I let you imagine the crimes they will potentially do if they know they can get get away with it after their mandate.

What makes you think that the presumption of immunity could not be broken in a case in which a president used his office to take out a political rival?

Here's a key quote from the SCOTUS decision:

Hit jobs on political rivals are not part of a president's official responsibility. It doesn't require any further, explicit evidence by the prosecution to make the court which is litigating the case conclude that presumptive immunity doesn't apply to such an act.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 7 2024 02:08pm

Commanding the military is not on the outer perimeter of his offical responsibility. It is a core responsibility. The president can just say "I did this in my function as the commander in chief of the military" and your ability to break the immunity is dead on arrival.

To break the immunity you have to argue he did not order the strike for an official reason, and to prove that you need to bring in evidence about motive, but you cannot bring in evidence about motive, as that is explicitly forbidden by the ruling.

Oh wow it's impossible to break his immunity. Who would have thought? Almost like that was the intention of the ruling.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2024 02:32pm

To be clear, the president having immunity for core responsibilities is necessary and required.

The problem with this ruling is specifically the idea of having an executive with presumptive immunity and no balancing test against the executive's interest. Previously the standard was that you had to balance the public good alongside the executive. This ruling throws that entire principle out the window, and says that an executive must effectively be totally unencumbered.

To support this ruling the supreme court ignored all precedent before and only evidenced their claim with a single line out of context from one of the federalist papers.

Against this ruling the court ignored that the constitution does give explicit immunity in the speech and debate clause and doesn't give any for the president, indicating that none was intended, and ignored that presidents before this including Obama and Reagan both were unencumbered in their actions even after considering the possibility of being prosecuted.

This will go down as a bottom 5 ruling from the supreme court, probably bottom 3, but is totally in line with the current flavor of the court that is to completely ignore and often fabricate evidence to make a conclusion they are paid to make.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2024 02:45pm

I already linked you a detailed article from the law department of Cornell about the unclear legal picture with regard to the extent of a president's power to use the military (absent a declaration of war by Congress).
You don't need to actually bring evidence about the president's motive to prove that ordering the assassination of his rival does not fall under the core responsibilities of the office. That's a decision which the court can make based on legal texts and historical tradition alone, without needing to take the concrete motivation into account.


Yeah, right, John Roberts is clearly in cahoots with Trump and wants to enable him to become the bloody and legally unchecked tyrant of a christofascist ethnostate, or something along those lines.

Plenary powers aren't weighed. We have a method to decide who gets to make the decisions of what executive actions serve the public interest- elections. Courts cannot usurp the powers of the president to decide whether they are being exercised in the public's interest, that is again like I said just a naked power grab violating the separation of powers. If Biden were to pardon his son Hunter, nobody can charge him with criminal conspiracy for it, no court can infringe his official powers by imposing the court's desired policy goals and what they think serves the public interest. They can just review if its legal, and it is, therefore they cannot intercede. Congress can impeach him, voters can reject him and his party. Those are the levers.

I covered this pretty thoroughly

We haven't declared war since 1942. I think you need to brush up on your American history, because there is no question about what the president can do without an official declaration of war. Anything since about 1945 is evidence of that. Including drone striking American citizens.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2024 02:57pm

No official declaration of war having been issued by Congress since 1942 only means that the extent of the commander in chief powers that the various presidents throughout the years were exercising was not limitless.

Remember how it was a huge deal when Obama was found to have ordered drone strikes on US citizens without due process? "Is he actually allowed to do that" was a real debate back then, so yes, there were questions about what exactly the president can do without an official declaration of war.

Guy debating that President power is still under checks and balances also believes he can exact classified documents via Jedi mains tricks you cartwheels to defend things that benefit Trump are endless

Under this ruling, even if he isn't allowed to do it, you aren't allowed to introduce motive or request evidence because being the commander is a core power, and he is assumed to be immune as a first step and it is on the prosecution to break immunity. And as much as you want to waffle, commanding the military is explicitly a core power with no clearly defined limits, and it has been that way for at least 80 years and more realistically our entire nation's history.

That's the problem. Not that he's literally allowed anything. That even if he isn't allowed to do something, you will never be able to break immunity.

You have to be able to think about more than one thing, which I know is challenging.



For reference, Goom's position was literally "yes he would be immune from drone striking a political rival" and went on to say this case was decided exactly how he thought it would be. And that's a real problem, that the supreme court has sunk to the level of Goom for their analysis.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 7 2024 03:36pm