You seem upset.

Is this photoshop? This dude struggles with a glass of water.



This post was edited by Pyrotechx on Jul 3 2024 09:49pm

Nah... he was playing "Hail to the Chief" on a water bottle.

I have no idea why this post would be a violation, and I wasn't the guy who reported any of your posts. But your replies are weak man.

You're leaving out a whole bunch of important context.


Let's say a president wants to assassinate a political rival. So he calls a general in and says "drone strike Donald Trump". The general refuses, the president fires the general and appoints a new general who agrees to do the drone strike.

Under this ruling, with absolutely no ambiguity, this has immunity. Commanding the military is a core presidential power that has absolute immunity as does removing those under his command.

Wait wait, you say. The president's official duties can't include drone striking American citizens. We should challenge this.

So you try to prosecute the president. You say "he did this to assassinate a political rival". Sorry, that argument explicitly is not allowed. You cannot question the president's motive. If the president says "he was a terrorist supporter who was supporting our enemies to do another 9/11" that has to be taken as fact that his motive was to protect the country. You explicitly under this ruling cannot question the motive when determining what constitutes an official or unofficial act.

So you bring in the military general and he says "The president explicitly said he was going to lose the election and so he wants to drone strike his opposition and he fired me because I refused". Sorry, that isn't allowed either. The president cannot be questioned for core acts and that is a core act.

So congress impeaches him. Except it fails because commanding the military is an explicit power of the president and they all don't want their families to die. There is quite literally no recourse because threatening political rivals, while not explicitly allowed under this ruling, is functionally impossible to prosecute.

This throws the balancing test out the window and assumes any intrusion is too much. Specifically the ruling says evidence must post NO INTRUSION. Not just balance the intrusion with the public good. It says NO INTRUSION. This can be pretty easily argued to mean even if the president just says "official act" that seeking evidence would cause some level of intrusion. This is also compounded by the fact they laid out NO TEST for what constitutes an acceptable level of intrusion. So if any of this is wrong.... well guess what you have literally no basis to dispute it. They intentionally left the actual details of how you would determine an acceptable level of intrusion.


I hope this explains well why people are freaking out. The president has the absolute broadest possible immunity short of being declared a king. As long as he's smart enough to say "official act" it's very likely he will be unprosecutable no matter the act.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 6 2024 06:04pm

It's not trivial to assume that the power to "command the military" stretches to any arbitrary purpose, even if this purpose has absolutely zero to do with national defense and the order is given with clear-cut corrupt intent.

The supreme court's ruling states that


Based on legal tradition, it is clearly not a slam dunk that ordering a drone strike on a specific American citizen falls within the scope of the president's "core constitutional powers".
See, for example, the following:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commander_in_chief_powers#:~:text=Article%20II%20Section%202%20of,Service%20of%20the%20United%20States.%22




So the tldr is that ordering a drone strike on his rival is a presidential action which clearly cannot rely on absolute immunity and will instead fall back on the weaker "presumption of immunity"-clause in Trump v. United States. And from that point, courts will be free to examine if the presumption of immunity holds in this specific case, and then determine after less than 2 minutes of deliberation that it does not.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 7 2024 05:50am

Again what you're failing to grasp is the actuality of the balance of power and the tyranny inherent to a democracy.
You could have all the words written on the constitution and judicial precedents you want, if power comes down to which side has more planks of wood with nails in them, and batters senseless the other side to take power by force, the constitution is good for nothing more than wiping the taco bell away.
The ability to prosecute a president, whether sitting or former, is not a lever that affects that balance of power, not intended to do so, not necessary to do so. At best it would be redundant with the existing safeguards, or at worst it gets exploited by a tyrant as a means to quash the democratic will of the people by persecuting his political rivals (gee).

So you get your hypothetical
Biden demands a general assassinate Trump. The general refuses, Biden fires him, gets someone who will assassinate Trump. The president can then be impeached and removed, which he would be, the constitutionally prescribed recourse to remove a president. His personal fate after that is irrelevant compared to being removed from office, though congress still has tools to imprison him officially, or more likely the public would simply assassinate him. But you claim a scenario where Biden threatens congress into submission and rules as a bloody tyrant like Saddam Hussein did. Okay? What about this scenario would be made any different by the power to prosecute him? Who in the Iraqi judicial system stepped up to prosecute Saddam for murdering his political rivals? If someone is overthrowing a government by force, its no longer a democracy (see: Ukraine circa 2014), and only force can restore democracy. The judiciary would be powerless in such a scenario unless you're going to hand out RPGs and M4s to the justices so they can join the march on DC.


The founding fathers, like the supreme court today, didn't build the law around collapsed failed states where the law is irrelevant, because that would be an oxymoron. Instead what we deal with in the courts its the balance of the separation of powers at peacetime, in a functioning democracy, where we have to take as a presumption that the elected officials represent the people who elected them and the powers we split up among them. And this case was trivial by that measure. The president is tasked with seeing the law faithfully executed. Any attempt by the judiciary to either hold the president criminally liable for exercising his official powers, or to even intrude upon his deliberative process as to how he exercises those powers, would be a clear usurpation of the powers of the president by the judiciary. A prior restraint to how a president is even allowed to think and act, arbiters of plenary powers granted to him in the constitution. A constitution which granted clear levers to be used by congress to rein in a president if he misuses his powers, a safety valve that kicks in faster than the 4 year window between elections.

Oh man sure is great how you ignored 2/3rds of my post to make this argument. Really shows you understand what's going on and aren't just cherry picking the parts you want to hear.

When you go to break the immunity you'll quickly find the evidentiary standard is impossible to meet because, again, presumptive immunity where you can't introduce any evidence because the standard for evidence is literally "NO INTRUSION" into the executive.

So when you say "the order is given with clear-cut corrupt intent" that is EXPLICITLY not allowed to be introduced. You are never allowed to question motive when the president exercises an constitutional authority in order to break presumptive immunity.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2024 10:14am

Just on the surface the American citizen for good reason can’t quite be sure that the president cannot turn the military against his own people. I think 99% were pretty sure you would be put in Gitmo. For that. Not anymore it would end up in court. That by itself makes this ruling a disaster Now the essays of things an pres could do to line his pockets corrupt elections stay in power is limitless. Supreme Court is donor compromised and it shows

As it pertains to Trump literally EVERY person that worked close to him says he’s unfit currently. Now his character flaws are 10x more problematic All cuz GaS WAs 2.49. Remember baseline the guys is after money/power and a liar that will stop at nothing for his own gain. Now he gets a free pass

This post was edited by theCrossbones on Jul 7 2024 11:56am