Cannon is a whack job, but considering the SCOTUS ruling it’s pretty reasonable to request briefing on this. The real issue here is that the SCOTUS ruling is insane.
the SCOTUS ruling held that official acts can’t even be used as *evidence* against a president, so the fact that the actual crimes here occurred after he left office doesn’t resolve the issue. that’s that John Roberts magic.
But isn't the docs case about stuff he did after being president? Is the implication here that being president makes you eternally immune from prosecution?
which is why the NY case is being revised too, right? Stuff he did as president is now no longer allowed in the case because they are retroactively Presidential Acts?
Correct. The jury heard evidence of Trump's actions and statements after becoming president, but it turns out that now all of that is probably inadmissible. The question then becomes whether the jury hearing it was error requiring a new trial or not.
My guess is that NY courts say no, it was harmless error (i.e. it wasn't necessary for the jury to convict and therefore its admission doesn't get him a new trial) but it gets to SCOTUS and they say it was.
I agree. If SCOTUS is shameless enough about it to invent a new constitutional rule that helps you and zero other defendants between your conviction and your sentencing there's not much the prosecutor or trial court can do.
I wouldn't in practice even know how to apply a harmless error analysis to the newly announced “the defendant is a special little boy” rule, since the whole point of the rule is to treat this defendant unlike any other
bsky.app/profile/saba...
Imagine the remand to Judge Chutkan.
"On December 1, 2023, this court decided no man is above the law. On June 22, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Court's opinion. . . ."
I mean at this point why not, right? The SCOTUS already signaled that they want no government limits on what the king does, so why not include stuff like "lying on your business records to defraud people is a presidential act because Air Bud rule says we never said it wasn't."
Well they're not saying it's an official act (because it is too extremely obvious it's not for even John Roberts to say otherwise). They're saying you can't use evidence of official acts to prove criminal unofficial acts, which the government probably did here.
To be clear, this part of the ruling is insane. It means that if the president murders a sex worker and then gives a speech the next day in which he confesses to the crime the government can charge him with murder but can't use the confession against him.
A: "He removed classified documents"
B: "Why"
A: "He wanted to use them"
B: "How did he know what was in the ones he took."
A: "He looked at them while he was Presid-OHHH"
B: "OHHH"
[airhorns]
A: "IT'S AN OFFICIAL ACT"
B: "IMMUNE, BABY"
Jack Smith scowls in a party hat as confetti erupts behind him
arguably the prosecution can’t even present evidence of how he came to possess the documents, because he was operating in an official capacity when he acquired them
The fun part will be when they Calvinball that "official acts" that definitely occured and no you can't have evidence that they did, take our word for it bro, can be used for exoneration.
I love this decision. President could just order a nuclear missile delivered to their private estate and couldn't be charged for stealing it because of course that's an official duty. SCOTUS are full of dropkicks
