The essay sets forth the maneuvering that took place to give Dems unfettered power to essentially define political opposition as against "national security". Their apparatus to eliminate the opposition is nuanced, clever and effective. I'm sure Obama's move to amend the Federal habeous corpus process by essentially creating a new class of political imprisonment was the icing on the cake. This is why I never call Obama and his minions stupid, far from it.

Too long to quote.

Andrew Weissmann Apoplectic at Immunity Decision – SCOTUS: The President IS The Executive Branch

I was against the immunity ruling.
You won't like it when the dems use it to subjugate you.

How could/would the Dems use the SCOTUS immunity ruling for subjugation?

And if you're against the ruling of limited immunity for the President, what would a presidency with no immunity be able to govern given that we live in a society where anything and everything is litigated?

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
I was against the immunity ruling.
You won't like it when the dems use it to subjugate you.

Then you don't understand it.

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
I was against the immunity ruling.
You won't like it when the dems use it to subjugate you.

The Dems have weaponized most Federal agencies and the DOJ against their political opponents with the full blessing of the Biden administration. People like Navarro and Steve Bannon are in Federal prison for refusing to speak to the J6 jackals on advice of counsel, despite likely having a legitimate claim of executive privilege. Meanwhile, Eric Holder and Garland skated on similar contempt of Congress charges.

Thousands of people who were at J6 are in Federal prison based on novel legal theories like using Sarbanes Oxley provision 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) to create felony prosecutions out of misdemeanor trespassing or disorderly conduct charges, at most.

They've already begun the subjugation part of the leftist program.

The office of the president cannot function if political opponents are able to utilize lawfare to immobilize official acts, or presumptive official acts. I think the Court got this one closer to right on than not.

This ruling did not give the POTUS carte blanche to do anything he wants. His actions are still subject to Congressional oversight, impeachment, judicial review, etc. It's just that he can't be prosecuted for official acts, which doesn't make all official acts are perfectly legal. Hell, it's not like any president has been prosecuted for his crimes (real or imagined) in the past.

If this ruling makes politicial persecution via lawfare more difficult, then I'm all for it. As much as we'd all love to see Brandon answer for his crimes, we all know the worst that will ever happen is he loses the election (again) and is punished by historians.

I'm frankly quite by those on our side who are against the ruling.

It strikes me that the people who claim this opens the door to unfettered criminality and oppression miss one key point.

And official act of any employee of the USG, including the President, cannot violate the law. The very minute that employee crosses the legal line, it is no longer an official act.

I saw this principle in action in the prosecution of the Aberdeen Three, where the first high-level USG officials (in the binary chemical weapons program no less) were convicted of violating federal hazardous waste laws (and they deserved that distinction).

Sotomayor’s stupid statement about the President telling DEVGRU to assassinate an American political rival is another example of an action that by definition is not an official act.

Now, a subsequent administration cannot simply come in and lawfare a previous President or other official over some action they didn’t like. Now, they must first prove it did not fall within the scope of the person’s official duties, for example, the President challenging the validity of electors in states where there were election irregularities or violations of election law. Good luck with that Jackoff Smith. If successful in making the argument an act is not with a USG’s official duty, then the prosecution can proceed.

And yes, Obama’s extra-judicial assassination of Americans who were Islamofascist terrorists was over that line, and he should be prosecuted for it. I said it at the time, and I reiterate it here.

Yeah, it just illustrated how fucking lunatic these 3 leftist SCOTUS justices are. Are they that stupid? It's good that Roberts took them to task for their tantrum.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Yeah, it just illustrated how fucking lunatic these 3 leftist SCOTUS justices are. Are they that stupid? It's good that Roberts took them to task for their tantrum.

They may well be that stupid. However, I think it is leakage of their hidden desires. The comments in this thread re: illegal acts are based in logic, contrasted with the 3 justices' comments based in emotion. They can easily picture a powerful government official ordering a rival's assassination.

It also sets the stage for allowing such actions in the future. Now that 3 justices said that those things are official acts, one could argue that they are.

Immunity already exists for many elected officials in their official duties. We don't have governors using their state police to assassinate rivals.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
I'm frankly quite by those on our side who are against the ruling.

Jeff Childers is a lawyer in Florida who writes a daily substack called Coffee & Covid, or just C&C. But it's not all about covid. It started as a battle against forced masking, and then against forced injections, and now its against the administrative state in general.

Anyway, he has a good take on this:

We begin with the UK Independent’s alarming headline from this morning: “Biden warns Trump can do ‘whatever he pleases’ if elected as Republicans relish Supreme Court immunity ruling.” Tellingly, that was a modified headline. Earlier in the day, it more simply said, “Supreme Court awards Trump some immunity from prosecution.” Biden did say that though, even though the Supremes ended none of the Trump cases. Biden is cognitively functioning on par with an above-average boiled turnip. But Biden and his handlers have no idea how good the decision really was, or they would be crying much, much harder.

How good was it? It was so good I actually started wondering if the QAnon people have been right all along. It was that good. It was that much of a game-changer. Just not for any of the reasons in the headlines.

Let’s begin with what yesterday’s decision didn’t do. Trump v. United States did not “totally immunize” the President. Instead, it created a three-tier test (the Supreme Court loves three-tiered tests), which explains why the Independent’s first headline said it provided Trump with “some” immunity.

But Democrats desperately hope for some distraction from Biden’s terrible Debate, and they are thinking maybe this could be it.

Joe made a short, sleepy, mumbly announcement last night that was just a feeble tantrum about the Immunity decision. While reading the three-minute blurb off a teleprompter, Joe recited, “For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle. And it’s a dangerous precedent.”

The three liberal Justices were equally unhinged, with Justice Sotomayor going so far as to say the majority decision transformed the Office of the President into “a king above the law.” I blame the public schools for Justice Sotomayor not knowing what a king is. She was probably thinking about a royal personage more like Burger King.
image 2.png

Let’s cut through all the noise right now. I’ll tell you what it actually said, and then I will explain why it changes everything. And after explaining how it doesn’t help Trump much, I’ll tell you how the Supreme Court sneakily helped Trump anyway, even though this decision largely ignored his actual cases. Stick with me for a minute, it will be worth it.

Regarding Presidential Immunity —for the first time in American history— the Supreme Court, solidly relying on a whole bunch of previous cases about related presidential issues, announced a brand-new three-tier immunity test:

Tier 1: Total Immunity for Constitutional Acts. “The President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” This blessed tier is only for when a president exercises explicit authority under Article Two of the Constitution. Things like negotiating treaties, issuing pardons, and directing military operations. As you can imagine, this is a small, well-defined tier.

Tier 2: Presumptive Immunity for Official Acts. The Court declared that “the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” In short, if the President acts officially, as President, that act is immune—but a prosecutor can still proceed if they can show criminalizing that type of conduct will not hinder the Presidential office.

Tier Two answers the Democrats’ most deranged temper tantrums. Prosecuting Presidents who order the military to assassinate (i.e. murder) their opponents would not harm the Presidential office, because presidents are not supposed to murder people, and it wouldn’t hinder the Presidential office to criminalize murder. Duh.

Tier 3: No Immunity for Unofficial Acts. “The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President's unofficial acts. The first step in deciding whether a former President is entitled to immunity from a particular prosecution is to distinguish his official from unofficial actions.” For example, the Court said a President has zero immunity when he acts as the leader of his political party, or when pursuing his personal interests.

Actually, assassinating political rivals would probably fall squarely under Tier 3 — enjoying no immunity at all.

As you can see, this three-tier system neither turns Presidents into kings —not Burger King, impotent King Charles, or Solomon— nor places presidents above the law. Certainly not Trump. The decision only resolved a couple of the worst counts in a single Trump case. As for the surviving counts involved in this particular appeal (Judge Chutkan’s case), the Supremes bounced most of the counts back down to her, to apply the new test and then get back to them.

I know that’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. But stick with me. This is where it gets really good.

Over-reacting Democrats —and there are plenty of those— are really only mad because the decision helped Trump indirectly, with timing. Judge Chutkan now must order more briefing and hold more hearings to satisfy the new 3-Tier Immunity Test. That will probably result in more appeals arguing she applied the test wrong, and so forth, and before you know it, Bob’s your uncle, the election will have come and gone and Trump will be walking around free as a bluebird with only an ankle monitor from his other conviction.

Democrats are also peeved because it gives Trump a small second bite at his “check stub” conviction. Yesterday, his lawyers filed a letter motion to delay sentencing —scheduled for next week— and asked Judge Merchan to reconsider the verdict under the new test. It’s a long shot, because they never argued presidential immunity as a defense in that case. But still, it annoyed Democrats.

But all of this political wrangling misses the point. Let’s jump into the C&C time machine and travel back in time to 2020, before the Trump cases were filed. (Cue wacky time-travel music.)
image 3.png

Clueless, low-information Democrats are wailing that the Judges anointed a Presidential King by creating a three-tier test under which —wait for it— Presidents can be prosecuted for crimes. Democrats are acting like this is a revolutionary improvement of the Presidential position. But that, like nearly everything else partisan Democrats say, is a lie.

What was the rule before the Supreme Court issued its decision? Well, before Trump, no president was ever prosecuted for a crime. Not for droning an Iraqi wedding. Not for illegal wars. Not even for jaywalking or running lawn sprinklers on a Tuesday.

Presidential prosecutions never ever happened.

Don’t miss this: before Trump, presidents obviously enjoyed de facto total immunity. The unspoken rule that everyone followed was that nobody can prosecute the President, or even a former President.

During the period the de facto total immunity rule reigned, the Supreme Court never had to address Presidential immunity. There were no cases; that’s how absolute the immunity was. But now that the Court has crafted a de jure (legal) rubric, Presidents who do illegal things can be prosecuted. They can now be prosecuted much more easily, in fact. Just not for nuisance claims, like the creative, trumped-up claims brought against President Trump, such as for notating his check stubs wrong.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Evidence shows President Obama was involved in the now-discredited Russia Dossier matter, which was used as a false predicate to spy on the Trump campaign for partisan political purposes. Evidence suggests Obama knew the Dossier was fake, purchased by the Clinton campaign. Yesterday’s new 3-tier test provides a clear procedure for prosecuting Obama for those very serious allegations.

In other words, the High Court incinerated de facto Presidential immunity, and replaced it with a clear de jure prosecutorial process. Former and future Presidents susceptible to more serious crimes than Trump’s are now fair game. I even got a very reluctant AI chatbot to agree:
image 4.png

The irony! By bringing all these silly, creative claims against President Trump for keeping a few boxes of “classified documents,” and because his bookkeeper wrote the wrong thing on a check stub, the Supreme Court got an unprecedented opportunity to end forever the silent, implicit protection previously enjoyed by every other previous President. That de facto absolute immunity is gone, never to return.

And now it’s open season on serious crimes committed by Presidents.

If President Trump wins the election, this decision provides exactly the right tool his DOJ needs to prosecute the last twenty years of Presidential malfeasance and abuses of authority. It almost seems like Trump planned it this way. In hindsight, it couldn’t have gone any better for Trump in the big picture. When Trump’s DOJ brings its first charges against Biden and Obama, the media cannot wail about it being “unprecedented.” He’ll just be following the law.

Beyond those long-term benefits for President Trump, the decision also placed a massive granite capstone on out-of-control Presidential authority. All future Presidents, Trump included, must now consider potential criminal liability under the new Trump v. US standard. The new rule will make Presidents much more careful when acting outside their Constitutional authority, like when they mandate vaccine shots or something, just as a random example.

So … it’s not even so much that Trump won. The American People won.

But the good news doesn’t stop there! Justice Thomas’s concurrence slid an assassin’s knife into Trump’s two most dangerous criminal cases.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon sits in the Southern District of Florida and presides over the Mar-a-Lago raid case. She is the only Trump judge the Democrats dislike, intensely, because she has been ruling fairly. Judge Cannon right now is considering the issue of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s authority. And Justice Thomas just penned an entire concurring opinion carefully analyzing Prosecutor Smith’s authority. Justice Thomas’s conclusion was that Smith lacks the Constitutional basis to prosecute his two Trump cases. Yesterday’s headline from the New York Sun:
image 5.png

Justice Thomas’s astonishing concurrence is not binding law. That’s not what the case was about. But it just handed a shrink-wrapped legal package to Judge Cannon, that will fuel her decision against the Special Prosecutor. After all, she now has a complete roadmap dished up by a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

Justice Thomas was Judge Cannon’s law clerk.

If Judge Cannon follows Justice Thomas’s Constitutional roadmap —and why wouldn’t she?— both of Prosecutor Smith’s cases will probably be dismissed. Democrats couldn’t fairly criticize Judge Cannon’s decision to dismiss, because she won’t just be some rebellious federal judge in South Florida. Her opinion would be consistent with a Supreme Court Justice’s analysis. And when the government inevitably appeals, in light of Thomas’s concurrence, the Eleventh Circuit would be under great pressure to affirm her decision. Then the majority of the Supreme Court could decline to hear a further appeal, since the Court has essentially already weighed in.

If it isn’t quite checkmate, it looks a lot like “mate in two.” Yesterday’s opinion greatly helped Trump, both by complicating his other cases apart from Prosecutor Smith’s, and also by stabbing Agent Smith’s two cases in the heart.
image 6.png

But beyond any benefits to President Trump, we the people benefited the most.

The Supreme Court still wasn’t done yet. It quietly slipped in another decision that could help tear the bloated, rotten heart out of the entire deep state.

(more...)
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...uesday-july-2-2024-c

Been evil his whole life.

quote:

Originally posted by Imabmwnut:
Been evil his whole life.

Now who would you be referring to?

I'll surmise sotomeyor quote on immunity is the dumbest thing ever said by a justice.

^^^^ yeah she's turning out to be an empty gown

quote:

Originally posted by sse:
^^^^ yeah she's turning out to be an empty gown

But she's a reliable vote for the leftist/commie/Dems.

quote:

Originally posted by pbslinger:
I'll surmise sotomeyor quote on immunity is the dumbest thing ever said by a justice.

This coming from a justice that referred to Former President Trump as having committed "traitorous acts"!

Apparently she either doesn't know he hasn't even been charged (not mention convicted) of being a traitor in a court of law! So where's her respect for the constitutional recognition of the presumption of innocence?

IMHO, Sotomayor has displayed a degree of bias that can only be rectified by recusal on matters involving the former president directly. I mean just how blatant does it have to be???

The Coffee & Covid article posted above by Chellim1 is a great explanation of the SCOTUS decision. Please read it

In light of this decision, I have been thinking about the Obama ordered drone strikes that killed 3 US Citizens, including Anwar alAwlaki.

This article really clarified things. As I now understand this... prior to the SCOTUS decision, Obama would not have been prosecuted for these killings because of the long standing "tradition" that Presidents and ex Presidents enjoyed virtually total immunity and would not/could not be prosecuted for such actions.

However, SCOTUS has now stated that under their Tier 2 test, a President CAN be prosecuted for illegally killing an American citizen.

So, the DOJ could now bring charges against Obama for that drone attack on alAwlaki. DOJ could also prosecute Biden for assainating Trump - contrary to Sotamayor's comments.

quote:

Originally posted by Rick Lee:
This ruling did not give the POTUS carte blanche to do anything he wants. His actions are still subject to Congressional oversight, impeachment, judicial review, etc. It's just that he can't be prosecuted for official acts, which doesn't make all official acts are perfectly legal. Hell, it's not like any president has been prosecuted for his crimes (real or imagined) in the past.

If this ruling makes politicial persecution via lawfare more difficult, then I'm all for it. As much as we'd all love to see Brandon answer for his crimes, we all know the worst that will ever happen is he loses the election (again) and is punished by historians.

It also does not immunize those below the President that carry out Unlawful orders.

This didn't take long:

Link

House Democrat proposes constitutional amendment to reverse justices' presidential immunity ruling

Aleading House Democrat is preparing a constitutional amendment in response to the Supreme Court's landmark immunity ruling, seeking to reverse the decision “and ensure that no president is above the law.”

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, sent a letter to colleagues informing them of his intent to file a resolution to start what's traditionally a cumbersome amendment process.

"This amendment will do what SCOTUS failed to do — prioritize our democracy,” Morelle said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Morelle said that former President Trump "must be held accountable for his decisions," adding: "I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and stand with me on the front line to protect our democracy.”
It's the most significant legislative response yet to the immunity decision earlier this week from the court's conservative majority, which stunned Washington and drew a sharp dissent from the court's liberal justices, who warned that the ruling imperils democracy, particularly as Trump seeks to return to the White House.

Still, the effort stands almost no chance of succeeding in this Congress.

Writing for the court's majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their official duties — a decision that throws into doubt the Justice Department's cases against Trump, including for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump and his allies celebrated the ruling by the high court, which includes three justices appointed by the Republican former president. His legal team immediately moved to delay next week's scheduled sentencing for his felony conviction in an unrelated hush money case in New York state court. The judge agreed to postpone the sentencing until fall.

The outcome all but ensures the federal cases against Trump will not be resolved before the November election, when he faces a likely rematch with President Biden.

The constitutional amendment process would likely take years, and might never come to fruition — but supporters believe it is the most surefire way to enshrine the norm that presidents can face consequences for their actions.

“This amendment will guarantee that no public officer of the United States — including the president — is able to evade the accountability that any other American would face for violating our laws,” Morelle wrote in a letter to colleagues this week.

He quoted Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who led the dissent, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined in dissenting along with their fellow liberal, Justice Elena Kagan. Morelle then summed up in his own words: "Presidents are citizens, not tyrants."

Another Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, said Monday that she planned to file articles of impeachment against the justices behind the ruling, which she said represents "an assault on American democracy."

“It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture,” Ocasio-Cortez said on social media. “I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.”

The House and Senate are on recess this week for the Fourth of July and will be back in session on Monday.

A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate — highly unlikely at this time of divided government — followed by ratification by three-fourths, or 38, of the 50 states.

There have been 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The most recent, adopted in 1992 after more than 200 years, is the Congressional Compensation Act, which prevents any changes to House or Senate salaries from going into effect before the next election.