Trump And Lawyers Think President Is Immune - Topic

said_aouita

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#21

Jan 10 2024 09:00am

If Trump has his own jet, why was he so often on epsteins?

Thor123422

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#22

Jan 10 2024 09:49am

Quote (Goomshill @ Jan 10 2024 08:15am)

This is a trivially easy question to pick apart

What stops Nancy Pelosi from ordering her staff to murder a random guy on 5th avenue?
There's no protection of law a priori. If she wanted to, she could pull out a gun and do it herself. Either way, she would be prosecuted only after the fact, at which point she could be charged with murder, convicted and sent to prison. The only thing to stop her from doing it is the resistance of those in her employ who would refuse the order and not murder people on her behalf.

What stops Donald Trump from ordering seal team six to murder a random guy on 5th avenue?
There's no protection of law a priori. If he wanted to, he could pull out a gun and do it himself. Either way, he would be impeached and removed from office only after the fact, at which point he could be charged with murder, convicted and sent to prison. The only thing to stop him from doing it is the resistance of the seals who would refuse the order and not murder people on his behalf.

Did the judge in this case even think through the dumb fucking logic? The law isn't a shield against future conduct. Bad rulings have the ability to infringe upon the separations of powers, but they don't have the ability to restrain the execution of those powers. The president can do whatever the fuck he wants, there are ways to hold him accountable for it, the same as every other citizen. And that includes prosecution for official acts taken while a sitting president- after he's been impeached and removed from office. That's precisely what was written into the constitution, for exactly the case of an executive run amok.

Man this is just an embarrasing misread of what the question was.

Under the theory being proposed by Trump's lawyers Trump could have all house Democrats killed. Oh look, no impeachment. And since he wasn't impeached there's no ability to try him criminally. Guess he just gets away with it? But wait! Republican officials would impeach him and almost certainly would! They're going to vote on it now and 90% are voting to impeach! So he resigns realizing his plan failed.

He wasn't impeached and so cannot be tried criminally.

This is the conclusion to Trump's lawyers arguments. That he could try any number of illegal acts to stay in power, and if they fail he resigns and avoids all possibility of punishment.

RedFromWinter

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#23

Jan 10 2024 09:59am

Quote (Pyrotechx @ Jan 9 2024 09:26pm)

Oh. You're one of those ones, that think the insurrection on Jan 6th was "peaceful". My bad, I didn't know you had your TV locked on Fox News and already drank all the Kool-Aid.

So peaceful :bonk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXnHIJkZZAs

Nice source citation. You provided a video from the political circus hearing where there were no questions allowed, video cherry picked and doctored, cut and re-arranged. On par with ISIS propaganda, but being published from our highest chambers. Disgusting. The members of the commitie were agenda Democrats, failed Republicans who no longer represent constituents.

There was a happening on Jan 6th, but to call it an insurrection and attribute it to master mind Trump is absurd, tarded logic

Goomshill

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#24

Jan 10 2024 10:01am

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jan 10 2024 09:49am)

Man this is just an embarrasing misread of what the question was.

Under the theory being proposed by Trump's lawyers Trump could have all house Democrats killed. Oh look, no impeachment. And since he wasn't impeached there's no ability to try him criminally. Guess he just gets away with it? But wait! Republican officials would impeach him and almost certainly would! They're going to vote on it now and 90% are voting to impeach! So he resigns realizing his plan failed.
He wasn't impeached and so cannot be tried criminally.

Wooooow so if the president of the united states and congress are willing to vote along with a naked power grab to kill the opposition and declare him emperor, the democracy falls apart?
No shit

Quote

This is the conclusion to Trump's lawyers arguments. That he could try any number of illegal acts to stay in power, and if they fail he resigns and avoids all possibility of punishment.

There's no set of laws or rulings or precedents that could possibly protect the country from the scenario in which the president is a madman and all of congress are behind him as are enough military actors to carry out his rampage. The law is nothing more than a few words in the wind or written on a sheet of paper. The president is commander in chief, controls the military and has the nuclear codes. If nobody is going to stop him, he could do whatever he wanted, and a court trying to rule against him would be like a court ruling against Caesar after crossing the rubicon.
The only scenario in which the law matters, is the same scenario in which the president has no more protection under the law than any other citizen or lawmaker. The same one where if Nancy Pelosi ordered a murder, she could be arrested. Because after Trump is impeached and removed, he too could be arrested.

All this sums up to creating either a scenario in which the law is completely irrelevant and all that matters is force of arms and a country in open civil war, or a scenario in which the law matters and Trump is every bit as liable as everyone else.

UmadLoL

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#25

Jan 10 2024 11:28am

Yes, that’s how it works.

Very simple.

This post was edited by UmadLoL on Jan 10 2024 11:28am

gnarjay

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#26

Jan 10 2024 11:49am

Quote (Goomshill @ Jan 10 2024 08:01am)

a scenario in which the law matters and Trump is every bit as liable as everyone else.

is he starting to get it guys????

Thor123422

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#27

Jan 10 2024 12:39pm

Quote (Goomshill @ Jan 10 2024 10:01am)

Wooooow so if the president of the united states and congress are willing to vote along with a naked power grab to kill the opposition and declare him emperor, the democracy falls apart?
No shit

There's no set of laws or rulings or precedents that could possibly protect the country from the scenario in which the president is a madman and all of congress are behind him as are enough military actors to carry out his rampage. The law is nothing more than a few words in the wind or written on a sheet of paper. The president is commander in chief, controls the military and has the nuclear codes. If nobody is going to stop him, he could do whatever he wanted, and a court trying to rule against him would be like a court ruling against Caesar after crossing the rubicon.
The only scenario in which the law matters, is the same scenario in which the president has no more protection under the law than any other citizen or lawmaker. The same one where if Nancy Pelosi ordered a murder, she could be arrested. Because after Trump is impeached and removed, he too could be arrested.

All this sums up to creating either a scenario in which the law is completely irrelevant and all that matters is force of arms and a country in open civil war, or a scenario in which the law matters and Trump is every bit as liable as everyone else.

I see you've intentionally misunderstood the criticism again.

In the scenario I described his party isn't on his side and he avoided all consequences by resigning.

Do better

Goomshill

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#28

Jan 10 2024 02:25pm

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jan 10 2024 12:39pm)

I see you've intentionally misunderstood the criticism again.

In the scenario I described his party isn't on his side and he avoided all consequences by resigning.

Do better

Oh I mistook your scenario as being remotely sane and having any sort of logic behind it
That's the dumbest scenario I've ever heard. If congress is against the president and he resigns, they can simply do whatever the hell they want to him. They're congress, they can pass laws. They can say they impeach him after he leaves office, they can pass a constitutional amendment if they want to. Any of it is completely utterly irrelevant to the balance of power because he's already left office at which point it doesn't matter towards the running of government, you're only talking about punishment for a private citizen with no powers. They could just pass a law saying fuck Trump in particular and lock him up. They could hold him in contempt of congress arbitrarily like they're doing to Peter Navarro right now. They could say that impeachment works even after he's out of office, to strip him of his executive privilege. It truly does not fucking matter and the frames of the constitution had zero reason to consider such nutty cases where it means nothing.

How is that even a discussion? Like in what imaginable world could that possibly matter? If the whole of the country was against a president and he resigned in disgrace and they wanted to have some formal framework for locking him up, they'd just pass the modern equivalent of damnatio memoriae in congress and put him in a gibbet.

bogie160

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#29

Jan 10 2024 02:29pm

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jan 10 2024 10:49am)

In a situation where the President has the sway to order military units to assassinate large swathes of Congress, and public outrage is sufficiently behind him, then the Constitutional order has completely broken down and civil war is the only remedy.

I mean, in this case, what exactly is the Judiciary going to do? They have no power outside of what respect for the law and norms allows.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Jan 10 2024 02:31pm

Goomshill

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#30

Jan 10 2024 02:39pm

Quote (bogie160 @ Jan 10 2024 02:29pm)

No even I thought he was discussing the civil war scenario
He's trying to say, what if Donald Trump ordered such assassinations, and seal team six refused to carry it out, and then all the republicans turned against him, congress moved to impeach him and he resigned "to avoid prosecution".
And then their sole concern is whether they can lock up Donald Trump the private citizen, even though in this scenario he's no longer president and has no powers and his fate is totally meaningless to the running of the country.
Which of course is absolutely nutty because even if you somehow cared what happens to Trump in this scenario, any defense by him hinges on the thin premise of a resignation nullifying impeachment and the entirety of the USA government being totally powerless to enforce their laws or change their laws as necessary despite being empowered to just change the constitution if they really cared, and of course also supposing the average John Q Citizen not just ridding us of a turbulent priest.

I cannot even begin to describe how profoundly irrelevant and pointless such a thought experiment is. Its like saying, what if Donald Trump ate a million cans of beans and inflated to the size of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and began erupting a gaseous cloud that smothered washington D.C. with a saving throw against instant death and nobody was able to arrest him because their manacles wouldn't fit around his corpulent wrists.

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