This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court ruled that presidents are “absolutely” immune from criminal prosecution when their actions involve allegedly official acts while they were in office.
In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts remanded the case to the lower courts, which now have to determine whether Trump’s conduct was official or unofficial.
A grand jury approved an indictment against Trump in August for charges including conspiracy to defraud the US and obstructing an official proceeding.
Trump faces a series of legal challenges across the country both at the state and federal levels.
Most recently, he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York in a trial over hush money payments, including payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress a story about her and Trump having sex.
That means — unlike in the state case — that if Trump were convicted but elected president, he could potentially pardon himself.
The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 49%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What he did was not official. Now the lower court gets to decide what is official, and it’s being intentionally slowed down until AFTER the election so the current admin can’t go ballswild with the new allowances. Fuck these Maga-locing shitheads on the SC.
I’m positive Cannon will decide that relocating documents to Mar-A-Lago was an official act.
It happened before AND after he was out of office, and they were caught on tape moving locations. Knowingly relocating Presidential documents outside of the chain of command in itself is a crime. It’s technically treasonous.
Yeah, but that law requires intent and all that evidence you mentioned can be thrown out.
Intent is proven by subjective knowledge of what he knew about the law, and his internal staff have already testified he knew of the existing laws. There’s also recent recodings of him saying so and worrying about a crime being committed. He knew, and illustrated such, it’s not a hearsay case if he’s on tape, and others acted at his direction, which again, is already on record.
The ruling explicitly states that those things on the record are not admissible if they were not through some public form of communication. So his phone call to the Georgia governor would be inadmissible even though it is currently public knowledge since it was originally a private call he claims was official business.
His public tweets would be admissible.
It does not state that AT ALL. I’ve read it twice. Please feel free to link me to my error.
RIOT
We won’t because we’re asleep at the wheel. Don’t worry though, we will finally wake up when Trump enters his third term. It’ll be too late to do anything about it but at least we’ll be awake.
Thats not gonna cut it. I’m down now. I’ll lose my job over losing my democracy.
Where we marching?
DC
We got rally points set up? These jackasses are gonna try to turn us into slaves so they can survive the climate inferno.
So americans, now you can show if you actually mean it when you say this is what you have the 2nd for.
Unfortunately the ones who say that about 2A are on the side of the nationalists.
I’m clairvoyant and I can see the future: They won’t. It’s always been all bark and no bite when it comes to armed revolution here in the states.
Well I suppose not always. We did have a revolutionary war and a civil war.
But anybody alive today? Less bite than a newborn.
Also the Whiskey rebellion and Union/county wars, but nobody remembers them because they were relatively small. Also a lot of Rednecks especially Boomers and Gen X ended up being fucken bootlickers, sure there are some of us within Gen Z who are trying to revers the damage but well culture rarely moves fast.
Hey now, don’t besmirch the name Redneck with those sad sods. The Rednecks fought the good fight at the Battle of Blair Mountain, only to be put down by the US military backing robber barons.
Oh no I agree, I was moreso opining the damage done to Redneck culture as a whole. I may be of the Southern Californian variety and have little to no relations to those fine sons of bitches in the Appalachians but I have nothing but respect for mine distant kin. No I was simply stating that the bootlickers in who were taken advantage of through several points of cultural weakness did a shit tonne of damage. I have had the pleasure of talking to Rednecks of the Greatest generation and Silent generation, theyre no shits given savagery is something I wish I could muster but given the fact at least one of them car bombed one of his bosses and smuggled guns to the IRA I can say that I will never match up. But im still doing better than the Boomers.
Lol yeah right.
2A has been toothless for awhile. What good is stock modded AR15 supposed to do against tanks and fighters jets.
And that’s why they didn’t bother with guns in Iraq. Defeating the Americans was hopeless; mission accomplished.
This response is so weird I can’t quite tell what your point is. Are you suggesting that the Iraqis resisted with small arms fire? Because that’s not the case.
More US citizens die each year in the US from guns than US soldiers died in the entirety of the Iraq war. And it’s not a small difference either - each year 4-5x as many citizens die from gun violence. Not including suicides (which would more than double the number)
So was your post trying to say the small arms resistance in Iraq was effective?
When a group of American freedom fighters go to take over a U.S.A. military base and hesitant soldiers aren’t sure if they should follow a traitorous president or their oath to the Constitution, the American freedom fighters being well-armed will make the difference.
To be fair, the fighting would be guerilla warfare which the us hasn’t been that great at dealing with.
might have a tough time as a guerilla when your maga neighbors are informing on you
remember what we used to do with collaborators during the french resistance?
I’m a pacifist and don’t want to glorify violence at all but, the 'RA also was very effective at dealing with collaborators and informers. Minority rule cannot sustain itself in the long-term.
I used to be a pacifist too. But apparently, peaceful protests can be too easily ignored.
Takes all kinds.
We could probably mount a pretty decent resistance with what we have available. look what happened in iraq during the occupation. insurgency would be the way to go in a rebellion against the us govt.
20 years of war, 2,459 US lives, plus about 3 months.
cough Vietnam cough
Exactly why I think americans who say the 2A needs to stay to overthrow a fascist government is full of shit. I would love to be proven wrong though
It’s still good enough to shoot people who accidentally step on your lawn, or the teachers and co-students you had a disagreement with.
Well, fellow Americans. This experiment with democracy was fun while it lasted. Every significant goal of the founding fathers has been systematically thwarted by these Christofascists. We once again have a de-facto monarch.
The consequences of this decision will be dire, and unpredictable. Every law, every right, every freedom can now be undone by an official wave of the president’s hand. Rights to privacy? Gone. Due process? Gone. Bill of Rights? Gone.
No one—democrat or republican—should be happy about this. The right to bear arms is now on the chopping block right along with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.
Hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m misreading the situation. But it sure sounds like every right that previously defined us as American people now hinges on the benevolence of our president. Americans can no longer brag about “American freedom.”
And Europe’s next. Another far right puppet of Putin will be elected to run a European country in the next few weeks. Just shows that Europe follows the US in lockstep with a 5 year delay.
The sad thing is that you’re completely correct.
It’s over. This is the beginning of the true end. The end has been in sight for a while now, but it was always over the horizon.
Now we can actually see it.
There is not a way for us to legally come back from this.
In retrospect, I guess that we should have seen it coming that the Supreme Court of lifelong, unelected officials would be our undoing.
It’s pretty sad that we’re all taking this lying down with all of our Second Amendment talk.
As an official act, dissolve the current supreme court and reverse every terrible decision they made.
Biden can now legally shoot Trump on stage during the next debate. Gotcha.
I don’t think having a raspy voice will be the biggest talking point in the aftermath this time.
And if anyone raises a stink and somehow manages to prove that this was illegal anyway, I’m sure it’s the same people who have claimed that he’s senile anyway.
Biden could, but he won’t. We’re just going to get more finger wagging and muttering at him about being a scoundrel and shit.
Correct. He’s still trying to Chamberlain when it’s long overdue that he goes full Kubiš & Gabčík.
“The only way to solve this is by voting harder.” They leave out the “for the next 30 years, continuously, until the court is rebalanced through natural causes and decides to undo what is now ‘precedent’”.
The key point here is what constitutes an official act. I would say an insurrection is the opposite of official.
Kicking the can down the road to buy him time.
If anyone ever doubted that the DNC and the GOP weren’t on the same team, just watch as the DNC let this opportunity slip right through their fingers. Access to the greatest political, strategical, minds and they will let this opening wash away into a river of fascism.
It’s a play, we are watching theatre. Meant to keep you distracted. Meant to keep you oppressed.
1000% this. If the DNC wanted to stop this, they could have.
How?
For starters, by spending the last 4 years training a different candidate to beat trump this year.
But failing that, they could absolutely have prevented that disaster on the debate. They knew full well how the rest of America will react to seeing Biden look like that, and I find it no coincidence that it happened directly before The Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron and Grant immunity to Trump.
While that is interesting, you realize before the 4 years you mentioned, Trump did everything he’s in trouble for doing. He also established the supreme court we have. If Biden randomly died his first 5 months, we still would be in a similar (if not the same) situation. Every person who made this happen, would still have their previously established power. Training someone new would not have stopped this inevitability.
Meant to keep you distracted
From what?
We could all collectively decide to chop the heads off of the elite. We don’t need to argue about which capitalist is better every 4 years. There’s nothing physically stopping 90% of the country from just overthrowing the other 10% if we really tried together
Surely if something he does is unconstitutional, it is not within his official capacity or power!?
But somehow I have a feeling I’m being extremely naive just thinking that.The SCOTUS majority just decided that nothing the president does is illegal, at least in a way that can ever be prosecuted.
I mean… I actually agree with (aspects of) that ruling. A nation’s leader is going to have to, by necessity, do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put “war”
The issue is defining what counts as an “official act” and having any kind of checks and balances on that.
For example: Let’s look at the purely hypothetical example of an outgoing president engaging in a violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to prevent losing power. Crazy, right? But, in that example, it is not at all a stretch that said former president is an enemy of the state. There is a lot of legal discussion on whether it is legal to pop them in the head without a series of trials but it is in that range where it is probably better than not to give the elected POTUS immunity in that situation.
But what if that outgoing president insisted that it was an “official act” to lead that violent insurrection? No intelligent person would at all consider that a defense.
Prior presidents have done all kinds of shady shit without worrying about prosecution. Even the angry orange didn’t get charged until he tried to overthrow an election.
There was zero reason to even decide this case except to give immunity to someone who blatantly abuses their authority.
From the dissent:
Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless
When the foremost observers of the fascist cabal say their ruling is “just as bad as it sounds”, I will take their word for it.
do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put “war”
Note that as bad as that is and as evil as it has sometimes been, it is “legal”, and thus not subject to criminal prosecution. It is specifically legal for the president to do that sketchy stuff.
For an “official” act to be illegal, but not subject to prosecution just makes no sense. It shouldn’t be possible for an illegal act to be “official”.
Extra bonkers is the 5/4 opinion that you can’t even mention official acts, like if you accept a bribe in exchange for an appointment, you can’t mention the appointment while trying to prosecute the bribe.
The SCOTUS can lick my fucking SCROTUS.
So, is insurrection an official act?
Only if you win.
Then its called a revolution instead.
Also if you lose apparently
Only if done by a republican.
IOKIYAR
Okay.
Biden should officially execute half the Court with no trial.
Did they just make it legal for the president to be officially crooked?
Yup
Very legal and very cool
Maybe. But Biden still has time for it to not be so cool for Trump.
Yes
Citizens United was the first step to make it blatantly legal by being able to hide donations in a way that makes make it easy to give money directly to candidates from any source, foreign and domestic.
Then that “it was a gratuity, not a bribe” ruling last week means anyone can just buy off politicians in the open.
So as of this morning it is legal for a foreign country to bribe the president to have someone assassinated.
