Impeachment only removes him from office. Unclear what would happen if he then ordered the FBI and military to arrest and imprison all Senators and just stayed put. Guess it would be an "official act."
What if he’s impeached for something by the House and starts ordering Secret Service snipers (whom he preemptively pardons) to assassinate Senators who say they’ll vote against him at the Senate trial? What does anyone do about that?
Trump's attorneys specifically were asked about the President's power to assassinate political opponents. The Court is saying that's cool. It's an invitation to political violence.
Well, you see, if the rest of the senators see how bad it is that he's doing that and don't cower.. they could still remove him. Couldn't criminally prosecute him though. So no reason at all to not steal an election if all you care about is yourself!
We already know what “official acts “are - any act taken by a Republican, and I mean ANY. Unofficial acts are pretty much any action taken by Democrats. It’s Bush vs. Gore all the way down and yet one more reminder we should have become ungovernable then.
Exactly. I mean they pretty much ended any sense there was a bright line, even as they shat on the Constitution and gave him an immunity that is now where in that document.
Yes, but also, unless I’m misunderstanding, official acts that are within the clear purview of the President are now likely immune, regardless of the legality of the outcomes of those acts. Giving orders to the military is a clear purview of the Commander-in-Chief. (ctd)
I understand that in theory but what is to stop an impeached president from citing this decision as the reason why an impeachment is not valid? I guess I’m asking the extent to which this muddies the waters of the remedy.
Would a drone strike against Senators or Congresspersons calling for impeachment, who also happened for completely unrelated reasons to be a Clear and Present Danger to the US, be unprosecutable?
Might such immunity affect whether a Senator would support conviction?
As a matter of Constitutional law, it should make no difference. As a matter of politics, it could give additional cover to any of the president's co-partisans in the House and Senate to oppose impeachment.
Correct, I’m just wondering how much additional weight is given to arguments (specious or not) that any high crime is not an executive crime bc “immunity”
Unfortunately, our current Constitutional settlement* is “members of a President’s party vote to acquit in impeachment, then look for any argument they can find” (Eg McConnell’s newfound certainty that you can’t impeach an ex-President). They’d certainly use this.
* dating, I would argue, from 1999
Since impeachment is the constitutional route to convict a president, they can't argue about this case affecting it.
The immunity is conditional on impeachment being a thing.
But doesn’t it become a circular argument (beyond what we’ve already witnessed) when a legitimate argument for voting against impeachment is that any official act is not a crime, now sanctioned by the SC?
It could be used as an argument in the future, but one could argue that the constitution makes it clear that is is for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, so whether it was an official act or not would be irrelevant
The Impeachment is valid because it exists outside the "legal/illegal" framework; and isn't criminal in nature.
What this does do is create a defense of "it must have been an 'official duty' because I wasn't impeached, and convicted, for it".
An odd thing is that the Constitution says that an impeached person may subsequently be criminally indicted for the acts for which he was impeached.
SCOTUS has just said, not if it's the President.
The Roberts court will be recorded as the court that trampled the Constitution to serve Trump.
irrelevant. the threshold for trying impeachable crimes has been raised to purposely cryptic levels the effort would be pointless, and besides, there's much that a president could do as an official act in retaliation that Congress would likely not risk.
no longer any threat of impeachment. it can't really be tried, and there being no limit to presidential so-called official acts likely means impeachments will never even happen anymore because the president can threaten all sorts of shit in retaliation as official acts.
