to all crimes by constitutional impeachment and conviction.
The fact that state and local prosecutions are unnecessary constitutes effective immunity.
The president would be precluded from official duties by overwhelming numbers of state and local prosecutions.
State and local prosecution would nullify and void the office of president and constitute political, not jurisprudential, acts.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Department of Justice
Office of Legal Counsel
October 16, 2000
“A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution”
In 1973, the Department of Justice concluded that the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unduly interfere with the ability of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned duties, and would thus violate the constitutional separation of powers. No court has addressed this question directly, but the judicial precedents that bear on the
continuing validity of our constitutional analysis are consistent with both the analytic approach taken and the conclusions reached. Our view remains that a sitting President is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.
RANDOLPH D. MOSS
Assistant Attorney General
Office o f Legal Counsel
I am never going to understand terminal TDS on the part of the populace, but it makes perfect sense in the rarified halls; Trump is someone that can hold his own with them financially, hence their doing everything they can to bankrupt him. This is not my country anymore, and thank the Gods Musk has more money than, well, the Gods. Only the dems would call the granting of what they were actually asking for, being nimrods fueled by their own brains’ snap reactions rather than reason, for ‘insurrection’. These people are clowns. ALL of them, and they have made their own words meaningless with their whining and droning.
It’s not just that Trump can hold his own financially. It’s that Trump is an alpha male who gets things done – and he’s not afraid to tussle with people verbally. He doesn’t hold back for sake of politeness; he says exactly what he thinks and calls people names.
The media and much of the Democrat party is made up of effete liberal snobs. The males among them are weak beta males, who are physically and psychologically threatened by alpha males like Trump. Trump makes them pee their pants with fright. So when they go on the air, since Trump is not present and they have the shield of distance, they insult him by projecting their own vanity and moral rot onto him.
@oldmanfromkansas
Yup. Perfectly summed up. Nothing terrifies a modern leftist like actual masculinity, male or female.
What should terrify you is the complete implosion of the post-Cold War world order
Without NATO, the biggest benefactors of a disjointed West are the axis of evil (as Dubya would put it).
^^ Paid mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex. He gets rich by stealing from our grandchildren, sending thousands of unwilling conscripts to their death, and risking nuclear Armageddon. He seeks to snooker the people with facile and ignorant comparisons to World War II, which is his only historical reference point, as if nothing ever happened in history other than that one war.
Geopolitical facts matter. Your oldies not.
Those facts are that Russia is a failing state. That the US need to be more concerned with what we are going to do about Russias 6000 nukes as it slowly comes apart – not how to stop Russia from advancing in ukraine/
Russia was a failing state. Joe Biden’s sanctions, and the consequences of those sanctions, have revived Russia while weakening America. Russia is now in a much closer alliance with China and has ready markets for its exports including energy. It is also teaming up with other nations to form an alternative to the dollar as a global reserve currency. With yearly $2T deficits, combined with a national debt approaching $35T, putting our debt-to-GDP ratio at 125%, it is only a matter of time before the dollar bubble bursts and then America will be a failed state, or at best a regional power, but not a global one anymore. Perhaps that was all inevitable anyway, but the Joe Biden administration’s inept response to the Ukraine situation has sped it up.
What did he get done during his administration? Let’s see. He blew up the debt bc of a YUGE tax cut for the wealthy, combined with a YUGE tax cut for corporations. Neither tax cut was balanced with spending cuts.
Oh, he embarrassed this country, a country I served for 25 years while on active duty in the USN, before the UN-everyone laughed at him.
He belongs in a federal prison for 20-24 years.
The world was a lot safer when he was Potus. Right now it is on the brink of WWIII and a nuclear Armageddon. Russia, North Korea, China and Iran now feel free to act aggressively. “Joe Biden’s” deficits are $2 trillion per year, every year, but evidently you have no issue with that . . . gee I wonder why.
Far from embarrassing this country, he removed the embarrassment of Obama and prevented the Clinton Crime Syndicate from re-occupying the White House . . . European allies suddenly started paying their share, which they never did before. They didn’t do that out of the kindness of their hearts. Many Arab countries followed his leadership to enter into normalized relations with Israel. That wasn’t due to any supposed “embarrassment” of this country. You seem to live in opposite world.
Federal REvenues went up after the Trump tax cuts, and as we have seen in the past cutting taxes at the upper margins actually raises revnue and boosts the economy.
The Debt did not blow up under Trump or because of the tax cuts.
The debt blew up as a result of our response to Covid – AND the resulting inflation.
Corporations should not pay taxes – corporate taxes are just double taxation of consumers.
Contra those on the left – we have no tax problem – S taxes remain too high.
We are still above the revene optimizing maximum. Worse we are far above the growth optimizing maximum.
We have a spending problem PERIOD.
Absoltely Trump did very little to reign in spending.
Republicans shoudl have their feet held to the fire – governmetn spending MUST be cut ALOT.
No Republicans are not going to do that. They are lying.
But democrats do not recognize there is such at thing as too much spending.
Trump was inarguably excellent at foreign policy – surprisingly so.
If you are embarrassed by success – that is your business.
Very little of Trump’s foreign policy was new – Alot of it was just Obama’s but accelerated – or at-least what Obama promised (and before him Bush).
No nation building,
get the US out of wars,
don’t start new ones.
Strike peace deals where possible.
Contain China.
Move towards Europe taking more responsibility for its own interests – Europe and the mideast.
This is not embarrassing.
Alot of it is what Obama said. Some of it is what Bush said.
The difference is that Trump did it.
I want alot more of Trump’s foreign policy.
Trump is likely the most effective foreign policy president since Nixon – frankly he accomlished more than Nixon, and Carter combined.
Wally, the YUGE apprentice Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot posted this version of the commie war cry: The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share!
“He blew up the debt bc of a YUGE tax cut for the wealthy.”
It’s a YUGE Soviet Democrat lie to claim that the wealthy got the greatest tax cut – the opposite is true. I don’t say so: the Treasury government website says so.
Oh, he embarrassed this country, a country I served for 25 years while on active duty in the USN, before the UN
Wally served before the UN – but was still serving when Trump was president? Hmmmm… all of it sounds like another YUGE Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot lie.
A lie attempted under the guise of the logical fallacy Appeal To Personal Authority.
If you’re going to attempt feeble Appeals To Authority by pimping out your 25 years in active duty in the Navy, I’ll top that with my 30 years in the Army. You lose by the very fallacious rules you demand we accept as you attempt to heighten your persuasiveness, sucker. Kneel before me and my greater years of active service, you cretin.
Using your rules, my 30 years with boots on the ground on the two way rifle range beats your 25 years as an undisciplined civilian in the Navy where you were sleeping in a bed and eating in a cafeteria every day.
Now that I’ve mocked your supposed superiority you attempted to claim based on years of military service sufficiently, here’s what’s more relevant to your patent dishonesty and serial lying:
I don’t recall anyone I served with during Trump’s years in office supposedly laughing at Trump as he backed down the ChiComs who had bought Biden.
Don’t recall anyone in the military laughing at Trump as he backed down Iran’s Mad Mullahs who Obama and Biden had enriched and empowered before Trump.
Don’t recall anyone in the military laughing at Trump as he backed down Putin, backed down the Middle East terrorists, and of course backed down the DPRK.
What’s incredible is that Wally isn’t full of embarrassment, shame and remorse for voting for Obama/Biden despite the fact they abandoned Americans to die in Benghazi prior during their reelection campaign. And then lied to Americans that it wasn’t the hajji terrorists they were funding who carried out a terrorist attack – they claimed it was just a protest against an offensive video that got out of hand.
Wally had no embarrassment about those SEALS and diplomatic staff being murdered by terrorists while Obama/Biden refused to allow a rescue mission and then lied about it – he voted for Obama/Biden again.
What’s incredible is that Wally still isn’t full of embarrassment, shame and remorse for voting for Biden after Bribery Biden abandoned thousand of Americans and allies in Afghanistan to the hajji terrorists. All in the hope that it might be a photo op for him on the anniversary of 9/11. Instead of it becoming Bribery Biden, Quartermaster In Chief To Hajji Terrorists.
What’s incredible is that Wally isn’t full of embarrassment, shame and remorse for voting for Bribery Biden after all those troops died in Kabul, where snipers were ordered to stand down instead of take the suicide bomber out. Or embarrassed after Bribery Biden used a drone to murder an Afghan family with children afterwards, hoping it would make him look good after those troops were killed by that SIED. Or embarrassed about Bribery Biden then lying that none of his generals told him he needed to leave a maintenance force in Afghanistan when he left.
And finally, what’s incredible is that Wally isn’t embarrassed that Bribery Biden has changed the military from a fighting force to one instead whose primary goals are Diversity, Equity (NOT equality), and Inclusion.
Wally is a psychopath in that he feels no embarrassment or shame for supporting and pimping for Biden in all of this, and so he’s eager to vote for Bribery Biden again.
Despite the fact Bribery Biden should have been serving a life sentence for treason and accepting bribes long before Trump ever entered politics.
Thank God I didn’t serve in the Navy and don’t have to deal with the embarrassment of a Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot like Wally parading around his 25 years of Navy service and saying it’s Trump that embarrassed him during his military service – not Obama before Trump, or Biden afterwards.
You do understand that the Cold war is over. The USSR lost and collapsed.
You can rant about the “axis of evil” – but it is pretty clear that no nation except China is more than a regional threat.
Does Europe aneed to stand up to Putin – Absolutely.
Should the US provide resources to do so ? Yes, but the actual propblem of Russia is a regional european problem – not a problem involving US interests, not even a global problem.
NATO is important to preserving order in Europe – but the US dominance of NATO is not.
European nations including Poland have announced they will not provide Troops to Ukraine.
Europe has decided that the threat to Ukraine possed by Russia is not sufficient to provide more than weapons.
If the Europeans do not feel threatened – The US needs not overrule them.
This is their domain. We are evolving a new post post cold war order.
In that order Europe is an ally not a vasal of the US. Issues in Europe are EUROPEAN issues – not in the US vital interests.
Therefor the Europeans should decide them.
John Say posted: Issues in Europe are EUROPEAN issues – not in the US vital interests.
The opposite is true. That outrages the populist mindset today, of course. ‘Ukraine bad’ is right up there with ‘orange man bad’ for much of the population.
It was certainly a US vital interest when we promised Ukraine that we would serve as their defense if only they would surrender their nukes, rather than holding on to them as a deterrent to aggression from nuclear Russia. What suddenly changed – particularly to make Putin feel it was safe to invade Ukraine as long as a Democrat was running the USA? Why should who is president make a difference to what are vital US interests?
Anyone want to attempt convincing me that Putin would have invaded Ukraine if they still had those nukes instead of an empty faithless US promise to be their defender? Or attempt to convince me Putin would have invaded if Trump or Reagan were president at the time? Or for that matter, if George Bush who cut that agreement were the president?
Ukraine was right beside America from the very first days of the war in Afghanistan and then Iran, right up to the day we left – even after Obama/Biden reneged on our commitment to come to Ukraine’s defense in the face of aggression. If it wasn’t a vital US interest for the world to see our ally Ukraine fighting beside us while other NATO nations would not – despite the fact Ukraine was not attacked by hajjis and did not have a Muslim population to worry about – why didn’t we say “Go home; this is not your war to spend blood and treasure on fighting beside us”?
Surely there must have been a reason of vital interest for our country to be happy to have small Ukraine as our ally in that war, seen fighting right beside us despite the fact they were not attacked by hajji terrorists.
In my opinion, however Ukraine turns out, we have gone well past the point where any kind of good outcome is possible due to the foot-dragging and cowardice of these two Democrat presidents. I don’t see a win no matter what happens. The situation is well past the tipping point and we’re just waiting to see if we get the least of the worst possible outcomes. Neither of these invasions and subsequent wars would have happened if Putin had realistically believed there would be consequences not making it worth his while.
But two or more things can be true at the same time:
Ukraine has corruption that is pretty much the same flavour as the corruption we have here in the USA. Sometimes it’s the exact same corruption. The unprincipled, unsupervised and unaccountable spending we have done in Ukraine, much of it on things having nothing to do with strategic and logistic support for fighting a war should not be allowed to continue that way.
At the same time, the repeated claims that we can now desert Ukraine and renege on our promises to serve as their defense, because what happens in Ukraine is not a vital US interest, flies in the face of common sense. And if not common sense, the reality that there are second and third order consequences resulting from policy decisions like this. Whether the decision is to abandon Afghanistan along with Baghram Airbase and all that military weaponry to the hajjis, or reneging on promises we made to allies like Ukraine that were made specifically because that country was one of our vital interests.
We tried “European issues are not US vital interests” through most of WWI until our wilful blindness finally caught up with us and we finally got dragged into the war in it’s final fifth year.
We tried “European issues are not US vital interests” during the original two and a half years of WWII – until that war caught up with us on the sidelines and we were dragged into a war that would not have turned out that way if we hadn’t hoped isolationist policies would keep America and our interests safe from Germany and its allies.
Rightly saying Europe should be doing more of the heavy lifting and spending is not going to shield us from the second and third order affects of whatever decisions we make.
Whether we abandon Afghanistan to the hajji terrorists, do nothing while the Mad Mullahs orchestrate attacks on American assets and kill Americans, or renege on our promise given to Ukraine in exchange for them making us feel safer by surrendering their nukes, other nations are watching while weighing their own foreign policy decisions. Both adversarial nations and friendly free nations. They take our actions and lack of action into account when formulating their own foreign policy and who to align themselves with.
Pretending that second and third order affects of those decisions – or Trump pushing adversarial nations back into their fetid little boxes – do not exist is not the way to discuss foreign policy. That European issues are indeed US vital interests is why we’ve had American troops stationed overseas in Europe for almost 80 years now and South Korea for almost as long. Believing Russia today can’t possibly do anything to affect us, is about the same as believing Germany after WWI couldn’t possibly be a future threat to American security a few decades later.
It’s that Trump is an alpha male who gets things done –
This
someone says there is problem. Trump provides a solution. He doesn’t seek council from inside the beltway politicos.
The State Dept, most PO’d. Remember, he was impeached becuase he was going off script with the “working group” desires. Silly Trump had the weird notion that the President set foreign policy.
The Abraham Accords really caused a stir. Peace thru trade was a huge success, the speed and simplicity produced instant results. Exposing the State Dept, with buildings full of elites holding sinecures at State, as Dilettantes
@iowan2
Again, yup. The elites will clutch their pearls until their heads are removed from their shoulders, and that mentality is likely the worst it has ever been in human history at present, anywhere on earth. The people currently calling the shots were not elected at all. They just honestly believe in their heart of hearts they are ‘better’.
Peace thru trade was a huge success . . .
Interesting observation. Peace through trade. Argentina President Milei recently explained how that works in his professorial economics lecture at CPAC.
I would suggest reading a 70 year old book – “The Uggly America”. It is a criticism of Post War US foreign policy.
And pretty close to perfectly describes Trump’s foreign policy.
John I leaned this WWII cunundrum 5 to 7 years ago. Maybe insty put up a post.
The GOPe clings to the Marshall Plan, yet today. President Trump came to office and asked why?
That question caused them to melt like the Nazi’s in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Trump is asking why the US is still supporting, spending, the the rebuilding of Europe 75 years after WWII.
And yes, WHY is the US so heavily throwing cash at NATO?
Or perhaps they think diplomacy involves more tact?
“Tact” is a weasel-word incompetent diplomats use to cover up their abject failures . . . a phenomenon that defines the Joe Biden administration’s state department and all its chicken-hawks, who (a) let the world walk all over America and treat it like an ATM, (b) make the world a far more dangerous place, and (c) (relatedly) foist possible nuclear Armageddon on the rest of us. I’m sure when your grandchildren are combing through the rubble looking for a morsel to eat in a radioactive environment, they’ll be gratified to know that the people who did that to them used a lot of “tact.” It’ll put everything to rights.
Yo, anonymous paid mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex: you may get money in your current gig, but you make everyone else miserable and you make yourself fit for hell.
One of the problems with “diplomacy” is that it presumes a controlling roll in foriegn affairs for diplomats.
The “official” policy of the US of nearly all western nations has been that nations who trade with each other do not war with each other.
But despite being our policy since the revolution – we have followed it mostly in breach.
There is more power for diplomats, for various govenrment elites in controlling foreign trade rather than free trade.
Trump si not some religious free trade advocate. But he actually has been a greater advocate for actual free trade than the norm.
Trump tends not to be purist in anything. But that does not mean he does not lean strongly away from what those in power – both in government and out favor.
Today you can buy Iraeli oranges in Dubia or UAE, or not as you chose. No politicians make that choice for you.
It’s been awhile since looking into the exact numbers, but while some say it is an ‘extremist’ court, the liberals were almost every time seen to all vote together, while there were more times when some of the conservative judges crossed over with their votes. Which, maybe I’m reading that wrong but, seems to show the liberal side is more entrenched in their ideology?
The most common ruling is unanimous.
Jonathan: SCOTUS just handed DJT a life line in granting him cert. on his claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. If the Court conservative majority really thinks DJT has no claim of immunity they could have denied cert. and sent the case back to Judge Chuitkan to set a new trial date and let DJT appeal any adverse jury verdict back up to the Court. So now DJT gets what he hoped for–oral arguments beginning the week of April 22–more delay and a final decision that could come before the end of the June term of the Court. What does this mean?
If SCOTUS rules a president does not enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution the case goes back to Judge Chutkan to set a new trial. Add about 82 days and a new trial date could not be set until sometime in September with a trial verdict probably not coming until after the November election. Exactly what DJT wants so his campaign is not burdened with “convicted felon” as part of his resume.
What caught my eye in the Court order was the Q it wants the parties to address: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office”. The operative words are “alleged” and “official acts”. The factual record by Judge Chutkan and the DC Court of Appeals found that J.6 was a conspiracy by DJT and his supporters to stop the electoral college vote count so DJT could stay in power– through violence. It involved pre-planning and coordination. The “fake elector” scheme was part of that overall carefully thought out plan. These are not just “allegations” but facts established in the lower court record that are beyond dispute. The other problem with the framing of the Q is that both Judge Chutkan and the DC Court of Appeals found none of what DJT engaged in were “official acts” because trying to overturn the results of a legitimate election are not within the outer parameters of presidential duties.
While you may seem to think SCOTUS will ultimately reject DJT’s claim of immunity the framing of the issue does not give me much comfort. If DJT is re-elected he will immediately stop the criminal cases in DC and FL and that will have an adverse impact on the state prosecutions. And he will pardon all the J.6 insurrectionists. That means DJT will not be held accountable for trying to overthrown our Democracy!
The only saving grace is that NY DA Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution of DJT is going to trial starting March 25. Neither SCOTUS nor DJT can stop that one!
Do you mean like when people at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI tried to soft coup 45 with made up bar talk and were never held to account? IMO that was a worse attack on democracy than what J6er’s did.
Dennis: thanks again for your well-supported analysis. One thing Turley doesn’t mention is timing, which is everything. In the Colorado case which held that Trump was not eligible to run due to starting an insurrection, the SCOTUS acted within 48 hours. In this “presidential immunity” case, they sat on the decision whether to grant cert for weeks, and then agreed to cert, pushing out briefing and oral argument isn’t until the end of April. Who knows when the ultimate decision will finally come–there’s no deadline, but they are clearly dragging their feet, and it’s clearly on purpose. Yeah, when it benefits Trump, they can move with lightning speed, but not so much when Trump is likely to lose on the merits, which he is–so, the next best thing is to delay the decision as long as possible, on the possibility that Trump could cheat his way back into office and pardon himself or get an unethical AG to drop the federal cases. Those politicians in black robes, 3 of whom are there wrongfully (Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch), know exactly what they are doing, and they are the reason why the SCOTUS has the lowest approval rating in decades.
@Gigi
Yes, so well-supported it can’t hold up to a Google search’s scrutiny, and Google censors results. Spare us. Nobody believes the lies anymore, the dems have just gone too far. There won’t be any backing up, either. The only future for that party is a fracturing, and I personally think it’s coming. Good luck convincing anyone you were not on the fringe spouting paid nonsense afterward.
Gigi: Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. It’s pretty clear the right-wing majority of SCOTUS and DJT are on the same wave length–delay any decision on the merits of DJT’s immunity claim until the clock runs out on any possibility that DJT can be tried or convicted before the November election. As Anonymous pointed out in his comment ( @5:53pm) the majority of the Court adopted some of the language as that used by DJT in his petition for cert. That should tell us all we need to know about where the right-wing majority leans.
Because the issue is of vital importance for the November elections SCOTUS could have acted quicker. It knows how to act with urgency. In the 2000 election it took only 48 hours to declare George W the winner. SCOTUS could have acted earlier by granting Jack Smith’s request for an expedited hearing back in early Dec. That would have allowed consideration of the Q of presidential immunity to be decided early on and avoided the present quagmire. But that is not what the right-wing majority on the Court wanted so we had to wait months for the DC Court of Appeals to rule.
On the merits argument even Turley admits it’s a loser for DJT. Even the right-wing majority on the Court could not find a former president has immunity for criminal acts committed while in office. DJT’s infamous call to Brad Raffesperger is squarely outside the “official duties” of a President. It would be
So it’s unlikely SCOTUS will side with DJT on the merits of the immunity issue. But by the time the Court gets around to deciding the damage will already be done. Any chance the DC election interference and Mar-a-Lago cases can be decided before the election will be foreclosed. That’s what the right-wing majority on the Court wants and why DJT is so overjoyed. And it’s not because he thinks he could win both cases. If DJT thought he had any viable defenses to the two Jack Smith indictments he would have demanded an early trial date. He knows he will lose because the evidence against him is overwhelming. So his entire strategy has been delay, delay and delay. And, yes, SCOTUS has been “craven” in giving him what he desperately wants–to avoid accountability before the November elections.
Dennis McIntyre — I take this opportunity to remind you that our host, Jonathan Turley, does not want you to address him as “Jonathan”.
I was scrolling down the article and thought your comment was part of it. I guess I got extra reading enjoyment for my money. But I was so confused that I spent almost five minutes re-scrolling the article because I simply could not believe Mr. Turley would write that. I did that out of respect for Mr. Turley himself, but it serves as a reminder that one must apply respect to everything in life or risk ending up with a warped view of the world.
Dennis McIntyre, paid to be Bribery Biden’s paid police state fascist defending Biden White House Crime LLC, tried this one:
“Jonathan: SCOTUS just handed DJT a life line in granting him cert. on his claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.”
Rhetorical question, folks: why did Dennis McIntyre not mention this was Biden’s version of Lavarentiy Beria, Jack Smith, getting what HE ASKED FOR from SCOTUS?
Dec. 6th 2023: Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a writ of certiorari before judgment, asking the justices to leapfrog the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and decide “as expeditiously as possible” whether former President Donald Trump actually does have “absolute immunity” from prosecution.
Give everybody your inside scoop Dennis/Baghdad Bob, here’s our question: Did the Soviet Democrats’ political hitman Jack Smith (the supposedly “impartial Special Counsel who took out Obama’s most feared reelection opponent Bob McDonnell prior to that election), gamble that he would get summary judgement and could then run an identical McDonnell style prosecution prior to the election? With it not mattering if SCOTUS then overturned him with a 9-0 decision after his candidate won as it did with McDonnell after Obama won against a weaker opponent than McDonnell who he was terrified of.
Another rhetorical question folks: is it a mistake that Dennis McIntyre, attempting to cosplay as a personal friend of Professor Turley and an honest commentator here, continues to use the term “January 6th insurrectionists”, when the FBI doesn’t say it was an insurrection? When his fellow police state fascist, Special Counsel Jack Smith, hasn’t charged Trump with insurrection?
Only the Soviet Democrats January 6th Soviet Show Trial Commission uses that term – while spending almost as much time hiding evidence. And of course our very own Dennis McIntyre, who parrots them every time he remembers to do that.
Is it possible that Dennis McIntyre isn’t working for Bribery Biden here? Is it possible that it is Commissar Nancy Pelosi of the Soviet Democrat Politburo, the director of the “select” January 6th Show Trial and the Adam Schiff Show that’s paying McIntyre to be a serial pathological liar and distractor?
You gotta love how these Socialist dolts yack about the “insurrectionist”, the treasonous insurrection, white supremacist maniacs, wahhhhhhh! Newflash Socialist dolts, no one has been charged or tried and convicted for insurrection.
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was outraged on the air and denounced “the cravenness of the court.”
That makes no sense. Craven means cowardly. If the Court was craven, it would avoid hot-button issues. A craven person does not put a bullseye on his back so others can take potshots at him.
What she means is the opposite: the Court is acting courageously, but she dislikes that state of affairs because the Court’s current composition is majority-conservative. She wishes it was craven, but has says the opposite.
Now, as to why someone would say the opposite of what they mean? That’s another subject. It could be that she’s a liar, inarticulate, psychotic, or something else. One thing she’s not, is deserving of respect.
Rachel Maddow is correct–the SCOTUS should have denied certiorari because the law is clear from the Nixon case–there’s no Presidential immunity. Even Mitch McConnell said so right after the insurrection. Instead of summarily denying certiorari, they dragged their feet, and then granted cert and set briefing several weeks out. Oral argument isn’t until the end of April, and there’s no deadline for a decision. This foot-dragging is DELIBERATE. In the Colorado case, where Trump was kicked off the ballot, the SCOTUS acted within 48 hours. The foot-dragging on this bogus “presidential immunity” case is calculated to prevent Trump going on trial and getting convicted before the election. Maddow is correct–helping Trump avoid accountability IS craven. The American people deserve Trump’s culpability to be determined BEFORE the election. Most legal scholars agree that SCOTUS will hold there is NO immunity, but if Trump cheats his way back into office a 2nd time, the ruling will be moot because he will either pardon himself or get an unethical AG he appoints to drop the federal cases. Setting the stage for this is BEYOND craven and unethical, and that’s why the overwhelming majority of Americans have no respect for the SCOTUS.
Again for the retards.
Smith filed the petition, He got exactly what he wanted.
@Gigi
Revise history all you like, the rest of us were actually there watching last week. Heaven forbid the court does its job rather than getting on its knees with the leftist apologists. If this were a sane time in history, Smith would be jumping up and down that SCOTUS didn’t just blow him off like an annoying fly. Can’t please a brainwashed pedant, though, or their bosses who fear people living by their own admonitions rather than what they are told. Pbbt. Go away. You convince no one of anything. Sing in your little chorus with your sycophants. Meanwhile we will do *actual* good for people, ALL people, and for free, not for a wage like a hooker.
James: The SCOTUS could “do its job” by denying certiorari and letting Trump’s cases go to trial, and then allowing an appeal, which is the rule by which the rest of us live. In all of his cases, Trump’s pathetic loser attorneys file one interlocutory appeal after another, designed to do nothing but delay, delay, delay, all to help prevent him from getting tagged as a “convicted felon” before November. The appeal of the isssue of “presidential immunity” went against him in the 11th Circuit, and the unanimous decision is very well-reasoned by 3 judges, one of whom Bush appointed and the other Biden appointed. They agreed with Judge Chutkan that the POTUS is not above the law. An “interlocutory appeal” is an appeal of a judge’s ruling before trial–and they are supposed to be RARE. Trump has, so far, LOST every one. He will lose this one, too, but SCOTUS is trying to help him delay being found guilty until after the election, and THAT’S the point of the criticism. It is valid. The American people have the right to have a trial lay to rest the issue of Trump’s culpability before November.
Gigi, the police state fascist Marxist Useful Idiot channeling ‘Russia Dossier’ Rachael Mad Cow threw out this Democrat trademark hypocrisy:
“James: The SCOTUS could “do its job” by denying certiorari and letting Trump’s cases go to trial, and then allowing an appeal, which is the rule by which the rest of us live.
Exactly like James Comey decided HE – not the Attorney General – would decide whether or not Hillary Clinton should be indicted for the Espionage Act felonies he found she committed? Because he claimed no reasonable prosecutor (and the FBI aren’t prosecutors and don’t prosecute) would indict Clinton on Espionage Act charges, charges regarding destroying subpoenaed evidence, and charges relating to lying under oath to Congress and then the FBI? You old enough to remember that, Gigi?
That’s the rule the rest of us live by when the FBI investigates crimes, Gigi? They decide, not prosecutors, whether not the common herd will be indicted?
Or “do their jobs” exactly like James Hur just did for Biden? Deciding on whether or not Bribery Biden should be indicted and tried before a jury for possessing classified documents he stole from SKIFs while he was a senator and classified documents he stole from SKIFs while Vice President?
Hur, doing his job by using his variation of The Comey Clinton Excuse: “my Ouija Board on loan from James Comey tells me no reasonable jury would find Biden mentally competent to be held criminally responsible for his crimes”. Deciding that he would NOT allow Biden to go to trial and a jury to do it’s job to then decide at trial whether or not Biden was mentally competent?
That’s the rule of how prosecutors deal with the rest of us? Like Trump for example?
The rest of us get the same rules of deliberately allowing statute of limitations to expire on the most serious offenses and sweetheart deals that include universal immunity like Biden’s cashier, the Crackhead Kid got from Weiss?
Biden says he’s competent to stand trial, Gigi – there’s still time for Hur to allow the jury to do it’s job in just eight months!
You’ve LOVED the way Soviet Democrats have decided whether or not Clinton and now Biden should be indicted and go to trial, after which they could appeal their convictions as you now want for Trump.
Tell us Gigi: what changed?
Rachel Maddow is correct–the SCOTUS should have denied certiorari because the law is clear from the Nixon case–there’s no Presidential immunity.
****************************
Really? Show me where it says that, Justice Gigi. Love it when amateurs – like Maddow – try to play lawyer.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/683/
Dear Prof Turley,
Seems to me this immunity thing could be a Hum Dinger. Stretching back into the hallowed halls of antiquity. .. way back.
Thus, ergo, it seems almost untenable the SCOTUS would (or realistically could.) deny retroactive presidential immunity for any actions in the past – should any charges be proffered – leaving only the actions of president Trump in question, as currently charged by DoJ in various courts of law.
(SC Hur investigation of current sitting president Joe Biden determined he was too feeble to withstand any scrutiny.)
If the SCOTUS were, somehow, to deny retroactive immunity for presidential actions in the past .. . well, as they say, Katie bar the door.
Now, do you know anything about this ‘Smirnov’ dude, or not? This has all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.
*indeed, according to SC Weiss investigating Hunter Biden, one of the FBI’s most trusted CHS is really working for ‘Russian Intelligence’ .. . and the election is just around the corner!
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/the-smirnov-indictment-does-not-vindicate-the-bidens/?utm_source=msn&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=morein
This decision does not surprise me in the least.
Whether the left likes it or not, presidential immunity is real.
The DC court of appeals decision actually confirms that but subjects it to an unspecified balancing test.
The result being the DC decision provides no meaningful guidance to future presidents as to what they could or could not be prosecuted for.
Can Obama be prosecuted for the execution of Al Anwari ? Can Biden be prosecuted for deliberate failure to enforce border walls ?
Just like the CO case removing Trump from the Ballot we have left wingnuts once again going where no one has ever gone before with the law.
I would note the way that SCOTUS has framed the question.
All they are seeking to answer is ” do former presidents have immunity for official acts during their presidency.
The answer to that should be OBVIOUSLY yes.
If a president has immunity while president, but not after, the immunity serves no purpose, beyond encouraging presidents to hold power as long as possible by any means necescary.
But the argument of Smith and others is that they do not.
If SCOTUS answers the question YES, as they must, then the follow up questions are
Under what circumstances does a president or former president NOT have immunity ?
What is the process for defeating immunity ?
No, the question is “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?”
All Presidential acts are official.
What prosecutors would need to do is “allege” an act is a crime.
Burden of proof always on the Govt.
No, not all Presidential acts are official. For example, acts carried out by a current President as a candidate for a second term are not official acts.
If SCOTUS answers the question YES, as they must, then the follow up questions are Under what circumstances does a president or former president NOT have immunity? What is the process for defeating immunity?
Isn’t it fairly clear that if the answer is yes – i.e., that a former President enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office – then the answer to the follow-up question is: whenever the person’s actions are not alleged to involve official acts
I realize that generally speaking a statement does not imply its converse, but in this case it seems fairly obvious, to me at least. Or am I missing something?
If the Court finds that there IS immunity for alleged official acts, the next question could be whether the indictment alleges official acts or not. This then requires a definition of the scope of official acts. In particular, do you look at the act alone, such as an order from the President to an official, or do you also examine the purpose. Trump argued that you only look narrowly at the act itself without regard to the purpose. Neither the District Court nor the D.C. Circuit panel considered this, because they both held there was no immunity for official acts. This may be something the Supreme Court decides.
That seems like a more likely follow-up issue to me. I would think you look at the act, and ask whether by its nature it can fall within the scope of official presidential conduct. The act’s purpose is subjective: to enhance his own popularity; to make someone else mad; to improve the economy; to improve his political party’s fortunes in future; etc. Acts often have multiple purposes and it’s not always possible to know what they are.
I agree with that. But take the hyperbolic example given by Judge Pan in oral argument. Trump orders Seal Team 6 to kill a political opponent, which is a crime. A President, as Commander in Chief, can give orders to his military. But most reasonable people would think the President could be prosecuted in this case. What is it about that order to do something illegal that overcomes the immunity? It seems to me it must relate somehow to the objective or purpose of the order not being within the President’s constitutional authority.
Citizens like Trump have and always will remain a threat to the Administrative State, and consequently a distant hope for the resurrection of representative democracy in America. None other than Jack Smith himself, who is the Administrative State’s attorney in the case, is on record having previously acknowledged that only the Supreme Court can resolve the presidential immunity issue. The case is now where it needs to be. Before leaping into the breech with only their political motivations blazing, curmudgeons like Rachael Maddow should hold their rage until they have an actual reason to be indignant.
. . . curmudgeons like Rachael Maddow . . .
Nice!
The Court has not been particularly eager to reenter this area of constitutional law, but it may now be prepared to lay down new precedent and bring greater clarity for future presidents.
Would that the Court, the Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch and all Americans seek greater clarity in what really matters. Happily some Americans do know what greater clarity means including Gary Sinise who just published a beautiful tribute to his son, Mac. Sure to bring clarity to most, but not all, worth a read.
In Honor & Memory of McCanna Anthony “Mac” Sinise
1990 – 2024
https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/mac-tribute
Censoring viewpoints that don’t conform to the regime’s narrative . . . trashing the idea of an independent judiciary . . . these are fascist tactics. All fascist governments don’t want opposing viewpoints to be expressed, and they don’t want an independent judiciary.
The prog/left is fascist. It’s as simple as that. And their favorite slur to freedom-loving Republicans is that we are fascist. Projection, projection, projection.
This issue is apparently all they are looking at:
“and that petition (for a writ of certiorari requested by Smith) is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
I would have rather SCOTUS address the question raised by Meese and others as to whether Smith himself is even legally able to prosecute these questions (immunity and document stealing). The fact that SCOTUS is limiting its review to Smith’s request and not his status, not granting Trump’s request for a stay, and expediting review months faster than would normally be done means to me this was more of a win for Smith than for Trump?
The presidential immunity question also effects the GA case.
The improper appointment of Smith does not.
Also the immunity question is a question of first impression. It has never been before the court before.
The closest we have seen is civil immunity which took the court 2 years to decide.
Smith should be removed. His appointment is unconstitutional.
But that does not alter the question of whether Trump can be prosecuted.
But there are myriads of small issues like that, which the court should address and do so quickly.
The Smith appointment is a purely procedural matter, but there is a reason that due process is often complex.
The reason is that complex process make weaponizing government harder.
Mueller was also unconstitutionally appointed.
Frankly there is a major SC problem, but that needs to be addressed by amending the constitution.
There must be a process for appointing an SC. That process can not lie solely with the AG. Frankly it should not reside within the Executive at all.
The executive should not get to decide if it has a conflict of interests prosecuting a case.
At the same time the process of appointing an SC must be sufficiently easy it can not be politically thwarted, and sufficiently hard it can not be politically weaponized.
OT: “The co-founders of former president Donald Trump’s media company filed a lawsuit Wednesday, claiming that Trump and other leaders had schemed to deprive them of a stake in the company that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.” – WaPo
The lawsuit/complaint was filed by Hunter Biden’s former and maybe ongoing attorney, Christopher Clark. More pile-on.
Hunter Biden isn’t one of the plaintiffs and is irrelevant to this case.
(the above BRIEF Anon. comment (11:48) was from me (I hit “send” too fast). No one said Hunter Biden was one of the plaintiffs.
Here’s some details for you:
(1) Christopher Clark formerly represented Hunter Biden in Biden’s now-defunct plea agreement. He successfully petitioned for withdrawal in that matter. Unknown to me if he had or now represents him in anything else.
(2) The SEC (o/a 15 February 2024) approved Trump Media’s merger with DWAC (a deal w/estimated worth $3-4B).
Thirteen days later (on 28 February 2024), the sealed lawsuit against Trump Media was filed in Delaware, main plaintiffs being represented by the same Christopher Clark, who told Washington Post about the suit.
Take from these facts what you wish. Yours truly, lin.
Another cowardly Anonymous tried this off-topic distraction and then tried a trademark hypocritical Circle Back Psaki maneuver:
“WaPo: OT: ‘The co-founders of former president Donald Trump’s media company filed a lawsuit Wednesday, claiming that Trump and other leaders had schemed to deprive them of a stake in the company…’ HOWEVER, the fact that this lawsuit was filed by Hunter Biden’s lawyer is irrelevant to this irrelevant off-topic case I mentioned.”
It’s so special to have special, politically determined rules for what is irrelevant and what is not. So an off-topic lawsuit is relevant enough to mention – but pointing out that a Biden lawyer is behind filing the case is irrelevant if anyone brings that fact to our attention.
On the question of relevant/irrelevant:
Is it relevant that Jack Smith won a well earned reputation as Obama’s version of Lavarentiy Beria, who Obama’s DoJ sent out to prosecute the potential re-election opponent Obama was terrified of: Governor Bob McDonnell? And SCOTUS excoriated how Jack Smith as Obama’s prosecutor excoriated Jack Smith for not only twisting the law beyond recognition to carry out that prosecution, but making up new law while doing so? That they set aside the conviction of McDonnell in a rare 9-0 decision – but by then the election was over, Obama beat the much weaker Mitt Romney, and McDonnell was left asking “Where do I go to get my reputation and career back from Jack Smith and his boss Barack Obama”.
Same Jack Smith of the Obama/Biden administration who instructed Louis Lerner of the IRS on how she could shut down GOP get-out-the-vote groups during Obama’s reelection campaign by “investigating” them as was investigating Governor McDonnell? How many tens of millions of punitive damages were paid out for illegally depriving those groups of their First Amendment rights – AFTER the election was over and Obama had won? Damages paid by taxpayers, not Lerner and not the Obama/Biden reelection campaign, BTW.
Is it relevant to ask why any American can believe that Jack Smith, with his record of political prosecutions to take out opponents of the Obama/Biden administration, does not even come close to meeting the criteria for being an objective, unbiased Special Counsel.
Or this: is it relevant to ask why any normal American would gloat at and support police state fascism used by a political party to take out their political opponents both before Trump entered office and now up to this very day? That was supposed to die with the Soviet Union – not be picked up by the Soviet Democrats to use as a play book.
No, this cannot be true. I was informed by experts right here. Trumps media companies were losing $millions and destined for bankruptcy.
You and your WaPo quote co not even address the question the plantiffs is seeking to address.
Regardless this is a dispute about the management of the media company. The only thing it changes if decided against Trump is how the media company is managed.
It is interesting that after telling us for years that Truth and its parent were on the verge of bankruptcy – now suddenly you thinkl they are worth hundreds of millions.
Trump paid about 100M for his share of Truth. The value peaked at 700M several years ago. It is estimated at 200M now. But it is estimated that Trump’s share alone is worth 4B if Truth goes public.
So Trump’s share of Truth Social is potentially worth more than Trump’s entire net worth.
This volatility also goe so why Engoron is full of Schiff.
The only value of anything is what a willing buyer and sellor agree to – the only role the courts have is assuring that all parties live up to their agreement.
With respect to this lawsuit and the managment of Truth’s parent – the court should decide the case based on whatever agreements, bylaws, contracts were established by the founders of Truth. Regardless of whether that favors Trump or not.
The only way they ever had a chance to get Trump was to sacrifice a Clinton or a Biden on the alter of corruption. Had the Oligarchs orchestrated that with their bought and paid for unelected bureaucrats, then perhaps they could of lied through the obvious, hidden behind the bodies of the aforementioned scoundrels.
“Mary Trump, the niece of the former president, declared that “the Supreme Court of the United States just reminded us with this corrupt decision that the insurrection did not fail–it never ended. I other words, the Supreme Court itself is now part of the “insurrection.”
********************************************
You need a good insurrection every now and again. It focuses the attention of the ruling class, scares the bejesus out of them and let’s them know that wielding power over humans is like “holding a wolf by the ears.” (“De Vita Caesarum,” C. Suetonius Tranquillus (121 AD)). You never know when you will lose hold and get your hand bitten off. Like most fears, there’s value in that.
When a government moves away from the good of all to the good of a few, it has lost its way and needs to go. We’re reaching that tipping point as any fool can see. Trump, as a revolutionary, is the last stop before the train crosses that bridge to nowhere whether the Left knows it, likes it or wants it. Reality and history are good that way.
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
~ Tho. Jefferson, Declaration on Independence
I know, it’s “of” not “on.” But I do like the “on” langauage as it’s prescriptively instructive for us all and not merely a message to, and the thumbing of the nose at, a tyrant.