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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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.
Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.
That's not what anybody is worried about, but rather that this is the vanguard of a movement whose followers will happily kill us for any number of out-group reasons, take away bodily autonomy, labor rights, civil rights, and regulatory protections, and then, okay, yes, have the President sign our death warrants should we decide to protest all of this.
As one of the candidates has openly advocated and said he'd do.
I'm trans and I'm legitimately worried the President will try to cure my ADHD by sending me to a camp that specializes in "concentration" if you catch my cold
Those things are already happening and will get worse if we don't lobby and vote. This has been the vendetta of the conservative party in this country for several decades. They have been taking small chunks out of every regulatory legislative government branch and agency for literal decades with the intent that eventually they could undermine the government process enough to get what they want.
The reason I said "citizens worried about the President signing their death warrant" is because that's literally what headlines have been saying and I see a lot of those same headlines parotted both on Lemmy in these discussion threads, and in other web forums in relation to the topic of criminal charges being brought against a sitting or former president.
We should have always been worried about our rights. We should have always been lobbying to further limit the government in what it can do against the people. Instead we haven't made a new amendment to the constitution since '92, and we are leery of doing so and keeping it a living document because we fear all the things the other side will do, and they're doing them anyway.
I see what you're saying, and I can wholeheartedly agree that we should have been worrying about our rights for years. I'm not here trying to say that this latest ruling suddenly changes everything, but that it's incrementally worse.
I guess I do have to defend those headlines a little bit. It's not that we worry that the President is going to murder us, personally, but that it's abominable that he could, and not be prosecuted. But, then, I was complaining about that when Obama had al Awlaki killed based on ersatz due process that he made up.
Very well thought out reply, thank you. I'm absolutely alarmed, zero people should be above the law, and I think this puts us on a very dangerous path, but if we all collect our heads we can still keep our current president, and maybe work some stuff out from there.
I'm absolutely annoyed with the Biden talk, like no he isn't my favorite candidate. He's just not openly calling for overthrowing democracy, so that's my choice. I don't worship my leaders, and in a 2 party system I just choose the least worst. He's the least worst.
I keep thinking back to Carlin. He called it in the 90s. "We don't have leaders, we have owners, they own you." Two big things keep me from panic attacks right now. One is that the true owners of the country right now are corporations, and they want stability and you to keep paying, which is oddly comforting in terms of what's going to happen. The second is that it's not over yet, we just need to all go out and vote for the least horrible candidate we have! Huzzah!
I'm a bit bothered that people aren't going to the web to read the ruling in full. They're relying heavily on dissenting SCOTUS member's statements and the media. I'm also disheartened at the number of people who don't know their rights, don't understand the government's functions in society, and don't understand that the constitution is meant to be a living document that restricts what the government can do, not what its citizens can. Of course the number of people who don't know what's in the constitution and its amendments is also very high.
It wasn't that terribly long ago that we didn't have presidential term limits. There's absolutely a way forward with further amendments to the constitution which is something we as a people should also lobby for.
Edit: Speak of the devil: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750735-joe-morelle-amendment-supreme-court-immunity-ruling/
The real problem isn't what this does right now, it's how vague and open it is to interpretation. Official acts aren't described anywhere in it, and they're explicitly allowing other courts to decide rather than call out things that are obviously wrong for someone with that much power to do. Rather than cracking the door and opening it when needed, they swung the door wide open, and it will be up to courts to close it later. That vagueness is the terrifying part, who knows what acts will be "justified" later.
They aren't though. They say in the document that they are the final word on what is within the scope of official acts. So it's not even a separate regulating body purpose built for that. It's lower courts making a decision and the SCOTUS deciding if it is right and wrong and having the final say.
If you trust the courts, that works fine, but they have proven all year how the court is definitely partisan and corrupt now. The court shouldn't swing in either direction - they should be only beholden to the constitution, and justices who take money are no longer just listening to the constitution
Yes. And to be clear I don't think this is a good thing. I'm actually very much against the courts deciding the purview of what is lawful conduct for the president within his duties to the Constitution and what is not.
Yeah I see it as left open so it can swing either way depending on the election, and that worries me. As a kid I was naive, I thought we had the perfect uncorruptable government, and here we are proving even the nine people who are supposed to be the least corrupted people - are some of the most.
This one, including all text from the justices (including dissents) is over a hundred pages. That's doable for many people, though not all, and it should be important enough to prioritize for those who can. But I think this one falls into the category of sticking my head up a bull's ass while most people will just see what the butcher has to say.
Reading even the first few pages would be preferable to the fear mongering and panic in my opinion. If you're getting a pared down version from Cornell law, fine. If it's coming from fox news or vox media, I don't think that should be the end of anyone's endeavours to understand what is going on.