As I have previously written, I am not someone who has favored expansive presidential powers. As a Madisonian scholar, I favor Congress in most disputes with presidents. However, I saw good-faith arguments on both sides of this case and the Court adopted a middle road on immunity — rejecting the extreme positions of both the Trump team and the lower court.
One of the most glaring moments in the address came when President Biden declared that “for all…for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
That is not true.
The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.
The Court has often adopted tiered approaches in balancing the powers of the branches. For example, in his famous concurrence to Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), Justice Robert Jackson broke down the line of authority between Congress and the White House into three groups where the President is acting with express or implied authority from Congress; where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area); and where the President is acting in defiance of Congress.
Here the Court separated cases into actions taken in core areas of executive authority, official actions taken outside those core areas, and unofficial actions. Actions deemed personal or unofficial are not protected under this ruling.
It is certainly true that the case affords considerable immunity, including for conversations with subordinates. However, this did not spring suddenly from the head Zeus. As Chief Justice John Roberts lays out in the majority opinion, there has long been robust protections afforded to presidents.
There are also a host of checks and balances on executive authority in our constitutional system. This includes judicial intervention to prevent violations of the law as well as impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
President Biden’s hyper-ventilated response is crushingly ironic. He was vice president when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge. When former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the “kill list” policy (that included the right to kill any American citizen), he was met with applause, not condemnation.
The Obama-Biden administration then fought every effort by the family to sue the government. President Biden would have been outraged by any attempt of a Republican district attorney to charge him or President Obama with murder.
He would also be outraged by prosecutors pursuing criminal charges for the deaths associated with the deluge of undocumented persons over the Southern border.
In his address, President Biden also claimed that “the law would no longer” define “the limits of the presidency.”
That is also untrue. This case was remanded for the purpose of defining what of these functions would be deemed private as opposed to official. Even on official actions, former president Donald Trump could be prosecuted if the presumptive immunity is rebutted by prosecutors.
What was most glaring for many civil libertarians was President Biden’s portrayal of himself as a paragon of constitutional fealty. He declared that “I know I will respect the limits of the presidential powers as I have for the last three-and-a-half years.”
That was also untrue. President Biden has racked up an impressive array of losses in federal courts where he was found to have violated the constitution.
This includes rulings that his administration has exceeded his authority and engaged in racial discrimination in federal programs. Indeed, Biden has often displayed a cavalier attitude toward such violations.
For example, the Biden administration was found to have violated the Constitution in its imposition of a nationwide eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden admitted that his White House counsel and most legal experts told him the move was unconstitutional. But he ignored their advice and went with that of Harvard University Professor Laurence Tribe, the one person who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was, of course, then quickly found to be unconstitutional.
Biden showed the same disregard over the unconstitutionality of his effort to unilaterally forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt. Courts have already enjoined that effort as presumptively unconstitutional (though an appellate court in one of those cases relaxed aspects of the injunction).
The address was used to reinforce his “democracy is on the ballot” campaign theme. Pundits have repeated the mantra, claiming that if Biden is not elected, American democracy will perish.
While some of us have challenged these predictions, the other presidential candidates are missing a far more compelling argument going into this election. While democracy is not on the ballot this election, free speech is.
For many of us in the free speech community, President Biden has become the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. As discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” the Biden Administration has helped fund and maintain an unprecedented censorship system in the United States.
That record is hardly supportive for a president claiming to be the defender, if not the savior, of the Constitution.
“This guy is such a lying piece of garbage. Every pundit out there who says he’s a ‘good man’ should be written off & ignored forever.
Biden is not a good man. He’s never been a good man.
He’s been a terrible person all his life & he’s destroying our country.”
@SeanParnellUSA
He is a good man…at sniffing children and plagiarizing
. . . besides sniffing children, he wants to make sure they get their showers.
Jonathan Turley – The Indispensable Pundit ☺️
The lies and plagiarism from 1988 are resurfacing again and hopefully, all of the other lies since then will become an effective video for the upcoming meat of the POTUS campaign. Once people who are not subject to being totally brainwashed by Democratic politics will awaken to a sense of awareness concerning the real damage being done by Biden and his handlers that cannot exclude the compliant and complicit media across the spectrum of the corporate definition of “the media”. The outlets for anything conservative are limited and the choices we have are under constant attack and ridicule by the leftist outlets that outnumber the conservative ones by a large margin. The attacks on the SCOTUS for doing their job are outrageous, dangerous, and totally classified as “misinformation” by the very ones who are supposed to be defenders of the Constitution and the gatekeepers of truth for all, not just for “their truth” which by definition is subjective at best and lies at the worst. The rampant hyperbole by the uninformed and ignorantly opinionated talking heads from the vast array of leftist so-called news shows that in reality are nothing more than opinions is the real danger to our democracy, an essential partner to the real ethos of the United States of America, our republic.
It has been obvious for too long that Joe Biden is suffering from either dementia, loss of cognitive ability due to aging, or other maladies that the insiders know about but keep silent that was on full display during the debate when the teleprompter and notes were not allowed. Biden had to stand in front of the cameras and America without the usual props, notes, and other things to assist him when making a public appearance. As one who is in the same age range as Biden, I can attest to the fact that over the years, I have had the good and bad misfortune of witnessing the decline of a loved one due to the ravages of the disease, dementia. Biden is in the twilight of the end of the inevitable when it involves dementia. No matter what ones political and ideological positions may be, it should be incumbent on every one to demand that Biden step down even considering the aspect of a few months under the leadership of Harris. This nation is truly at a crossroads this time and on November 5th, 2024, the nation will decide if it will survive or continue down the road of inevitable destruction of our republic with a representative and responsible democracy. The angry mood of the nation as a whole if one depends on the media for the only source of information is growing exponentially based on the remarks coming from outlets using outrageous examples of absolute danger based on the SCOTUS ruling about presidential immunity while performing legitimate and legal duties of the office.
We cannot go on like this much longer before the enemies will no longer just be “at the door” but will have kicked it in and walked in without any resistance.
Time to wake up and think. Time to have hands across the aisle by reasonable and honorable representatives if any are left and to address the problems and find reasonable solutions. Doubtful if it will happen but we can at least hope.
I think Amy Coney Barret is a terrible jurist, until I don’t.—-Svelaz George
ACB brings back the dream turned nightmare that was Sandra Day O’Connor.
Reading Barrett’s written majority opinion regarding Biden Administration censorship of First Amendment rights through corporate media proxies, that declared that private persons don’t have standing to challenge that censorship, citizens groups don’t have standing to challenge that censorship, and states don’t have standing to challenge that censorship… so who DOES have standing to go to court and challenge government censorship of First Amendment rights through proxies like Facebook working with the FBI, HHS, etc?
It took just ONE state, Massachusetts, whining that because they treated CO2 as a pollutant, the EPA should treat it the same for the entire nation to get that Roberts court during Obama’s presidency to agree that one single state had standing – and agree to give the EPA the power to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
Barrett, Roberts, etc – they’re all aware of that – but Roberts assigns Barrett to nitpick her way to a conclusion where nobody, no citizens organization, and no state government has standing to go to court to stop government First Amendment censorship through proxy.
And Barrett and Kavanaugh both were recommended to Trump as originalist/textualist justices… any journalists ask the Federalist Society to give their explanations for the recent opinions authored by these two?
All of you will soon be enslaved by the lizard people of Epsilon Eridani, so all of your blathering here is irrelevant.
Contrary to popular myth, there is such a thing as a stupid question.
Exhibit A (from the Sotomayor school for the inane): “Is the President now legally permitted to order the assassination of American citizens without trial?”
And one can learn something important about those who ask stupid questions. In this case, it’s the Left’s desire to manipulate and rule by fear-mongering.
Sam,
Then there is this gem,
“President Biden, acting within the scope of his official duties, could dispatch the military to take out the conservative justices on the Court” – Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
And they are the ones claiming they are trying to save democracy.
When you say “manipulate by fear-mongering” you make it sound as if that’ll never happen, but Pres. Obama described himself as pretty good at targeting Americans and killing them. Justice Sotomayor’s question is another example of an unreflective progressive projecting onto others what they do themselves.
Unhinged, Delusional, Desperate and Dangerous.
The Black Swan is on the lake but the wings are now flapping.
One of the trickiest limits on Presidential power arises when a 1st term President is running for re-election. There has always been an understanding that the President compete on a level playing field, in terms of putting policy choices before the voters. The challenger has essentially the same power to compete on those terms.
As the nation learned in Watergate, there is a temptation for the incumbent President to wield unfair advantage by using the unmatched powers of Office. These are enormous, including the Justice Dept., the CIA, the IRS. Nixon’s campaign was found to have used an ex-CIA contractor team to spy on the DNC, nudged FBI Direction Patrick Gray to assist in the cover-up, and used Executive Privilege to prevent Congressional oversight.
The Roberts decision is quite deficient in failing to explicitly analyze a President’s avenues for unfair competition during a re-election effort. It seems the Court majority chose to ignore this most sensitive case of Presidential power:
• Corrupt, self-serving motives are not to be considered in determining official vs. non-official acts
• Evidence of the corrupt act is to be suppressed
• The use of the federal bureaucracy to gain unfair advantage has been declared “official action” and thus immune from prosecution
I was quite OK with the Court precluding frivolous, politically-motivated prosecutions, but it has gone overboard in that quest, to the point where a “win at any cost” 1st term President will feel free to conspire with others in the Exec. Branch to put official powers behind the re-election effort.
Anyone who thinks these advantages will not be employed out of some “noble restraint” are naive.
Also, I would have preferred to hear JT’s opinion on this SC decision, not his oppo-branding of Joe Biden’s opinion.
That approach is evasive on Jonathan’s part.
Your regurgitating of the Watergate myth is hilarious given the context of your overall attempt to make a point.
OK, how about something more recent? How about Obama tacitly approving John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, Harry Reid to spy on the Trump campaign?
How about Joe Biden’s campaign using CIA (current, contractor and retirees) to dupe the country about Hunter’s laptop?
These are exactly the kinds of abuses of power during Presidential campaigns that SCOTUS seems completely unconcerned with. The sitting President should be under the highest scrutiny during campaigns to make sure no advantage of Office is unfairly used. Meeting with other govt. officials to conspire on how to tilt the election was just declared immune from prosecution. Impeachment is pretty worthless in a partisanized Congress. So, what deterrents are left?
1. Voter ID.
2. Any and all communications between government/ngos and media are public domain, with the rare ‘top secret’ stuff immediately accessible to a bipartisan committee then public after 2 years.
3. All coms between public agencies and elected officials/staff/attys are public, with the same top secret crap.
4. detailed telephone, text, email, personal visit, etc logs between agency and elected officials/staff/attys and everyone else is public
5. etc – massively transparent coms/funding/planning/etc
6. 2-term limits for senators and 3, 3-year terms for representatives.
7. Transparent banking for all elected official, their staff, their law firms, and NGOs and their boards.
8. Firing squad after 1 appeal for these people
9. cut the number of agencies and size of Fed government by 60% or so.
10. Balanced budget requirement except in case of 3/4 of each congress and SCOTUS review of necessity.
11. No fed or state funds to any media outlet.
12. Any government release of info is public and available to everyone, not selectable persons/outlets.
13. End the Fed
Why would you use examples of malfeasance that WAS NOT prosecuted. Give me one lousy example of lawlessness that WAS adjudictaed before this train from nowhere. OMG they just said the quiet part out loud!!
Get lost with that steaming turd. It don’t float.
PbinCA… the kinder, gentler, smoother Soviet Democrat Apparatchik version of Dennis “call me Baghdad Bob” McIntyre.
One of the trickiest limits on Presidential power arises when a 1st term President is running for re-election.
The power to send a DoJ prosecutor named Jack Smith to tell Louis Lerner at the IRS that she can shut down GOP get-out-the-votes groups for “investigation” until after the election? All within presidential powers – as long as that Democrat president apologizes for that after being re-elected and the punitive damages awarded by the courts to the GOP groups targeted and shut down are willingly paid by the taxpayer?
The power to send that same DoJ prosecutor, Jack Smith, again in that 2012 re-election to target and take out the prospective GOP nominee that Obama/Biden feared the most – popular Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. Doing so by both rewriting existing law, adding new law, and pretty much the same as everything Jack Smith is doing yet again with Biden/Harris’ most feared reelection opponent Trump? All as an “impartial and unbiased without connections to the DoJ” Special Counsel?
Also within presidential powers – as long as Obama, after being reelected and SCOTUS unanimously reversing Smith’s conviction of McDonnell and calling Smith out in the decision as “a threat to the separation of powers” says in response “I didn’t know anything about that prosecution”?
Would it be considered “Corrupt, self-serving motives are not to be considered in determining official vs. non-official acts” when Obama chose to ignore over 150 Suspicious Activity Reports from banks reporting Biden White House Crime LLC for money laundering and bribery during his 2012 reelection campaign? Warnings from the State Department that The Big Guy was merching out the VP’s office in the White House?
How about Obama sending his minions like Susan Rice, Biden, etc out after Obama and Biden abandoned Americans in Benghazi to be killed by hajji Muslim terrorists, specifically to lie to Americans the terrorist attack was just a protest against an offensive YouTube video that went wrong?
How about a president who instructs his DoJ to hide the criminality of his son, The Family Cashier For Biden White House Crime LLC? Hiding investigations and what is happening from congressional review – while the “prosecutors” and his Attorney General allow the most serious indictments to disappear after waiting for the Statute of Limitations to remove that threat?
How about a president who has his DoJ offer his felony covered son the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free plea bargain – which would give him full immunity for EVERYTHING criminal he did while Biden was in the White House, to keep The First Felon Son out of the courts AND the public eye in the run-up to the election?
Soviet Democrats and their slick police state fascist apparatchiks – as soon as they’re claiming anybody that’s a threat to their agenda, not just Trump, is doing something wrong… you can pretty much guarantee that’s exactly what they’ve been doing themselves.
But, but ,but… misleading citizens IS what the prog/left media does. It’s their only function.
Thank you professor for laying out what the SC actually ruled vs what Biden claims. Or I should say, what his “team” claims aka gaslighting.
Thank you for also pointing out how un-Constitutional Biden and his “team” has been.
“President Biden declared that . . .”
A sundowning “president” with a career-long history of plagiarism and pathological lying, who for years was the head of a family of grifters — tethered to a wife channeling Lady Macbeth.
Anybody who believes a word Biden says deserves what he gets.
As I said in another post bad prosecutors bringing bad prosecutions forces the court to make un necessary decisions, the left has only themselves to blame for this.
EXACTLY
Please everyone, feel free to add to the list of Dems shooting themselves in the foot with their avarice. Allow me to start.
2. Harry Reid and the filibuster
Jeff- I would prefer that Dems shot themselves in the head. It would cut down on the nonsensical chatter on this site
GEB,
That would release a lot of hot air. Would be worse for the environment, more so than cow farts.
Ray Bourke
This is the SECOND time in less than a decade that SCOTUS has been required to address the police state fascism of Jack Smith and his preferred method of waging lawfare on opponents threatening the re-election of a Soviet Democrat President.
In the Obama/Biden re-election campaign of 2012, they dispatched Jack Smith from the DoJ to take out their most feared potential GOP opponent, Bob McDonnell, leaving them facing the feckless Mitt Romney instead. Four years after the election, after McDonnell’s appeal reached them, SCOTUS in a rare unanimous decision threw out Smith’s conviction of McDonnell. They went further, calling out Smith for changing existing laws, reinterpreting settled law, adding his own bits to existing law, by stating that he was “a threat to the separation of powers”.
Of course, that didn’t help McDonnell four years after Jack Smith did that – all that McDonnell could do is say “Where do I go to get my reputation and my political career back?”.
And it certainly didn’t hurt Obama and Biden who sent Jack Smith to be their version of Stalin’s Lavarentiy Beria; they were comfortably back in the White House – in the middle of launching their “Russia Dossier” spying and investigation of Trump when that decision was released.
And now Obama’s Third Term has brought back that same Jack Smith/Lavarentiy Beria “show me the man and I’ll find you his crimes” threat to the separation of powers back to take out the most dangerous opponent to their re-election for a second time. This time as an “impartial, unbiased Special Counsel with no connections to the DoJ he previously prosecuted political opponents from”.
You could accurately say Jack Smith is known to the Supreme Court justices – eight years is not a very long time.
It doesn’t inspire confidence that they handled the man they called “a threat to the separation of powers” so gently when his police state fascism on behalf of the White House is in front of them the very next time a Soviet Democrat president is in a re-election campaign again.
Turley is, of course, wrong about his assertion that no limits were removed from the president with the immunity ‘decision’. And it’s completely predictable this op Ed from him was coming. It’s his job to write it after all…
Actually, politically speaking it’s a huge gift for Biden. It lets him take attention off his awful debate and run a campaign against the SCOTUS. It lets him abuse what the decision opened the door for. It’s always hilarious to me the right loves abusive decisions from the court because they think the left will just sit around until the right gets in power to take advantage. That attitude is prevalent on this blog every day.
But Biden could very well take advantage right now. And I hope he does. The right has made it clear they’re no longer good faith actors. They’re showing no signs of coming off that stance. It’s really time to bust them in the the fsce. It would be extremely negligent to not explore all the threads that have just become available in which to do it. There is absolutely no reason to wait around for trump and project 2025 to do what they’re planning to do. It would only take 5 R congress people and 3 scotus members to get knuckled under to give D’s control of all 3 branches. Let it ride, I say.
Wow, bug has gone completely off the rails today
Who can blame him. His world is falling apart.
Notice the reference to project 2025
Conspicuously absent from any posts whatsoever until the last week. Now he, George, Gigi and Dennis have all brought the red herring up
Coincidence? I think not.
Who cares what you think, troll? I can tell what you’re feeling though. The scotus has you just as apprehensive as everyone else. This last decision opens the door to things the country as a whole hasn’t experienced in awhile and it has you scared. For good reason.
Oh yes, you always know what everyone is thinking. I’m so scared I am on my way to The Ocean Course for a nice round and a couple of toddies afterward.
Let me look up the 12 steps again and see what we can do to help you with that delusion.
Ok retard. George failed miserably at this yesterday. Maybe you can take a stab.
Tomorrow morning, Biden wakes up. No, make that noon. He calls for the nuclear football, and announces he is going to nuke mar-a-lago to “save democracy”.
We are all curious. What happes next, in your fantasy?
Lol. Another drunk on the golf course thinking they understand the 12 steps. You’re just as much of a cartoon as your nuclear football red herring…
Mar a lago (and Bedminster, and trump tower) get taken by eminent domain. Trump’s secret service detail loses just enough man power to always leave one vulnerable angle. And since you idiots have been railing on about “lawfare” and Garland being puppeted by Biden (while his own son was being prosecuted)…, well, now it could happen. Legally.
But please…, just keep believing your real problem is Antifa or BLM members disturbing your golf game.
Nuking mar-a-lago wasn’t my hypothetical, dum dum. It was one of your sycophants on the DC Court.
Now, care to answer her question?
I already did.
Now, you evaded it. Try to keep up.
Biden has the football in hand. What next?
Well let’s see if we can disable you of YOUR fantasy by pointing out the hypothetical is stupid and unrealistic. And not at all how a president would abuse the lowered limitations of yesterday’s decision.
Destroy an entire city to kill one imminent threat? No. But would they sacrifice a flight crew of a plane being flown with that threat on it? Yes. Or if that threat was in foreign territory and susceptible to drone strike? Yes. Or in a foreign embassy that just happened to be populated with a kill team who’d just love to cut him up and then say “what person were you talking about???”
Well yeah…
Maybe look into the 12 steps yourself, no? Lol
All either implausible or actually immune.
Where were you when Obama killed a US citizen child?
Next?
Use Sotomayors example. It’s better than your incoherent ones.
Or, we can use a variation of your hero Sotomayor’s scenario.
Bush goes to Iraq, finds Chris Kyle, and tells him to shoot one of his fellow Seals in order to “save democracy”.
Take it from there, please….
Does it. No repercussions after yesterday. Do you not understand what yesterday’s decision was???
Does it what? I asked you to explain what happens next. LMAO am I talking to george now?
I think that idiot just tried to say that Chris Kyle would have done it.
How you gonna debate someone who lives entirely in an alternate reality?
He’s not worth your time.
Or this is my favorite. George said…idk…could happen
Biden orders SecDef to kill Trump
Take it from there, please……
your real problem is Antifa or BLM members disturbing your golf game.
I am packing on the golf course, so I’m probably not someone they want to try to spray paint.
If only I were the President…..
I can see that’s what you incoherently mumble to yourself when you pass out at night (or afternoon), yes.
You do understand, you’re the drunk here? We need to stick to reality, it gets messy otherwise.
Is denial in the 12 steps?
Mar a lago (and Bedminster, and trump tower) get taken by eminent domain. Trump’s secret service detail loses just enough man power to always leave one vulnerable angle. And since you idiots have been railing on about “lawfare” and Garland being puppeted by Biden (while his own son was being prosecuted)…, well, now it could happen. Legally.
Now, what could happen???
This is incoherent brah. Try again.
“Another drunk on the golf course”
Reading for comprehension issue again? Or more disengenuous characterizations?
I drink AFTER the round, and thats precisely what i said. I take my golf seriously. Bwahahahahahaha
And I never get drunk. I have the self restraint to stop, unlike some people (who shall remain nameless but think lazy BLM fvcks would bother the drive to Kiawah Island)
I don’t understand the 12 steps because, unlike you, I havent beeen thru them 6 times.
Bwahahahahahhaha
You are every bit as stupid as you appear to be. Clearly.
Oh, you got me there, bug. Happens every time, doesn’t it…
Bwahahahahahahahahaha
Been through them more than 6 times. When one is sober they become a way of life. A set of skills rather then a paint by numbers cartoon that you idiots think they are…
As for other aspects of your idiocy, do you not understand that what happened yesterday makes it possible for a president to get away with any number of entirely self focused acts as long as they can ‘justify’ the need for it as being related to national security? And that they can control the mechanism of how to justify it through leaning on the Justice department?
Clearly, you don’t.
Hey, I’m not an idiot because I don’t understand your plight, drunktard. Find another reason to call me one. Bwahahahahahaha
Happy painting. I gotta tee off now! See ya at the 19th hole!!! I’ll oder a tonic water for ya!
Turley is, of course, wrong about his assertion that no limits were removed from the president with the immunity ‘decision’… The right has made it clear they’re no longer good faith actors.
Is that you Joe Scarborough, from the Mika and Joe Adultery Show?
Or just yet another cowardly Anonymous police state fascist Soviet Democrat Useful Idiot Marxist apparatchik doing the same?
It’s really time to bust them in the the fsce.
It’s really time to bust elected presidents acting as police state fascists, their Lavarentiy Beria style police state fascist prosecutors, and their cowardly Anonymous police state fascist apparatchiks in the face.
Politically and legally – not in reality as the Soviet Democrats’ street thugs in Pantifa and Black Liars & Marxists do to people they’re sure won’t or can’t fight back.
Justice Barrett made a valid point. One that clearly shows the flaw in the opinion,
“ Consider a bribery prosecution—a charge not at issue here but one that provides a useful example. The federal bribery statute forbids any public official to seek or accept a thing of value “for or because of any official act.” 18 U. S. C. §201(c). The Constitution, of course, does not authorize a President to seek or accept bribes, so the Government may prosecute him if he does so. See Art. II, §4 (listing “Bribery” as an impeachable offense); see also Memorandum from L. Silberman, Deputy Atty. Gen., to R. Burress, Office of the President, Re: Conflict of Interest Problems Arising Out of the President’s Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller To Be Vice President Under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution 5 (Aug. 28, 1974) (suggesting that the federal bribery statute applies to the President). Yet excluding from trial any mention of the official act connected to the bribe would hamstring the prosecution. To make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo, the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo, even if the quo, standing alone, could not be a basis for the President’s criminal liability.”
The majority said you can’t use records or communications of official acts to show motive. Bribery while engaging in official acts cannot be prosecuted. Even after being impeached and removed a former president cannot be prosecuted.
Biden will be happy with that
Funny George. Because yesterday you claimed that bribery and treason were the only things that could still be prosecuted.
Shall i post the link?
Its like George is in total meltdown and denial of what is now the law of the land.
The majority said you can’t use records or communications of official acts to show motive.
Once immunity has been established. By a court, not by proclomation of the defendant. Bribery is claerly not immune.
The act isn’t the crime in a bribery case. If it were, it would be separately adjudicated to determine if it were in the outer perimeter.
Ooops.
+100
-100
George, the resident Constitutional Kluxxer racist, doesn’t seem to be able to explain why Barrett’s view is right and the majority opinion that disagrees and rebuts her on the specific example she is using is wrong. It’s almost like George hopes nobody will notice the majority opinion shoots down the complaint she shares with the three Soviet Democrat justices.
Poor George… now George, did you notice that not a single Justice in the majority agreed with her on that point?
That in fact, on that point that you’ve fallen in love with, she was in opposition to the majority but in concurrence with the dissenting opinion given by the Three Soviet Democrat Stygian Witches: the racist Wise Latina Woman Justice Sotomayor, the Questioning Birthing Person Justice Jackson, and Justice Kagan?
This is one of Bolshevik Barack’s “teachable moments” George. Not for you – you’re almost too far gone to even be worth paying attention to.
But for others who read your sophomoric BS and might think you finally found something. Here’s how the majority opinion dealt with Barrett, Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan and that specious claim:
The prosaic tools on which the Government would have courts rely are an inadequate safeguard against the peculiar constitutional concerns implicated in the prosecution of a former President. Cf. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 706. Although such tools may suffice to protect the constitutional rights of individual criminal defendants, the interests that underlie Presidential immunity seek to protect not the President himself, but the institution of the Presidency.
JUSTICE BARRETT disagrees, arguing that in a bribery prosecution, for instance, excluding “any mention” of the official act associated with the bribe “would hamstring the prosecution.” Post, at 6 (opinion concurring in part); cf. post, at 25–27 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). But of course the prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act. And the prosecutor may admit evidence of what the President allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced in the performance of the act. See 18 U. S. C. §201(b)(2).
What the prosecutor may not do, however, is admit testimony or private records of the President or his advisers, probing the official act itself. Allowing that sort of evidence would invite the jury to inspect the President’s motivations for his official actions and to second-guess their propriety. As we have explained, such inspection would be “highly intrusive” and would “ ‘seriously cripple’ ” the President’s exercise of his official duties. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 745, 756 (quoting Spalding v. Vilas, 161 U. S. 483, 498 (1896)); see supra, at
18. And such second-guessing would “threaten the independence or effectiveness of the Executive.” Trump v. Vance, 591 U. S. 786, 805 (2020).
Had Groucho Marx been asked if he would ever consider entering politics he might have responded: “Never!” “I couldn’t possibly respect a constituency which would elect ME to high office!” It is the lack of respect for the intelligence of the electorate, the bigotry of low expectations of them inherent in elected officials, which accounts for the ‘bilge’ spewed forth from the ‘tanks’ of Joe Biden yesterday evening. Only an alert, knowledgeable and informed electorate can serve as a bulwark against that sort of flood,
Watching the lying Dems and media scream that Trump lied during the debate and that Trump lies all the time…as they support Joe Biden, the biggest known liar we have ever seen is a complete gaslighting joke.
The guy that said he was at the top of his class, said he had 3 majors, was charged with plagiarism, read a moronic speech reciting the life story of a Welsh politician and claiming it as his own, said he was raised as a PR, A Jew, drove a truck, was a con law professor, CORN POP, had his son die in Iraq, never discussed his son’s business with him and of course had his uncle EATEN BY cannibals now claims his opponent is a liar.
They are shameless, they are despotic, they are insane and they will do anything to win.
The question is who wrote those words for him. We aren’t arguing with Joseph R. Biden, the man, but with the inner circle of advisors who are telling him what to say, what to do, and even where to walk.
Where in the Constitution does it say the President is exempt from the law when executing “Official duties”? Where? NOWHERE.
Who decides what an “official duty” is? By the separation of powers argument this asinine SC just threw out, the President decides. So the President can now decide that an individual is an enemy of the state, a grave security risk, and have him killed. All “Official” duties.
Remember a small place called Guantanamo Bay? Just a beach community for illegal aliens right?
If you don’t think that this possible, just listen to the Repos spout their hatred.
You are correct that Presidential immunity is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, but it is implied from the grants of power given to the office. Article II reads, “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”
Presidents are an entire branch of government unto themselves. They are not answerable to the other branches, but rather share power as equals. Immunity in this case means where the President is given a Power, he has that Power, and no one can later come along and judge him for exercising it.
And where does it say they can break laws as part of their “Official” duties?
In the SCOTUS ruling.
Now the law of the land.
I loved SCOTUS rulings until I didn’t anymore—Every libtard for the last 50 years
Who decides what an “official duty” is? By the separation of powers argument this asinine SC just threw out, the President decides. So the President can now decide that an individual is an enemy of the state, a grave security risk, and have him killed. All “Official” duties.
It’s like another feckless, cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat police state fascist denies that the majority opinion says otherwise. Not only that, ignores this entire column that refutes that gross, hysterical lie.
But… from the racist Wise Latina Woman Justice Sotomayor and the Questioning Birthing Person Jackson’s minority dissent opinion – straight to your tentacles on your keyboard to post your weird BS.
Or were you just channeling Bolshevik Joe Biden’s claims – that this Turley opinion piece crushes?
America in 2024.
The President of the United States, the Executive branch, most Democrats, and their toadies in the Main Stream Media will look you straight in the eye and lie to you. They have no shame!
Most are afraid to call out their lies, and those that are tethered to their phone 7×24, actually believe the lies because they stopped thinking for themselves years ago. Watching this unfold before our very eyes is amazing!
Terrifying how many abject lies that man can spew in less than four minutes.
And then, like a true authoritarian, walks away without answering any questions.
Just doing what he’s told by his puppet masters, who know that if he took questions we’d see a repeat of the dementia on display at the debate.