Prosecuting a president fundamentally is a political act, and why would we think a random DC bureaucrat better qualified to make a consequential political act than the Senate itself?

Carving out some special protection strikes at the heart of the idea that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

The DOJ threat of criminal prosecution only becomes functional when the president becomes a private person, at which point the president no longer has the ability to act in an official capacity anyway.

As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority.

[1] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/what-is-a-mi...

There are a non trivial subset of Tier1 operators who would absolutely take whatever mission they were given by the president and do not view their role as being political

Yes it’s in the training, but it’s not something that is expected because operations like this touch hundreds of people who ARENT operators (generals, joint staff, analysis, strategic planners etc…) that teams rely on to wave that flag through the targeting and JPOE process

This is an incredibly flimsy check on power:

- What if the president uses a drone strike instead?

- What if the president staffs the military (and seal team 6) with loyalists?

- What if the president uses this power to threaten and extort officials into doing his bidding?

Now, let's play that out in real time:

Donald Trump: please kill person XYZ. Seal Team 6: Uh, no sir, that's illegal. We cannot do that. Donald Trump: the courts say I have immunity, this is an official act. Person XYZ is a threat to our country, and under the constitution I'm allowed to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This person is a domestic enemy. Kill them. Seal Team 6: Uh, no sir, we can't do that. Donald Trump: You're fired. I'm replacing you with someone that can do what I tell them. Seal team 6: Ok, we'll kill person XYZ.

And the courts will have no problem with that, as per their ruling.

Why?

Because, and this is purely hypothetical (lol), an opponent could try and convict politicians with spurious charges to get them out of power.

Singapore’s ruling party loves this tactic. Political opponent is charged with defamation, and if fined more than $5,000, they are no longer eligible to run for office.

It’s a commonly used political weapon which is why most democracies offer immunity.

Wikipedia has a (non-inclusive) list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_immunity

So...kinda the same?

When prosecutors campaign on pursuing an individual, when such efforts are multipolar and unending, and when the sum effort looks corrupt to a large portion of the country, then it seems obvious to suggest that outrage at a resultant SC ruling, which would not have otherwise come under consideration, is crying over one's self-inflicted medicine.

I don't think that it is healthy that this was put to the SC.

But it was absolutely inevitable given the various prosecutorial efforts and the norm breaking they represent. Even ignoring the open political corruption, and lies, involving them. Though, these aspects aren't necessary to ignore.

In short, breaking norms to pursue Trump was worth the squeeze for them. They were squeezed. That's it.

Assuming that these aren't crocodile tears over a ruling that will protect others from actual accused crimes of the past, or what might come in the future. That these prosecutions weren't specifically brought to force this result. Which is entirely possible. Certainly, such a benefit will be had.

If I understand this correctly, the core effect of this is to essentially transfer the gateway through which it is possible to prosecute a president from any AG's office to Congress.

I suspect which will serve to further entrench establishment power, of which Biden's camp is a part. Presidents within Congressional graces will be effectively immune, crime or no crime. Presidents outside of them may not be so much.

Whomever lived through 2016-2020 and thinks that Trump will have some kind of Congressional carte blanche either hasn't thought this through or is being deceptive.

Compare the improbability of Trump being able to swerve out of his lane, as far as Congress is concerned, and what Obama was able to legally get away with without stirring Congress.

Now predicated on the precedent of Obama's extrajudicial action, Trump may have been able to carry out extrajudicial acts during his term. But no one who was watching thinks that anything without a precedent would have resulted in anything except another Trump impeachment.

Actually based on that logic, we all need immunity! Quick, let's get rid of laws entirely.

I mean, the former governor of New York just said the New York prosecution against Trump wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else.

https://www.justsecurity.org/85605/survey-of-past-new-york-f...

1. Usually they charge the predicate crime.

2. FECA has never been used as a predicate crime.

3. I don't believe a campaign finance reporting violation has been tried as election interference.

4. There are a lot of unsettled questions about these laws like can 175.10 point to a federal crime? Is hasn't been prosecuted that way before. Can it point to FECA despite FECA's broad preemption?

Law professors discussing these issues below.

https://shugerblogcom.wordpress.com/2023/04/04/a-potential-p...

https://law.syracuse.edu/news/professor-gregory-germain-writ...

The examples in the article tie the business records crime to another crime that’s at least charged, things like insurance fraud, failing to pay taxes, fraudulently obtaining government benefits, etc. Remarkably, prosecutors couldn’t find evidence of “Kinpin” Trump doing any of those things.

The problem with the Trump prosecution is that it is predicated on an uncharged and rarely used election law crime, and that in turn is predicated on an uncharged federal campaign finance crime. It’s a double bank shot. It’s fair to say that prosecutors didn’t have occasion to charge someone else with a documents crime in connection with an election law crime. But there’s not a single example in your list where prosecutors upgraded the documents crime to a felony based on a chain of two other, uncharged, crimes that relate to far-flung areas of the law.

On top of that, the uncharged predicate crimes have been interpreted in a sweeping way. According to New York prosecutors, agreeing with others to suppress bad news during a campaign is criminal election interference, so long as it can be connected to any other “unlawful” act.

Then the third piece, the unlawful act underpinning the election interference charge, is a federal campaign finance violation that SDNY declined to prosecute, and which New York couldn’t have brought against Trump.

There’s the statute of limitations and jurisdictional issues: none of the claims could have been brought by themselves. There’s the due process issue: because they were not charged, Trump’s counsel had no way to challenge the novel interpretations of the election interference and election law charges.

Cuomo (the former NY AG) and Honig (a former federal prosecutor) are correct. A case based on such an elaborate legal theory with as much hair on it as this one had would not have been brought unless the defendant was Donald Trump.

This case was architected by Carey Dunne, my former boss at Davis Polk. If this case had instead been brought against a gang member, him and folks at Davis Polk would be lining up to do the appeal. But instead they have abandoned the principles of the legal profession and are looking the other way out of class loyalty. It’s shameful and a stain on the profession.

Ultimately the prosecution proved Trump’s indictment of the professional managerial class. They cannot be trusted to uphold the principles of their professions, and will abuse the authority those professions confer to advance their own ideological agendas.

Trump is flagrantly corrupt and coordinates crime through lackeys, many of which have been convicted of felonies. No, you don't catch old kingpins on the stuff you get everybody else with. There's definitely a two-tier justice system going on, but it bends in Trump's favor at every turn.

This is persuasive to nobody that doesn’t start from the assumption Trump is a criminal. The irony is that I used to share that assumption, because I’m a pretty trusting person. But after almost eight years of the smartest lawyers in the country going after him, I’m not so sure. My former boss at a white shoe law firm in New York helped engineer the New York case, and it’s the same kind of contrived legal theory the firm would use to help a corporate client make it seem like all their income was earned in Bermuda. Utterly unpersuasive.

Tell the corrupt SCOTUS to stop granting a former president unconstitutional powers.

Your comment defies the forceful attempts to stymie any Trump prosecution that GQP party members are performing full-time as of 2024

There is a reason they got Al Capone on tax evasion, and it wasn't because that was the worst thing he did. Crime bosses are notoriously slippery.

https://lite.cnn.com/2024/07/02/politics/trump-liz-cheney-mi...

And you mean to say his entire defense team was so bad that they couldn’t protect him from a contrived and tormented case ?

Against a jury of peers?

And the defendant is Trump, someone who is famously associated with the quote “Lordy, I hope they are tapes.”

No one has to persecute trump. He just has to stop doing things which make everyone republican President before him cry in sorrow.

What was it you said ? You can only think this if you start from the position that everyone else is corrupt except Trump

Yeah, it seems this would hinge on whether it was done to protect democracy (official duty?) vs win an election (not but who knows by now). If Biden gives up on running anyway, that removes that question. Then it may not matter much because it's not clear which testimony, recording or other evidence might be admissible where. Then it may not matter because the issue is not even whether that would be illegal or not - just whether the president would have immunity in case it is illegal - and there is evidence - and someone attempts to charge something

Interesting rough overview of that question is here:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hy...

Some positions seem more absurd than the usual. For example someone argues "SEAL team 6 would obviously not accept that illegal order" Which seems irrelevant every which way: presumes it's illegal and focuses too much on this one specific example. And accepts SEAL Team 6 for more than a meme - there are obviously lots of outfits other than that one.

Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions? Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing. Heck, part of the J6 prosecution against Trump somehow involves an Enron-era document shredding law.

What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country with pretty much unrestricted discretion to stitch together vague criminal laws into criminal charges against former presidents. Why should we place such trust in prosecutors?

Why do you presume that the dissent did not consider this? What are your qualifications to think you’ve considered this more completely than the SCOTUS (whether or not you agree)?

Why should we instead trust a single person with an absolute immunity for vague “official acts”? Said person is way more powerful than any of the prosecutors.

Half the country doesn’t share your faith that career prosecutors will do “what’s good for the country” instead of indulging their personal biases.

I would point out that prosecuting Trump under Sarbanes Oxley (a financial fraud law) for supposed insurrection doesn’t exactly engender trust and confidence in career prosecutors.

This case came up because a sitting President supported an insurrection.

The law is about the application of principles.

Sure. The President is elected.

Sure. Prosecutors are not. We don’t trust unelected prosecutors.

Sure. The Judges are not elected…

Therefore We don’t trust judges.

——

Frankly with the powers provided, the dems should really just exercise them.

I’m pretty certain that will immediately shift the narrative.

Being able to do what you want, so long as you “kiss the ring” has unfortunately been a reliable path to temporary and virtueless power

Unless the non-activist citizen votes to give their power to the most virtuous, they generally default to giving away power to someone they believe will ultimately give them priority with the least amount of impact to their core personality trait

Trump’s authoritarianism appeals to people who feel that he can control the various unelected people they feel have too much power over their lives and society: career bureaucrats, corporate HE, NGOs, universities, etc.

Remember the 2017 “Resistance” against Trump? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/resistance-from-with....

This revealed that no matter which party wins the election, the fourth branch of government is staffed and run by Democrats. All the three letter agencies are staffed by 95% Democrats. And people think that Trump can bring them to heel.

[Citation Needed]

I’ll add many federal employees are members of professional organizations. And in the last decade, professional organizations have become overtly political. And all of these are staffed mainly by democrats. Paul Clement, one of the leading Supreme Court advocates of our generation, left Kirkland, known as a conservative firm, over the firms opposition to second amendment cases: https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2022/06/23/kirkland-ellis.... This is a firm that will not hesitate to represent the worst Russian oligarchs, mass polluters like BP, etc.

Another example is SFFA. A super-majority of the public opposes racial preferences in college admissions and hiring. But not a single prominent law firm authored an amicus brief in support of overturning affirmative action.

Half the country doesn’t trust credentialed professionals anymore, and with good reason

From your article, that sounds more like close to even instead of your exaggerated 95%.

I trust credentialed people for providing facts and research in their domain, not writing policies.

If Project 2025 succeeds behind its wildest dreams, it won’t even come close to even balancing things out.

You're pretty optimistic about that. Trump has amply demonstrated that he can be ruthless. And he'll bring on people as cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries who will be of the same mind.

Polls suggest not.[1]

> (Remember this happened before Trump did anything. It was based purely on federal workers’ moral objections to Trump’s stance on immigration.)

The article said not.

[1] https://www.govexec.com/management/2016/07/poll-clinton-open...

Hypothetical: Trump is campaigning on immigration. Say he wins the election and issues an executive order to deport every single illegal immigrant. What should happen, in a democracy?

"People" generally don't have the expertise to run things in a complex modern world. Bureaucrats and lawyers aren't always better, but pace Damon Runyon (quoting sportswriter Hugh Keough), that's the way to bet. [0]

"Democracy" in a complex modern world means that "people" periodically get an opportunity to toss out the bureaucrats and lawyers — because ballots are better than bullets.

[0] "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/#google_...

I don't believe that congress is doing a good job representing the people but I don't think that the solution to that is to elect a king.

When you disagree with the ideology = king.

How does that make sense?

The inverse of total immunity (freedom, no jury, no trial) would be total oppression (prison, no jury, no trial).

> Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions?

Yes! That war crimes have become normal behavior for US Presidents doesn't mean that we now need more legal frameworks for protecting from prosecution of them.

It seems to me that, if we are to actually become a nation of laws and not of men, we need to acknowledge and account for the crimes in office of virtually every president. And if that's too difficult to do, politically speaking, then we simply aren't what we say we are.

> Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing.

This is also a huge problem. It seems that many of us walk around unknowingly subject to capricious prosecution for felonies (according to one author, three felonies a day[0]). How can we have equal protection under the law when any of us can be prosecuted at any time, and the matter of which of us are is one of political discretion?

---- > What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country

While the dissent is unsatisfying in some ways (including following the trend of exhaustive and distracting analysis of the particular facts of the case instead of sharp focus on the ostensibly simpler constitutional issues), you are mistaken, as the phenomenon you are describing is contemplated at length - 9 pages (13-21) are committed to this analysis [1].

0: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a...

1: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

The President's power as Commander in Chief is enumerated, so having Seal Team 6 whack DeSantis would be absolutely immune to prosecution.

I wouldn't say that the history and tradition of the office is to have Delta Force manufacture artistic pottery cups for children to drink milk from while at school. That action in that time and place would not seem to fall within the role of Commander in Chief (regardless of his intent / subjective belief that the use of fine porcelain may provide some tactical advantage).

That was the whole point of the decision - the official in question gets to determine what is/isn't an official action.

This does not seem to fit either the examples set in the majority opinion or a reasonable understanding of what the President's enumerated power as commander in chief means. In the absence of a Congressional declaration of war against Ron DeSantis (which I am all for) the President's core duty would seem to cover killing DeSantis only in the event of a clear and present danger to the nation from DeSantis. Otherwise this is rebuttable, and will be pretty easily rebutted, immunity.

Yes, we are relying on the courts to carve that kind of fine distinction, and yes, this decision makes that a bit harder. But hardly impossible, and we were already relying on the courts for that. Subjecting this decision to the most ridiculous interpretation is politically useful right now but that's about all it's good for.

This court would rule that people upset about the president assassinating all their rivals should just get elected president and change the policy.

After all, they already did say that women that want health care and the right to prevent (according to the court) overwhelmingly male politicians from messing with their lady bits should just run for Supreme Court and overturn their recent rulings.

Immune from judicial prosecution.

Not immune from Congressional prosecution.

---

This isn't a unique concept.

For example, if SEAL Team 6 improperly kills someone on a mission, they aren't prosecuted in criminal court; they are court-martialed.

There is accountability, but due to the unique nature of the profession, it has a specialized venue.

SEAL Team 6 can take care of that too

how can SEAL Team 6 even refuse a presidential order ?

He will do as he pleases, and a GOP led congress will simply let him, laws and precedent be damned (and the Supreme Court will comply). A DEM led congress will throw up their hands in uproar, and then refuse to actually do anything.

> that would never have happened.

What never would have happened? Some bizarre unknown chain-of-events which led to Trump staying in office? The occurrence which DEMs are somehow taking the heat for is the GOP outnumbering them and outvoting them in the senate to keep Trump in.

This, I believe, was originally set forth because the Senate was modeled as an “upper house” not subject to the whims of popular agitation (6 year terms vs 2 year terms. Appointment/selection by States vs direct election by district constituencies). The House, having more direct connections to the people is given the power to investigate and impeach a president, hopefully as a reflection of the public. The Senate, being composed of elder statesmen and slightly removed from the direct consequences of local constituents, is to be a check on potential rash impeachments.

So I’d dare say the impeachments were worth the paper the constitution was written on. The House impeached. The Senate tried, and acquitted him.

It is nothing, because nothing came of it.

Can you cite any other law or precedent that would restrict him from doing so?

That's the problem.

It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.

Again, citation needed. The whole problem today is that the category of immunity is so vague so as to be overly broad.

> It does not say that members of the military have immunity for following an unlawful order.

No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.

> It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.

It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.

That is a narrow standard. The only acts in this case which met that standard were discussions with Justice Department officials.

Everything else in this case was in fact remanded, and it remains within the power of the lower courts to deny Trump immunity on all other aspects of the case.

Your citation is exactly the bit that makes the President immune for directing Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival -- directing the military is within the President's "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority". According to the Supreme Court, such a direction is now "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution".

This is clearly an unlawful act that all military members are obligated not to obey.

> Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial. Pp. 30-32.

"Citation needed"

[1] nytimes, https://archive.ph/fz52u

Read the judgement. It's literally in the first pages.

> No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.

A President can't pardon non-federal crimes or overturn the a conviction through impeachment as it would remove power from Congress and the Senate, which a President can't remove.

> It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.

Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.

I read it. I read that it's absolute immunity in core function, which seems pretty damn broad to me. Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?

> A President can't pardon non-federal crimes

He won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties. Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.

> Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.

The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!

Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.

That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.

It's limited in scope, and still subject to impeachment, which immunity comes from because otherwise going through impeachment would be pointless.

> Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?

The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.

> e won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties.

You're beginning to understand

> Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.

And?

> The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!

These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. Because it was always the case, nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.

> Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.

If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece of paper and no amount of super-majority or SCOTUS rulings is going to make a difference.

> That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.

Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles. The oral hearings over the vaccine mandates is a good example: "but there are millions of dead children" she said crying. Yes, she did that. This is JFK assasination level conspiracy theory whether you like it or not.

Okay but the entire DOJ and military is a huge freaking scope, so what's the real limit here? We're talking about absolute nonreviewable control of the most powerful army and the biggest law firm on the planet.

> still subject to impeachment

This might be reassuring if we didn't go through two egregious examples of impeachment that didn't result in removal. In the first one, Trump attempted to us federal dollars to extort a bribe from a from the Ukrainian President. At the impeachment trial, Trump via Alan Dershowitz argued this conduct was okay because it was taken to increase his electoral chances, and Trump viewed his own election as benefitting America, therefore his actions were to benefit America and not grounds for removal. Because after all how can you be removed for doing what you think is best? From the trial:

  “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in an impeachment”

In the second impeachment, Trump attempted to stay in power by orchestrating a coup. Mitch McConnell all but voted to impeach, but fell short because in his view, the impeachment happened after POTUS left office and there was a criminal justice system to hold him accountable.

On the first part, well that just means the period between an election and inauguration is a now a crime-spree zone for any lame duck POTUS. They can commit any crimes they want using the DOJ and military during that period, and we know the Senate won't impeach because there's too little time for the impeachment to happen, and now we know the DOJ will probably not be able to prosecute due to this ruling hamstringing the types of evidence and charges that can be brought.

On the second part, we have yet to see whether the system of justice can hold him accountable for the coup. To date, it has not worked and it's been 3.5 years. So it's not clear the federal system of justice can hold any former executive accountable for any criminal conduct whatsoever. States have proven to be more effective at charging and trying criminal conduct, but we have yet to see if it results in any accountability.

So no, impeachment doesn't fix this system. This is a huge exploit. Since it was added intentionally we might call it a back door.

> The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.

Who is going to stop him though? That's the thing people don't understand about executive power. Before the thing stopping that conduct was the thought it was illegal and he would be prosecuted for it after he left office. But now? Now as long as the act was "official", good luck proving it without evidence. Good luck even charging it.

How did people end up in Guantanamo Bay without trial? Tortured? Imprisoned for years without charges or a trial. Who stopped that from happening? What makes you think you're safe from the same treatment now?

> And?

Well that's a pretty big hole in your argument since you're trying to convince me the powers are limited. If the limits of the powers are currently unbounded and the bounds are left up to the people who just gave POTUS sweeping immunity over the DOJ and military, then what are the actual limitations? Neither you nor I nor the SCOTUS judges actually know, so your insisting that the powers are limited is not really true.

> These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.

The ones I had listened to had predicted some limited immunity around things like the military and DOJ, especially the DOJ.

> If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece

I mean... yes? The point is to raise the alarm before it gets that dire by pointing out the ways we can go from here to there. Are you suggesting that it's impossible the armed forces would kill politicians in America? Doesn't that happen elsewhere in the world? Hasn't there already been a civil war here?

> Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles.

Lol I wouldn't even say the same things about the right leaning justices, glad to see where your extreme biases are.

What do you think the odds are for this Supreme Court to declare e.g. that shredding official documents (or moving them to the president's private property) is an official act?

But is it wrong? That's what the legal scholars I've read said, otherwise the PRA wouldn't be constitutional.

Murdering political rivals isn't a core constitutional duty of the President with automatic immunity. If he orders Seal Team 6 to do it, it's an official act, for which he has a rebuttable presumption of immunity. That means the prosecution has to prove he hasn't got immunity.

Roberts at least strongly hints in the majority opinion that Trump's immunity for trying to coerce Pence to commit crimes on Jan. 6 should be rebuttable. If that's the bar then ordering Seal Team Six to kill people will definitely get a president sent to prison the day he leaves office, whether the regular way or by impeachment.

Immunity before impeachment has pretty much been the position of the Justice Department (I think wrongly btw) with regard to current presidents for decades, including the Biden justice department. This isn't as big of a change as it makes sense for the Democrats to make it out to be.

Weird. Sotomayor is one of the few credible justices we have.

Kagan's also a much better writer.

Enlisted oath adds they will obey the orders of the president.

So a president or his intermediary just needs to find the right Master Sergeant. In theory.

But not to worry, there are plenty of authoritarian-friendly colonels available. Their oath doesn't prohibit them from following a president's orders.

Wrinkle: all officers and enlisted are required to refuse illegal orders. But if you do so, you better be right.

Of course, in this new United States that the Supreme Court created this week, summary executions could become a motivational tool.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_A...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Uniformed_Serv...

https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/what-the-law-of-military-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_execution

Who ordered that code red? Not LT Weinberg, that's for sure.

No different than the judiciary, right?

---

I am constantly amazed by the number of new discoveries made on HN, like military coups.

If not so, is there a reason why not? "Murdering an oppositional politician in your own country" seems quite clean-cut bad and unjustified. I know your political system is very much "they vs us", but it can't be that bad?

The problem is, the way things have been for the last couple of decades, many of us are not absolutely certain that the Senate would ever convict a sitting president unless it was 2/3rds of the opposite party -- which is pretty rare.

Probably, if a sitting president (regardless of party) assassinated a political rival, the Senate would convict. Probably.

They are almost certainly hyper-partisan Senators (of both parties) who would not convict a president from their own party no matter what.

The reasons for that would be multiple... greed, fear, a weird sense of loyality to the person, or even just a warped view of reality.

For example, if you thought Trump was Hitler 2.0 coming to take over the government and hunt down minorities and LGBTQ people, then you might feel justified in doing anything possible to prevent that -- including assassination.

So henceforth from this Supreme Court ruling, the President can call up the Attorney General ("official duties," remember) and say, "find a reason to investigate and arrest my political opponent."

That act, that conversation is now protected. And that action will be carried out, and there is no legal recourse, at least not long after much damage has been done.

At many junctures, not only the January 6 capitol riot, but many others, Trump was only prevented from disastrous anti-democratic actions by principled staff and officials around him. This time around, Trump (or any other dictatorial pretender) will not make the mistake of filling their administration with anyone but sycophants. Trump installed many federal judges. Even leaving it up to the courts to decide if something is an "official" or "unofficial" act, after the fact, is now left to fiat.

It's even worse than that. The Supreme Court says prosecutors can't even question the motive for that corrupt action, meaning that essentially all conversations between a President and his AG are de jure assumed to be above board.

We must assume the President opened an investigation into his opponent because he had a good reason to do so. Otherwise we might restrict his ability to take bold and decisive action, according to the court.

It doesn’t map on in obvious ways to what you see in Europe. In Denmark, for example, immigration was a political issue. When it turned out the people wanted to restrict immigration, the left of center government supported “far right” immigration restrictions.

In America, a large part of the left sees immigration as a moral issue, not a political one. When Trump was first inaugurated, the left refused to even accept Trump as legitimate because of his opposition to immigration. Hilary Clinton called his supporters “deplorables” and said he was “illegitimate.” This was long before any of the bad things he did.

You haven't been paying attention for long, have you?

Donald Trump was known as a fraudster and a genuine piece of shit since the 1980s at a minimum.

I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of NYC in the 90s and early 00s and was well aware of Donald Trump being a sideshow joke and a wannabe rich dude about 20 years before he was elected. Nobody in my hometown that had real money thought Donald Trump was anything besides a lawsuit-happy wannabe with midget hands.

The reason Trump is now a convicted felon is due to conduct that happened while he ran for office.

Are we not allowed to call into question the legitimacy of someone who commits crimes to get elected, and then uses his position to cover up for those crimes?

You have it exactly backward. The law is clear that "campaign expenses" cannot have any personal component. That makes sense, because the focus of the law is to prevent candidates from calling things "campaign expenses" that are actually for personal benefit. John Edwards was prosecuted for using campaign funds to keep his mistress silent because hiding an affair has a personal component in addition to a political component.

If Trump had been charged with a campaign-finance violation, his straightforward defense under well-established precedent would be that paying off Stormy Daniels had a personal component (avoiding personal embarrassment and his wife finding out), in addition to whatever effect it had on the campaign. The prosecution would have been required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump's marriage was so dysfunctional that the only reason he would have paid off Stormy Daniels was the election.

That's why prosecutors didn't charge him with a campaign finance violation.

You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.

If you're running for public office, you can't commit fraud to hide things from the electorate because you don't want them to find out. That can't be allowed in free and fair elections. If you get elected doing that, people have every reason to question your legitimacy. If you get caught and lie about it, expect people not to trust you. If you get charged with a crime related to that conduct, don't be surprised when a jury finds you guilty, because it's shady af. This is all very straightforward stuff.

No, I’m talking about the law. You’re wrong about what you think campaign finance law says.

> You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.

The law is the exact opposite. You cannot call something a “campaign expense” if it is an expense you would incur “irrespective of the campaign.” (That’s the magic phrase in FEC regulations.) If you pay off your mistress and call it a campaign expense, you’ll be prosecuted for campaign finance violations, because the prosecutor would say that you could have non-campaign reasons to do that. John Edwards was prosecuted for doing exactly that.

The New York federal prosecutor (SDNY) investigated the exact theory you are talking about: charging Trump with a campaign finance violation. They didn’t bring the case because all Trump would have to do is prove that he would have paid off Stormy Daniels “irrespective of the campaign.”

> The law is the exact opposite.

As far as I know if you spend money on a campaign you have to report it. If you get someone to spend money for you, you have to report it.

Seems like what you're trying to say is he didn't have to report it because arguably it had a personal component. Okay but that apparently wasn't the case; after the trial it is clear the payments were mostly for the campaign and not to save his relationship or himself of personal embarrassment. If you're trying to say "well he wasn't charged that way so it can't be election fraud" then again, I think you're missing my point.

Either way, I'm left at trying to guess your point because you haven't been clear in making it.

> They didn’t bring the case because

And?? Leaving aside you don’t know why any prosecutor didn’t bring a case, what are you implying? Make your point instead of dancing around it for 2 days.

Whether a prosecutor thinks they can prove that at trial is a different matter. That he was charged under a different law doesn’t make the underlying conduct okay from an elections perspective whether or not some federal prosecutor decided to charge that.

Either way what he did was he committed fraud and lied about it as POTUS, committing some of those crimes in the Oval Office, all to increase the chances of being elected. That is not okay. That makes one arguably (and definitely in my mind) illegitimate as a public servant. Apparently it’s also a felony.

If you think that conduct is okay because of whatever technicalities you can come up with, you’re missing my entire point.

Meanwhile we’re sending billions of dollars to obliterate a people in the Middle East which is a crime that will someday result in violence on our doorstep. Bill Clinton is on record flying to Epsteins island, and I could go on about the insane things our government has got away with.

I dont know anything about politics but that’s my reaction when people bring up “34 felonies”.

So you don't know what you're talking about and you're just making up scenarios in your head?

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/g-s1-1848/trump-hush-money-tr...

However, I don't believe they would. Not after the crap the Uniparty have done for my lifetime. Any president part of the uniparty will be protected and any president against it will be persecuted. We already have seen that.

One single indiscutable example: Trump is a draft-dodger. How many troop-supporting, valor-praising Republicans support him?

Oh, another one: Trump is a liar and a filanderer. How many Republican "values-first" voters and officials have refused to vote for him?

No what I mean is, why is it that Democrats, those of the '68 Chicago riots, sit-ins, Occupy Wallstreet, etc., are the ones saying "Nobody is above the law"? That was always Republicans when I was a kid.

You can't blame Kagan or Sotomayor or Brown for persecuting the opposition, they haven't been a part of whatever you're talking about. They're just the ones saying that they don't want the president to be a king.

And this is good no matter what party you like best. There are three branches, they're supposed to be a check against each other so that no one branch one can attain supreme power. Congress has already abdicated so much power[1] [2] to the Executive branch that honestly the Judicial is our last chance to restore those checks. And they're failing.

And if you think political persecution of the opposition will be over once Trump is re-elected I recommend reading some of what he's said about exactly that topic, then think about how it relates to this Supreme Court decision.[3]

[1] https://www.cato.org/commentary/congress-willingly-abdicatin...

[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/emer...

[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/25/donald-trump-waco-ra...

Many Democrats have shown themselves to be unabashedly evil. What has happened to them? Apart from ballot stuffing to win and using exective power to target political opponents? And what has happened to the principled ones who put country before party? Apart from losing or being pushed to retire? One single indiscutable example: Biden is a racist. How many diversity-supporting, inclusive-praising Democrats support him?

Oh, another one: Biden is a liar and a pedophile. How many Democrats who focus so much on calling out lies voters and officials have refused to vote for him after his perpetual lieing?

See, the problem is some of us don't want to get to the point where we derive petty satisfaction of definitively knowing how evil someone can be. That's why we have (had) checks and balances: to prevent us from knowing -- in the most real way -- how evil someone can be. A significant check on presidential power was removed yesterday.

Where once the president was bound by law and constitution, now he is bound only by his ambition and personal moral compass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Don...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_trial_of_Do...

> Seven Republican senators joined all Democratic and independent senators in voting to convict Trump, the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction of a U.S. president or former U.S. president. After the vote on the acquittal, Mitch McConnell said, "There's no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day." but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.

It's worth noting that the Supreme Court ruling here probably disagrees with McConnell's interpretation of the Constitution in a way that should have changed his vote.

To show what a different world it was then, the chair of the House committee, a Democrat, called his wife to tell her "we voted to impeach", *and then started crying" because it was horrible that it had come to that, and that the president had done such things. Today they would have been cheering.

Which we need to fix regardless, but in the interim it’s hard to conclude that the federal government isn’t starting to crumble under the combined weight of that problem and the general, concerning erosion of trust in expertise and institutions, and the rise of populism. The Supreme Court is very efficiently pouring gas on that fire.

And the president is still subject to impeachment.

So even if I some case they fail, there are no consequences so people can try again.

Yes there is also political considerations, but if the president feels confident enough to plan assainations of a rival, or for instance a coup with others in the executive branch, then he must feel he has that handled.

Part of the ruling was that conversations between DOJ and President constitute the President's official duties and "therefore" (per the three judges appointed by Trump, one who expressed sympathies with Jan 6 rioters, and yet another whose wife was an active endorser and planner of aspects of the coup) those conversations are protected and cannot be entered as evidence in a criminal proceeding against the President.

The more insidious outcome is that the President can now, because these conversations are official, officially order the AG to investigate and prosecute political opponents.

Maybe some court can review it on down the line, years later. Given the number of judges appointed by Trump, maybe not. Either way, the federal government and rule of law was massively, severely crippled yesterday by the Supreme Court

I am obviously no lawyer, but this “evidence can be nullified based on this and that” has always been dumb in my opinion. Not sure if that’s universally true in US law, but in certain EU jurisdiction even illegally collected evidence can be used in court, if the illegality of its collection is tiny compared to the case at hand.

E.g. it might be illegal to record phone calls, but if it catches a child molester it can be used - it makes soo much more sense

I would argue that even allowing the inevitable discovery argument or parallel reconstruction is insufficient privacy protections

The government should never be able to benefit from illegally spying on citizens

So... exactly what they've been doing for the past four years already?

It appears so stable that it actually hasn't cause any of the damage you fear in over 200 years. That the chief executive is not above the law has produced the most stable democracy that's ever been conceived.

Couldn't he just make up some BS about a national security threat to make it "official"?

Did we just become a monarchy?

¹ Obama and any other person in the same position

---------

To justify the Awlaki killing, Barron relies heavily on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the law that Congress passed to permit striking al-Qaeda post-September 11th, and which was used to justify the US-led investigation of Afghanistan.

Awlaki, according to Barron, was a leader in al-Qaeda's Yemen-based branch, which is known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The intelligence supporting this claim is redacted from the memo. But Barron claims that, because Congress authorized using "necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaeda, the AUMF would thus give the US legal cover to target Awlaki.

"In consequence," Barron concludes, "the operation should be understood to constitute the lawful conduct of war and thus to be encompassed by the public authority justification." He also writes that the AUMF argument makes the killing justifiable under international law as a defensive use of force.

One possible counter-argument is that this is unconstitutional: the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the killing of US citizens without due process of law. Barron argues that this case is an exception because capturing Awlaki was impossible — for reasons that are again redacted. If capturing Awlaki was "unfeasible," as Barron says, then killing him to prevent him from threatening the US becomes the only option.

---------

You may disagree with that interpretation of the law, but it seems — given that Obama was not prosecuted for this action — that the legal system does not agree with your disagreement.

Now the point is moot, since any president can order up the killing of anyone they like, because there is no longer a consequence for criminal behaviour. If you think the al-Awlaki killing was unlawful, I hope that you are gravely concerned by the fact that administrations no longer need to even attempt the appearance of complying with the law.

1: https://www.vox.com/2014/6/23/5835602/anwar-al-awlaki-memo

That is what the media - the same media who until a few days ago told you your current president was in no way diminished in his mental capacity - wants you to believe, they in turn were prompted by a 'progressive' judge - Sotomayor. It was clear from the outset that the media was lying about Biden and it is clear from the outset that this ploy about presidents being able to order hit jobs on their political rivals is a lie.

In short, think for yourself and you have a much better chance avoiding becoming a useful idiot as Lenin called those who blindly followed what the Party told them.