Rick Hasen’s Live Blog of the Supreme Court’s Oral Argument Over Trump’s Claim of Immunity in the Federal Election Subversion Case (Refresh this page frequently for updates) electionlawblog.org?p=142644
Sauer's argument for Trump is breathtaking in allowing the President to murder or commit a coup so long as it is wrapped in the trappings of a President's official acts.
This argument still has a ways to go. But it is easy to see the Court (1) siding against Trump on the merits but (2) in a way that requires further proceedings that easily push this case past the election (to a point where Trump could end this prosecution if elected).
Dreeben stresses that what Trump was charged with, trying to subvert the election, is not part of any official acts. Alito wants to avoid the facts of this case (for good reason!).
Alito tries to turn things on their head, by saying that to encourage peaceful transitions of power, you need to give incumbents absolute immunity so they will leave and won't worry about prosecution later. This is the most insane thing I've heard today (and there have been many crazy things).
After a couple of hours of oral argument, it appears that the Supreme Court is unlikely to embrace either Donald Trump’s extreme position—that would seem to give immunity for a president who ordered an assassination of a rival or staged a coup—or the government’s position
Conservatives on the Court are going to make it hard to prosecute a former president for most crimes. But they are likely to reject some of the most extreme, insane, authoritarian arguments that were made by Trump’s lawyer.
The final opinion will likely come closer to the government’s position, but it will almost certainly result in a divided set of opinions (which take more time to draft) and a lot of work on remand to rework the results of the case.
The bottom line is that Trump is likely to get what he wants—a further delay of this election subversion case, maybe pushing it to after the election. If that happens, the public won’t get the benefit of having a jury determine before the election if Trump tried to steal the 2020 election.
Further, if Trump is elected in 2024, he can end this and the other federal prosecution against him. He also is likely to try to pardon himself. And the Supreme Court will be complicit in much of this.
Merrick Garland should get exiled to an island prison for not launching investigations into Thomas's obvious financial crimes in particular, and the federal court's rank corruption in general
When Saur brought up the President has to be impeached and removed before he can be prosecuted, did no one counter that Trump’s impeachment defense was that he shouldn’t be impeached because he could be prosecuted later?
When you say "the Supreme Court will be complicit in much of this," you mean complicit in a coup attempt, right? They'll be giving aid and comfort to the Jan. 6 ringleader and possibly teeing up a second insurrection. So the justices doing this should lose their offices on 14A grounds, right?
No, the domain is this Supreme Court, which is, at a minimum, taking too long to say a crime is a crime regardless of who does it. And we are hoping they aren't engineering a decision that it isn't a crime if a particular president does it. We can't trust a court like that with our thoughts.
Me think Nixon’s corrupt impulses were strong, but balanced by interest in actually doing job of president to best of his ability.
Trump have no such interest.
Exactly.
The only interest trump has is feeding his narcissistic ego and that includes increasing his wealth. I’m amazed anyone with more than a few brain cells could ever see him as anything other than corrupt.
When some clever people find their principles in conflict with their preferences, they don’t use reason to interrogate their preferences, they use their cleverness to justify them. We call these people shitheads.
It's all absurd Calvinball hypotheticals with him while ignoring (and pooh-poohing the importance of) the facts of this actual case. They're "strict constructionists" only when the wind blows north by northwest.
A president much have full immunity (including for using the powers of government against a former president) otherwise a president might use the powers of government against a former president
