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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?

371 comments

  • Disclaimer: someone calm me and op down.

    I couldn't believe that every post wasn't about this ruling all day

    No, you shouldn't calm down, this decision is absolutely cataclysmic for the US should a dangerous person be elected or the ruling not overturned.

    I've been saying the states are okay despite all SCOTUS' stripping of civil rights and everything else wrong with that country because as long as there were checks and balances, voting had relevance.

    With this ruling,I can't see that it will continue to.

    A president can order their political opponents murdered.

    They can order that all civil rights be suspended indefinitely.

    They can order a suspension or abolition of term limits.

    They can abolish voting altogether in a hundred different ways and nothing can be legally done to halt that president from continuing to abolish voting until it sticks.

    If anyone does manage to legally stop the president, the president can kill them or cut off their fingers and remove their voice box.

    Literally anything is now legal, fair game.

    Biden has spoken out against that kind of power and he has it right now, so VOTE for BIDEN to buy yourselves some time.

    Whoever comes after this term or the next likely won't have the same scruples.

    This is far and away the most dangerous and harmful decision SCOTUS has ever made, which is saying a LOT.

    It is the antithesis of the line in the Constitution explicitly stating that no elected official (like the president) has legal immunity.

    The decision to grant an entire branch of the government absolute(it is absolute, anything can become "official") legal immunity could very rapidly destroy the country as it is and turn it into a true authoritarian state within a week.

    It takes some time to write, print and sign the executive orders or I'd say a day.

    I have to read up on it more because I haven't read or heard enough yet to convince me that this decision is not utterly catastrophic.

    I'm shocked the dollar hasn't collapsed, any further international faith in US stability is misplaced.

    Antiquated.

  • It is absolutely highly concerning. That said, there's way too many people who haven't read the official ruling who are panicking instead of advocating for people to vote to keep Biden in office and prepare another viable candidate for that office once his second term is up. Because the only way to get these idiots off the SCOTUS is to elect non-conservative presidents who can win. And that only happens if people both vote and lobby for what they want. We need better electoral college regulations. We need ranked voting. We need the people to lobby to further limit the government because obviously this is what happens when we don't.

    This ruling, coupled with the whole "Biden is too old, he should step down" BS is exactly the kind of propaganda concoction that will lead to Trump being re-elected in November if we don't do something.

    Do I think this is a way for a President to sanction and enact the murder of political rivals? Under certain circumstances, yes. Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.

    You have to understand that we've had alphabet agencies for a long time and the President literally could use certain pretexts to kill a person if they wanted so long as they did it a specific way. That has not changed just because of this ruling and that's a big factor people should look at. There's a reason former Presidents haven't been prosecuted for drone strikes. Technically they could have been held accountable in a court of law before that. But we've known for a long time that in all actuality the law only works that way if you're poor or if you're going up against someone else who's independently wealthy. That's why Epstein is dead after all. Not because he trafficked young girls. But because his imprisonment put other rich people in danger. Sam Bankmanfried isn't in prison because he stole money. He's in prison because he stole from other rich people. Same with Elizabeth Holmes.

    When Trump was in office, I need you to understand that the government (the people who guard national secrets) actually considerered him a threat and limited his ability to do damage by not telling him things. We would have been much worse off if they hadn't.

    As a result, the apparatus of the government is not a monolith, just like the apparatus of the military or even just the US as a whole. It's made up of people. And we've limped along this far because we could rely on them not to do certain things. But what Trump was able to get away with by being elected and being in office? This is the fallout of that.

    Your statement that the president can "personally" violate any law without criminal liability isn't correct. Here's a direct quote from the ruling "Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts."

    "As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, and n. 19. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts."

    On its face this ruling admits there is a such thing as an unofficial act. The problem is that the SCOTUS should not be allowed to make this decision without checks or balances in place. I.e. if they are making the deduction that a President has immunity, they must cede the determination of such acts that have immunity vs those that don't to another regulatory body. That's the disturbing part to me.

    This also makes me question what the point is of the impeachment process specifically because of this passage from the same ruling:

    "When the President exercises such author ity, Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions. It follows that an Act of Congress—either a specific one targeted at the President or a generally applicable one—may not criminalize the President’s actions within his exclusive constitutional power. Neither may the courts adjudicate a criminal prosecution that examines such Presidential actions."

    Technically an impeachment is not a criminal trial. But that passage doesn't specify the scope. So it could be used to argue that impeachment (while not a criminal proceeding) is an examination of the Presidents actions that potentially would not be allowed. And since the impeachment process is a check and balance for the presidential office, that's not okay.

  • This ruling was made for trump.

    Think of how much trump has done, legally, questionably legal, and illegal, while in office.

    Now remove accountability for any of it while ignoring the virtually Sisyphean task already faced to prosecute what he’s (and those surrounding him have) already done, and we have yet to see any sufficiently deterrent sentence being passed.

    Now also imagine the arguing over what constitutes “official” acts, you bet your ass that one side is going to be perfectly happy to “officially” let trump shoot someone on 5th avenue.

    This strips trump and those like him of the merest inconvenience of facing charges when they leave office. If they leave office.

    It’s potentially disastrous on multiple levels.

  • Inspired by the Warren court, I used to think the supreme court was a noble institution, today I believe it has been corrupted by Republican Christofascist shills who want power at all costs, even if it means betraying the constitution to install an unelected king. We're on our way to Gilead unless something is done.

  • 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.

  • Mhm as a Canadian, the entire last week of SCOTUS rulings spells doom for your country if the people of the US allow Trump and any other federal Republican to attain power again. Lots of cause to be alarmed.

    Roe v Wade from before this week was absolutely terrible. Snyder v Grants Pass was downright awful, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is going to have awful consequences for years to come. Trump v. USA to me is the cherry on top of this shit ruling sundae.

    The best thing you can do is disseminate each of these rulings, and why they are bad to every person you know. The message for Roe is clear, as most non-crazies would rather have state governments not mess with the business in your genitals. Try and figure out a good way to explain each of the others as they are just as horrible.

    • As Canadians, this should alarm us as well. The U.S is our biggest trading partner, we share the largest land border in the world, our political climate is directly impacted by what goes on to the south, and we have our own growing alt-right movement which the CP is pandering to - taking direct inspiration, if not outright manipulation, from the same elements at play in the U.S.

      We are not immune to any of this. The deeper the U.S. gets into the shit, the more dire the implications for Canadians become. If Project 2025 comes to be, and our government doesn't play ball with their approach to international relations, we're fucked. If we DO play ball, we're probably also fucked in different ways.

  • Qualified immunity was bad enough, fuck yeah I'm worried. Politicians should have fewer protections, not more. This is supposed to be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" and this is not that.

371 comments