Is anyone else highly concerned with the SCOTUS ruling that the POTUS is immune from criminal liability?
Is anyone else highly concerned with the SCOTUS ruling that the POTUS is immune from criminal liability?
Sorry if this is not the proper community for this question. Please let me know if I should post this question elsewhere.
So like, I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or jump on some conspiracy theory crap, but this seems like very troubling news to me. My entire life, I've been under the impression that no one is technically/officially above the law in the US, especially the president. I thought that was a hard consensus among Americans regardless of party. Now, SCOTUS just made the POTUS immune to criminal liability.
The president can personally violate any law without legal consequences. They also already have the ability to pardon anyone else for federal violations. The POTUS can literally threaten anyone now. They can assassinate anyone. They can order anyone to assassinate anyone, then pardon them. It may even grant complete immunity from state laws because if anyone tries to hold the POTUS accountable, then they can be assassinated too. This is some Putin-level dictator stuff.
I feel like this is unbelievable and acknowledge that I may be wayyy off. Am I misunderstanding something?? Do I need to calm down?
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You're not wrong, and if anything it's actually worse than it at first seems. This is a radically new and expansive interpretation of the powers of the presidency that effectively say, there is no difference between use and abuse of executive power. Any use of the power is by definition legitimate and cannot be an abuse.
Consider bribery, one of the few crimes explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Say the President of China writes a personal check to the President of the United States in exchange for using any one of his constitutional powers, like a pardon, or sending in seal team 6, or appointing that person attorney general, or to a cabinet position.
First, The president's motive can never be considered or investigated. Now think about that. There is no criminal prosecution in history that hasn't included some investigation of motive. It is key to describing quid pro quo. But because the president is absolutely immune in all of their official acts, their motive for using the official act cannot be entered into evidence.
Secondly, the official act itself cannot be used as evidence in any investigation even of a non-official act. So you could never say in an indictment or in a court of law, " and then the president issued the pardon", or " and then the president sent in seal team 6", you could only say in the indictment that person x gave the president some money. That's it.
Then there's Justice Thomas's opinion which, not to get in the weeds, but says that appointing a special prosecutor for the case in Georgia is a gross abuse of power. And unconstitutional.
So it is essential for the functioning of the executive branch that the President's right to stage a military coup of the United States be protected, but appointing a special prosecutor is a tyrannical act and gross abuse of power.
Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for attempting to overthrow the government, but Joe Biden is a tyrant for assigning an independent investigator to investigate him.
It is impossible to look at this supreme Court 's decisions and not see that their interpretation of the Constitution differs greatly depending on which party is in power.
The podcasters at 5-4 called this a Dred v Scott-type decision. Dred v Scott was the decision that held in the 1800s that slaves were property and could not Free themselves, and which led directly to the civil war.
We'll have to live with this decision for several years whether we like it or not, until at least two and probably three supreme Court justices leave the court and are replaced by non-conservative kooks. It may be the law of the land for the rest of our lifetime. It certainly will be the law of the land for the next decade and there is really nothing that the president or Congress can do about it as far as we know.
Oh and if Trump is elected, All of the oldest supreme Court justices could resign in order to allow Trump to appoint much younger arch conservative justices who will live longer and ensure that a conservative dominated Court controls us for many more years.
For 248 years, presidents were required to uphold the rule of law, otherwise there was an understanding that we would indict your ass the second you left office. The supreme Court has determined that is unconstitutional, and in order to uphold the rule of law, the supreme executive with the most power of any person in the world, must have a free hand to violate practically any law and cannot be prosecuted for it ever.
The only remedy is impeachment and removal from office. 2/3 of the Senate need to agree to impeachment in order to remove a president from office, and the President has such sweeping powers and immunity that it will be, especially in this divided era, impossible to reach that threshold.
So nobody is exaggerating when they call this an invitation to Donald Trump to become an autocrat. Roberts, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett have destroyed The credibility of their court and set the table for The greatest threat to the existence of the United States as a democracy since the civil war.
The start of Imperialist fascism in the United States. This is late stage Capitalism. This warning has been documented by the likes of Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.