At a crucial crossroads for American democracy, the Supreme Court slow walks Trump’s immunity issue
With the Supreme Court granting certiorari to Donald Trump on his immunity claims regarding the January 6th trial in Washington, we have reached a historic moment. The high court will now review the lower court ruling that a former president isn’t immune from prosecution for crimes he committed in office. but not until April. If the court agrees with Trumphim, it could lead America down a dark road.
Yes, broadly exposing the president to lawsuits or prosecutions for the thousands of judgment calls a president makes in the line of duty would cripple the presidency. But no one prosecuting Trump claims presidents should be broadly exposed to liability for their official decisions. Instead, the issue is framed by the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. It held that the president is immune from damages liability “for acts within ‘the outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.” The court has never extended that limitation to the president’s responsibility for a crime. Moreover, the court has never suggested that a president who commits a crime unconnected to his official duties enjoys any immunity at all.
SCOTUS is so anti-democratic. Why the hell does the fate of our democracy rest on the whims of Nine people holding lifetime appointments? I get that they want these people outside of the transitory world of politics, but that doesn’t really seem to have prevented politics from creeping into the Court anyways. If SCOTUS rules that POTUS has immunity while in office, then Biden should just suspend the election, declare martial law, arrest Trump, and lock up all the Russian sympathizers in Congress. Protecting the country from foreign agents seems like it should fall within the scope of the President’s powers.
I’m worried their plan is to wait until after the election. If Trump is elected, they then rule he has absolute power and democracy is basically dead at that point.
It already is. The rest of us just get to fight for scraps now.
This decision is just the Supreme Court saying “let them eat cake.”
It’s a shame we didn’t even make it to 250 years, but the Christians had to force a theocracy again. They don’t feel right unless they get to murder people for being different.
Democracy died when Dubya got elected by the court almost 25 years ago.
Trump’s own lawyers said that the president could kill his political adversaries and be free from any charges.
We placed the fate of democracy on some greedy white guys who want nice motor coaches and luxury vacations
White?
It kinda seems like the sort of hallucination a bot would make without a working knowledge of race in practice.
Excellent point
Especially when anyone who’s watched last week tonight recently. Will point out that the only fashy fuck openly wanting a motor coach was Clarence Thomas.
A SCOTUS ruling in Trump’s favor would absolutely grant him the power to do that. For better or worse, though, I just don’t see that happening as it would set a very dangerous precedent. We may avoid a dictator in the short run, but it would absolutely enable the next.
Half of those 9 we’re put there by not democratically elected presidents, also nice detail to add there
That’d be a hoot!