156 points
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Sadly no. The way they turned it around was very clever.

So they said that only official presidential business is immune, but were ambiguous what that actually means, so inevitably they made it so it would go through them to determine what is the official business.

Second thing is that they picked up from their ass that Constitution also says that no official business can be used in any trial, even if it is unrelated. This not only jeopardizes all the indictments he had, it possibly will negate the New York trial.

trump already submitted request to have it referred based on this SCOTUS ruling.

This election might be the last free election we have. And even if trump loses it will still not be over.

Please vote and make your friends and family vote. And not just for president but also for the Congress.

Edit: I also recommend everyone a book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century” (there’s also reading on YouTube) all the warning signs are present. The more people are aware what it is at stake the higher chance that this can be stopped.

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51 points

I also recommend everyone a book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century”

In case it makes a difference to someone, it’s a pretty short book.

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37 points

How does one prove whether or not something is official business if official business can’t be used in any trial?

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10 points

The “unbiased” judge will define what is allowed in the trial or not. And the prosecutor can appeal that decision and hope the higher judge is not also bought and paid for by the criminal president.

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14 points
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Until it eventually hits the Supreme Court and they decide what is and isn’t an official act based on what political party the President is affiliated with.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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24 points
Removed by mod
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6 points
*

For all intents and purposes does. Just SCOTUS made itself as a final check on what is an official act and what isn’t.

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11 points

So officially dissolve the Supreme Court and instate a new pack of judges and let those judges decide if it was an “Official Act” and thus totally legal.

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9 points

So… he could assassinate Biden and all political opposition, but not Stormy Daniels

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28 points
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Trump could kill anyone and they would determine that it was official business. On the other hand, Biden could have the Republican judges executed and replaced with sycophants who could rule that this also was an official act. It’s a bad ruling.

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7 points

He can’t appoint justices without Senate approval. He only needs 50 Senators to approve though. The rest can be bombed for reasons that apparently don’t matter.

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4 points

Unless he signs an executive order. It doesn’t get much more official than that.

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2 points

I don’t think this immunity applies to states. So the NY trial was unrelated.

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5 points

The NY trial was unrelated to his presidential business anyways. It was about private property and fraud relating therein.

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2 points

But also, other states that have indicted him for Jan 6th activity are unaffected by this, regardless of how Trump could spin this.

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1 point

We are dealing with an openly partisan court. Normally this wouldn’t affect it, but they already broke a lot of rules.

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125 points

Under this new standard, a president can go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable.

Uhhh, that already happened.

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70 points

Yeah, but now the Supreme Court said that’s perfectly ok and totally legal.

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33 points

Well, we’ve already had a president assassinate US citizens, so let’s rev up those predators and go looking for whatever billionaire’s yacht Coney Barret, Kavanuahh, and Roberts are chilling on

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18 points

If you want to get a bit more cynical, you could very easily describe the deaths of Fred Hampton and the Freedom Summer murders as presidential assassinations. If you want to take the extra step down the rabbit hole, there’s very real reason to suspect MLK was assassinated by the FBI.

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7 points

Maybe Obama should have been charged, just to set the record straight, but likely this wasn’t attempted because (1) Trump was too busy grifting to put any weight behind this, (2) all of those killed were on foreign soil, and (3) they were all working with Al Qaeda. This is getting into the realm of whether or not killing an enemy combatant is murder and what really defines an enemy combatant. I’m sure there was also pressure from both sides to specifically not answer these questions.

Either way I’d rather live in a country where a President gets charged after leaving office as a rule, than live in a country where a President can practically burn everything to the ground and walk away untouched.

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Fuck themmm.

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2 points

Except the extreme court gets to decide who is immune and what actions are okay.

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9 points

Not if they’ve been forcibly removed from office.

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2 points

EXTREME

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2 points

With a 6-3 vote either way.

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20 points

Most presidents have done this. Whether it be bombing countries they’re not at war with, trafficking drugs to enrich the war machine by arming enemies of the state, or invading foreign countries and committing war crimes based on their own manufactured lies.

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29 points
*

bombing countries they’re not at war with

Fun fact. We haven’t officially declared war since 1941.

Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and now Ukraine? All NATO led military interventions or AUMF policing actions. No articles of war required.

trafficking drugs to enrich the war machine

One of the craziest “America just be like that” stories I’ve ever heard was the time Bush Sr set up a drug buy right outside the White House, by having the DEA extort a teenager picked up for selling crack on the opposite side of town to show up on Pennsylvania Avenue the night of a State of the Union Address and do a straw sale to another agent, just so he could talk about it on national TV an hour later like it happened organically.

Bush dangling a bag of crack on national TV and saying in his Father-Knows-Best voice that we need to go full-on Phoenix Program across every major American city, because of his little kabuki crack sale, is one of those “burned into my conscience” factoids that really changed how I saw our country operating.

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11 points

We’re going to find those WMDs any day now. pepper sprays Occupy Wall Street protester

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1 point
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3 points

Except for the whole retiring from public life part. I wish Trump would just retire from life entirely.

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75 points
*

Would this same ruling have happened if Trump wasn’t involved? No, I don’t think so.

Stop the steal overthrow.

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21 points
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So now Biden can do what trump did and not certify the next president using fake electors.

And if he can’t break the law, can’t he illegally introduce a new law that makes all this presidential law breaking illegal?

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5 points

How would he “illegally introduce a new law”? He could issue a decree but it would be meaningless because nothing gives a president the power to make laws.

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2 points

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_executive_orders

The president can issue executive orders pursuant to a grant of discretion from Congress, or under the inherent powers that office holds to deal with certain matters which have the force of law.

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2 points

Correct. There’s absolutely nothing stopping Biden from doing exactly what Trump already tried and failed to do. He could put pressure on Governors to “find x number of votes”, submit a fake slate of electors to cast doubt on the results, outright threaten people if they don’t comply with his wishes. I’m sure this SCOTUS will find a way to interpret any of Biden’s would-be illegal actions as actually illegal, but tiptoe around Trump’s sedition and fraud.

I can’t believe that the prevailing opinion of the times is that the president can literally break the law, even ones specifically meant to bind them and only them such as campaign finance laws, and be immune from consequences under almost any circumstance as long as the court says it’s official. Congress effectively can no longer act as a check against the Executive. Only the Judicial can say what is official or unofficial.

This isn’t power anyone should have.

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72 points

I heard a good argument that while these justices are appointed for life to be judges, it doesn’t specify which branch. Reappointment them to a lower court and appoint new justices. They voted for this let them reap the consequences. Outline enforceable ethics standards.

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35 points

The rules of the Senate, as undermined by McConnell and inexplicably tolerated by Schumer ensure it won’t happen.

That co-equal branches thing was nice while we had it.

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17 points
*

Just dismiss the senators as official business. What still stands in the way of a total power grab by a US president?

As long as it’s official business and they keep it official by officially removing all obstacles, they are legally perfectly in the clear. IANAL obviously, but total power seems just a matter of being audacious enough to grab it.

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5 points

The president can’t dismiss them. That’s adding executive power. They took away criminal liability. He’d need to kill/kidnap/imprison them. And who knows if they’d rule that as an official act. They didn’t actually outline what counts and what doesn’t. So maybe for Biden that wouldn’t count and for Trump it would.

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11 points

Move them to Florida or Alabama.

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5 points

I think the more viable option is just packing the court but biden would have to get two Republicans to flip and all Democrats to agree. It’s embarrassing he didn’t do it when the Democrats had Senate in 2020

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41 points

The President Can Now Legally Assassinate You, Officially if it Supports the SCOTUS Majority’s Agenda

Anything Biden did would be determined to be “not official” by them because he’s a Democrat.

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17 points

Sounds like a reason for Biden to set a whole bunch of legal precedent while he’s still president.

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15 points

As I mentioned on another comment, there is no mechanism for the court to enforce that. The DOJ is under the President. Who will arrest the President? The SC may think this empowers them more, but it really does not.

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13 points
*

The conservative court acts in tandem with the GOP. Any government organization run by them will provide the support.

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3 points

The SCOTUS agenda is to collect maximum gratuities.

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4 points

And advance Christofascism.

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