But again, the constitution does say that he is immune, just not in the impeachment power section. It doesn't need to be explicit, its been recognized as the implicit effect of article II where it lays out the power of the president, implied by the "rule of law" itself: The president is given the sole authority to see the law faithfully executed. Its not some minor distinction to a society which was more than 100 years closer to the arrest of execution of Charles I than it is to Donald Trump in the modern day. The king who insisted the court answer upon what legal authority he could be tried. The founders were cognizant of such power struggles at the very top of government. The president is given the ultimate authority of law, but congress was given the explicit authority to strip him of it and then he'd be subject to criminal sanction. Any attempt to wield criminal sanction against a president for exercising his legal authority outside of the prescribed impeachment power would be a clear violation of the separation of powers, the judiciary trying to infringe on the executive. The courts don't have authority to remove a president, congress does.
Executive immunity isn't some new concept invented for Trump, its been there the whole time, we just never had a party demented enough to try to weaponize every lever of government to test where they can strip away privilege at the corners in a desperate attempt to subvert an election.

Where exactly does the Constitution imply that the president is absolutely immune from criminal charges? It was only in Nixon v. Fitzgerald in 1982 that the Supreme Court established the absolute civil immunity of the president, and even in this landmark ruling, they stressed that civil immunity only extends to conduct which is at least somewhat connected to the actual presidential duties. In the same ruling, the court even stressed (albeit indirectly) that the president is not immune from criminal charges.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/731/






The Supreme Court very clearly states that the president does not enjoy blanket immunity, but establishes a very high bar that needs to be cleared before jurisdiction over the president can be considered. The court then finds that civil charges generally cannot meet this very high standard and therefore concludes that the president enjoys immunity from civil charges.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 12 2024 04:44am

There's no reason for it to apply only to civil claims when it clearly has the exact same argument about separation of powers and infringing on the president's authority when it comes to criminal charges. It is the judiciary imposing itself upon the executive either way, when it comes to a separation of powers issue there is no distinction. And its not even some hypothetical distinction that hasn't been tested yet. We've had a case where the president of the united states ordered the killing of a US citizen without trial and had his military carry out that order. No court has authority to bring Barack Obama up on charges of murder for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and the ACLU and CCR already challenged his kill list status before he was even dead, being struck down as a political question that can't be reviewed by the courts. And the Obama DoJ wrote itself a memo granting itself unreviewable legal authority to kill a US citizen, one accountable only to congress through the impeachment power.

The idea of a head of government- including even at more local governorships- having legal immunity until stripped formally of that status, is a concept as old as democracy and republics. Its why caesar marched on rome when deneid his consulship, or the contemporary trial of gaius verres. And the founding fathers, or at least Hamilton, certainly laid out the same terms for a president to be held accountable- not by civil nor criminal charges, but by impeachment and removal, after which he could be just as accountable as a roman consul reduced to a private citizen:


writes just after describing how what powers the president does have in appointing officers and judges is subject to the control of the senate, restraint upon restraint.
can't really mistake hamilton as talking solely about civil liability when a president could have his life in jeopardy by prosecution


If the judicial branch can create legal fictions to declare a president invalid, even if he wins a lawful election, and then refuse to recognize his authority- its a direct assault on the separation of powers. And that's what's happening in this case, a state judiciary usurping jurisdiction over the federal judiciary and then using it to declare a president illegitimate and to nullify an election. It doesn't merely suppose to infringe on the powers of the president and second guess them and subject them to restraint not allowed for in the constitution, it supposes to fully negate the presidency and nullify all his powers of all kinds. Its impossible to render that congruent with the supreme court's warning of the danger of intrusion over the authority of the executive branch. There is a difference between the judicial branch having the power of constitutional review to push back against an executive who oversteps and claims legal authority that never belonged to him, and a judicial branch claiming to nullify all powers of the president by a judge's fiat order.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jan 12 2024 07:54am

When you say the founders never envisioned a corrupt tyranical ruler when outlining the presidency, you're already not worth talking to. That was an explicit topic that came up over and over again and was a major concern when defining the roles and limitations of the office. A presidency was, at the time, unique among positions of authority. We didn't create a king or a dictator. We created a president, which at the time was considered to be a relatively lowly position that didn't have the same level of gradiosity as king or dictator. This choice was intentional and meant to act as a signal that the president did not hold the same kinds of privileges and immunities as rulers in other systems.

A president acting in a corrupt manner against his political opponents was the exact thing the founders KNEW would happen eventually and was discussed at length, which is why they did not write any criminal immunities into the constitution. The president was explicitly not above the criminal justice system by design.

The reason the impeachment clause says what it does is so a powerful faction couldn't jail their opponents by way of impeachment after a favorable midterm election without going through the criminal process.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jan 12 2024 10:51am

As an originalist, I defer to the writings of one of our first supreme court justices, James Iredell.



America was founded on the idea the president is not a king.

This post was edited by Sioux on Jan 12 2024 12:30pm

Did you even read Hamilton's quote? He laid out precisely how a corrupt tyrant was restrained by congress both by power to review and deny his appointments, as well as to oust him by impeachment. Impeachment exists precisely because they envisioned a corrupt tyrant and gave congress the authority to remove him. They created that explicit provision to avoid a scenario like the trial of Charles I where no one had legal authority over him. The founding fathers were very explicit about the safeguard against a noxious president: Impeachment, impeachment and removal, impeachment and removal and ensuing indictment and jeopardy of life and estate if they will it.

Except those indictments aren't dependent on impeachment, and this was by design.

And we know this is and was the common understanding by literally everyone because trumps team and his own party flat out said it during the impeachment, so the fact you're falling for this fabrication is really embarassing for you

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jan 12 2024 01:02pm

From what I remember, the crux was that the killing took place outside of the US, i.e. outside of the domain of US law. The US Constitution does protect the life of everyone within its domain, irrespective of citizenship status, so the idea that the president can legally order the killing of non-Americans abroad, but that US citizens should be globally off-limits, makes no sense to begin with.


In modern times, this legal immunity of office holders is commonly understood to apply only to conduct related to his duties of office, not to a blanket immunity for arbitrary crimes.


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Cool, so you found one specific Hamilton quote which reads as if successful impeachment was indeed a prerequisite for further criminal prosecution. But neither is Hamilton the sole author of the Constitution, nor was this the only time when him or the other Founding Fathers discussed the powers, privileges and limitations of the presidency. Like Thor said: the founding fathers spent a LOT of time thinking about the threat of a tyrannical or corrupt president and how he could be reined in. Sioux already gave you an example of an early interpretation of this question by a Supreme Court justice which argues against conviction in an impeachment trial being a precondition for criminal prosecution.

If there's one thing the Founding Fathers were unmistakable about, it's that the president was not supposed to be a king, not supposed to stand above the law. The Founding Fathers certainly didn't intend for a president to be a quasi-king who can abuse his office or infringe on the rights of his citizens as he pleases as long as he has the support of 34% of senators...


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Oh, I'm totally with you that the ruling by the Colorado state supreme court is egregious, dangerous and cannot, should not and will not stand. But that's because they clearly violated the judicial hierarchy, not because of a president's allged all-encompassing blanket immunity. And when it comes to the Supreme Court, they are still bound by the separation of powers and the principle of proportionality, meaning that the standards for such a direct and drastic involvement of the judiciary in the election of the forthcoming executive are extremely high. Going by its own precedent, even the Supreme Court couldn't just bar a political candidate from running for the presidency on a whim; they would need an airtight case, find an overwhelming public interest in the barring of said candidate and show that no other recourse exists. Which is clearly not the case when the candidate in question has already been rejected by the voter once before.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 12 2024 02:17pm