Benito wasn’t exactly a Rhode’s scholar.
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I guess he really DID have an Article II that said he could do whatever he wants to do.
And might again.
Totoro help us!
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NYT liveblog:
The Supreme Court majority ruling sets the stage for a new appeals fight if prosecutors continue to want to tell the jury about former President Trump pressuring former Vice President Pence to disrupt the counting of Biden’s Electoral College votes — a linchpin to understanding the fake electors scheme, according to the indictment.
Chief Justice Roberts says Trump’s pressuring of Pence was certainly official conduct, but leaves open the question of whether it counts as the core kind for which Trump has absolutely immunity, or a lessor kind where he has only a presumption of immunity that can be overcome.
I have to go make a grocery run, after banging my head against the wall a few more times. See y’all later.
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“An imperial court writing about an imperial president”
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I want to thank this SCOTUS.
Five days ago, it was about a man who’s believed to be too old and should be put to pasture.
It’s now about six Justices (hopefully not including KBJ) who cherishes that sweet smell of dictatorship.
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How many pinheads can dance on the head of a angel?
Edited to make more sense
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J6 trial may not be done by election, but many opportunities to drag Trump through the mud with mini-trials…Is pressuring the states to overturn an election a core duty. What about inciting a insurrection?
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okay, I admit to not knowing much about the specific intelligence level of either of those two, but c’mon. Did they ramble on about sharks and electrocution? Did they actually think that sticking a light inside your body would cure a virus? Because Trump actually believes those dumb things he says. And he thinks he’s brilliant.
Trump is more stupid than I really ever thought a person could be. He thinks the first time he learns about something that he’s the first person to ever have learned about it. Maybe other dictators weren’t smart either but he really takes the cake. He is one of the stupidest people who has ever lived, and despite not knowing the majority of people who have ever lived, I feel very confident in making that assertion.
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I love his newest boner about electric planes not being able to fly at night.
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How this “conservative” court views the unfettered prerogatives of the president also speaks to the inviolable role of every executive in our society.
Money is not speech.
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He can technically have them rounded up and shot along with Trump, saying ‘There were suspicions that these individuals were enemy combatants who may or may not have engaged in, or been preparing to engage in, attacks against the American government. While Law Enforcement attempted to detain them, there was a chance they would act in ways that could make the officers fear for their lives, so I pre-emptively ordered them shot.’
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Until now, I would have been certain that conduct like this couldn’t be held to be within a president’s official role or duties. But today, with this lineup in the Supreme Court, I think that’s quite possible. Even likely.
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yes, yes, yes If he can accomplish that, or be well on the way to accomplish that before election day, there’ll be no question of his competence.
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Especially w/a Republican Speaker.
FLaggED!
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Intentionally or not, and depending on the exact nature of the procedure they are requiring, the Court may have decided to require the single best means to insure that Trump loses.
He keeps telling us that he really won the last election, that it was stolen by a vast D/RINO/Deep State conspiracy. If you try to object that he lost 63 cases in court over that claim, he will point out that he was not allowed to present his evidence.
So, in this procedure SCOTUS is ordering, he finally gets his chance to present the evidence, whatever information he had that would make a reasonable person believe that the election was stolen strongly enough to prompt that person to take action to stop the steal, within that person’s authorities and duties.
I don’t think that there is a reasonable argument against the claim that a president has a duty, an inescapable duty, to intervene with all the powers of the office, to prevent any federal election being stolen. Of course if you believe the election was stolen, you as president can, and really must, do everything to Stop The Steal.
Trump’s big problem if the matter is framed that way is that he did too little. Of course he had the clear duty to invoke the Insurrection Act if he had evidence enough to convince a reasonable person that the election was being stolen. Federal law enforcement and the military, if necessary, should have been sent in to confiscate the ballots and voting machines, to allow the forensic audit and definitive recount he kept telling us at the time would alone have proven his suspicions correct.
Trump reportedly considered that course of action, with at least summaries and impressions of the 12/18/20 WH meeting by now a matter of public record. Well, using his office to proceed at Stopping the Steal would have required him to convince his executive branch subordinates at DoJ and DoD that reasonable people could believe that the election was stolen. Well, they were not so convinced. Trump could have made the evidence public, if he believed that Barr and his DoD acting secy had somehow joined the conspiracy. He did none of that.
Failure to produce this evidence should have been at least one, if not the only, conduct over which he was impeached the second time. The trial in the Senate should have been the forum where he was forced to stand and deliver, to finally tell us all exactly why he thought it his duty to do all the fraudulent and obstructionist things he did to undermine the election result, rather than use the authority granted him under law to that end.
If this procedure SCOTUS is ordering is anything like that trial of the facts that failed to happen at the second impeachment, the result would be far better for the cause of defeating Trump than even a guilty verdict in the govt’s case before Judge Chutkan. Those charges cleverly sidestep – presumably out of a well-justified fear of jury nullification and a reluctance to take n the burden of proving a state of mind – requiring the prosecution to prove the belief-state in Trump’s mind about the evidence that he had lost. Well, maybe that was too clever. It would have avoided the central question of whether or not it was reasonable to believe that the election was stolen.
So, the court is ordering that a proceeding be held over exactly that point – what reasons Trump had before him during that lame duck to believe the election had been stolen. Those reasons clearly failed to convince even conscienceless partisan hacks like Barr that sending in law enforcement to confiscate ballots and voting machines was justified, so this procedure would involve calling Barr to the stand, calling in all the participants at the 12/18/20 WH meeting, etc, etc.,etc…The entire focus would be the presence or absence of a reasonable presentation that the election had been stolen, and therefore presidential action was not only justified, but required by his duty. Of course Trump loses in that procedure, because in the actual event, during the lame duck, he failed to prove that case to his own hand-picked partisan executive officers.
The devil is in the details, and if the procedure is not structured this way, as a forum in which Trump will be forced to finally stand and deliver this evidence that convinced a reasonable mind such as his the the election was stolen, then the FedSoc Six are indeed just running interference for Trump by creating yet another delay. But if the procedure fits the bill I have outlined, then it will determine that both Trump and a party whose sole credo now is that Trump Really Won, are all liars. It will be an effective guilty verdict, not just predetermining his loss of the trial itself, but also a guilty verdict reachable before the election.
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Those who know him agree.
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KBJ’s dissent is powerful.
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Richard Milhous is smiling somewhere down there.
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Nixon said: “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
I say: “If it’s a criminal act, that means it’s not an official act.”
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