I do so hope that the Supreme Court information about Trump is correct. It would relieve a lot of burden off of his shoulders.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
Funny, I say the same thing all the time

And I mutter it not only about the demonrats but RINOs like Mittens as well.

Everyone had better hope that immunity is upheld because if it isn’t I can see the Kenyan and his proxy being prosecuted for a lot greater crimes.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
Funny, I say the same thing all the time

I ran an errand the other day, less than a mile away, and noticed four cars with FJB bumper stickers. Loved seeing them.

I do mutter it to myself all the time myself.

A question for the Forum legal beagles: When justices in a Supreme Court case grill one side vs the other is that an indicator of the ruling? I'm asking because I'm listening to the Trump Immunity case audio and Michael Dreeben (Justice Dept counsel) is really getting grilled by all justices.

YouTube audio on Viva Frei (Trump supporter but very little commentary):

Dreeben is saying that judges and prosecutors take an oath to uphold the law and wouldn't misuse it against a president. Dreeben wants the court to allow discretion with prosecutors to determine whether a president has immunity, depending on the crime, but as another justice said, charging him with a crime means he can be prosecuted as a sitting or former president which justifies proceeding against him.

The government view suggests that unless a president is given a special exemption under the constitution, he's open to criminal charges with prosecutorial discretion. Grand juries indict all the time and that would open the floodgates to charging all presidents.

I think even that the Wise Latina sees the government's position as ripe for abuse.

quote:

Originally posted by Twist18:
Not sure if this is the right thread to ask this, but I’m wondering about the charges in Georgia. Shouldn’t the state be bringing the charges, and not a local DA? The crimes he’s charged with, from my understanding, are state election crimes.

District Attorneys are the Representatives of the state. The state is bringing the charges.
Also most state elections are run at the County level by the rules dictated by the state.

https://www.findlaw.com/crimin...trict-attorneys.html

quote:

In Georgia, the district attorney (D.A.) serves as the chief prosecuting officer. Along with a team of assistant district attorneys, the D.A. files criminal cases in state court on behalf of the government. As the prosecuting officer who represents the state, they address criminal activity and ensure public safety.
Here's what you should know about the district attorney's role in Georgia:

Scope and jurisdiction: Georgia is divided into 50 judicial circuits, and each circuit has its own district attorney. The circuits span from one to eight counties.
Election and role: Every district attorney is an elected official. Their primary duties include representing the state during the trial and appellate process for felony cases in the Superior Court, as well as juvenile delinquency cases. In counties where there's a solicitor general, the solicitor general handles misdemeanors.

Seldom in history has there ever been a bigger elephant in the room than the question of succeeding administrations weaponizing courts against a predecessor.

if they set the standard of eliminating immunity, then its weapons free on all past presidents - they realize that, don't they?

are they really that stupid....

oops, my bad

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
if they set the standard of eliminating immunity, then its weapons free on all past presidents - they realize that, don't they?

After listening to the oral arguments I have the feeling that the court will come down on Trumps side. I think three justices brought up your exact same point and never really did get a good answer from DOJs Michael Dreeben. He seemed ill prepared for this case.

Interesting...


https://twitter.com/julie_kell.../1784228073392513169

quote:

So, in other words, the federal government potentially shipped boxes of classified information from government storage to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, then charged him for possessing it, then rescinded his clearance after charging him?

That's not a fair interpretation of those documents.

Has there been testimony or evidence that GSA knew or had indexed the contents? Or was it just a pallet of boxes that needed to be moved?

That's the thing, these documents were just uncovered via FOIA of from unredacted motions in FLA. All of this was previously redacted, one should wonder why.

quote:

federal government potentially

Anything to this? Are they trying to steal TX, among other places?

Somehow, I’ve got in my head, that when all this started, the National Archives knew Trump had some documents. They went to Mar-a-Lago went through them, and removed some. They told Trump to put another lock on the door, and went home. Not long after that, Mar-a-Lago was raided.

I don’t remember this information being around very long.

quote:

Originally posted by Muddflap:
Somehow, I’ve got in my head, that when all this started, the National Archives knew Trump had some documents. They went to Mar-a-Lago went through them, and removed some. They told Trump to put another lock on the door, and went home. Not long after that, Mar-a-Lago was raided.

I don’t remember this information being around very long.

It has been around since the beginning of this whole mess.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...ls-prosecution-trump

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised a question Thursday that goes to the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith's charges against former President Donald Trump.

The high court was considering Trump's argument that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president, but another issue is whether Smith and the Office of Special Counsel have the authority to bring charges at all.

"Did you, in this litigation, challenge the appointment of special counsel?" Thomas asked Trump attorney John Sauer on Thursday during a nearly three-hour session at the Supreme Court.

Sauer replied that Trump's attorneys had not raised that concern "directly" in the current Supreme Court case — in which justices are considering Trump's arguments that presidential immunity precludes the prosecution of charges that the former president illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Sauer told Thomas that, "we totally agree with the analysis provided by Attorney General Meese [III] and Attorney General Mukasey."

"It points to a very important issue here because one of [the special counsel's] arguments is, of course, that we should have this presumption of regularity. That runs into the reality that we have here an extraordinary prosecutorial power being exercised by someone who was never nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate at any time. So we agree with that position. We hadn't raised it yet in this case when this case went up on appeal," Sauer said.

In a 42-page amicus brief presented to the high court in March, Meese and Mukasey questioned whether "Jack Smith has lawful authority to undertake the 'criminal prosecution'" of Trump. Mukasey and Meese — both former U.S. attorneys general — said Smith and the Office of Special Counsel itself have no authority to prosecute, in part because he was never confirmed by the Senate to any position.

Federal prosecutions, "can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices," Meese and Mukasey argued. "But neither Smith nor the position of special counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. He wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design. And that is a serious problem for the rule of law — whatever one may think of former President Trump or the conduct on January 6, 2021, that Smith challenges in the underlying case."

The crux of the problem, according to Meese, is that Smith was never confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. attorney, and no other statute allows the U.S. attorney general to name merely anyone as special counsel. Smith was acting U.S. attorney for a federal district in Tennessee in 2017, but he was never nominated to the position. He resigned from the private sector after then-President Trump nominated a different prosecutor as U.S. attorney for the middle district of Tennessee.

Meese and Mukasey argued that because the special counsel exercises broad authority to convene grand juries and make prosecutorial decisions, independent of the White House or the attorney general, he is far more powerful than any government officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate.

Sauer and Trump's other attorneys objected to the legitimacy of Smith's appointment in the charges against Trump in the classified documents case, also brought by Smith, before a Florida federal court.

In a March court filing in Florida, Trump's attorneys claimed that the special counsel's office argues in federal court that Smith is wholly independent of the White House and Garland — contradicting Trump's arguments that the federal charges against him are politically motivated. But at the same time, the special counsel's attorneys insist that Smith is subordinate to the attorney general, and therefore not subject to Senate confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"There is significant tension between the Office’s assurances to that court that Smith is independent, and not prosecuting the Republican nominee for President at the direction of the Biden Administration, and the Office’s assurance here that Smith is not independent and is instead so thoroughly supervised and accountable to President Biden and Attorney General Garland that this Court should not be concerned about such tremendous power being exercised to alter the trajectory of the ongoing presidential election," Trump's attorneys wrote in the filing.

The special counsel's office, responding to Trump's claims in the Florida case, argued that the attorney general "has the statutory authority to appoint a Special Prosecutor" and that the Supreme Court even upheld that authority "in closely analogous circumstances nearly 50 years ago" — in a 1974 case that challenged the prosecutor investigating the late President Richard Nixon.

Meese and Mukasey wrote in their brief that the Nixon case was irrelevant because it "concerned the relationship between the President and DOJ as an institution, not between the President and any specific actor purportedly appointed by DOJ."

The pair also said special counsel investigations are necessary and often lawful, but stated that "the Attorney General cannot appoint someone never confirmed by the Senate, as a substitute United States Attorney under the title ‘Special Counsel.’ Smith’s appointment was thus unlawful, as are all actions flowing from it, including his prosecution of former President Trump."

Smith was a private citizen when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him as special counsel to investigate Trump in 2022.

Other recent special counsels — including John Durham's Trump-Russia probe; David Weiss of the Hunter Biden investigation; and Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's mishandling of classified documents — were all confirmed by the Senate to various positions before being named as special counsels.

The Florida court has yet to rule on Trump's motion to dismiss the classified documents case due to claims that Smith was improperly appointed.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump's immunity arguments before its term ends in June.

^^^^^^
A day-brightener, sdy.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
A question for the Forum legal beagles: When justices in a Supreme Court case grill one side vs the other is that an indicator of the ruling?

In most cases that's tricky, there are so many things that can affect this, the pubic notoriety and attention is unbelievable, especially since they started releasing the audio. I've never appeared before the SCOTUS, but have noticed recently that predictions of outcomes haven't been too far off the mark. But in normal cases in lower courts it's a bad idea to call up the client afterward and say we have it locked. The main reason is that you can have everything in your favor, and the court should agree, but then hands down a surprise.

As the creator of the Boston publican “Mr Dooley” had him say: