Trump Lawyer Says Having Political Rival Killed Could Constitute 'Official' Presidential Act
rollingstone.com
Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assasinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?
"That could well be an official act," Trump lawyer John Sauer says
If I'm Biden, as soon as this is okayed, Trump is dead. Right? I mean, fuck.
Obviously, why wouldn't he? This is potentially the dumbest argument ever heard in a court room and we're all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility. What a joke.
We're all here because more than one of these judges is entertaining its plausibility. Listening to some of the questions coming from a couple of these judges, there is a very real possibility that they actually declare Trump at least partially immune, leading to the lower courts having to re-litigate the issues again (which would delay Trump's trials by years), or outright giving him enough immunity to make his current cases go away.
It's important to note that this would include the state cases. If Trump were to return to office, he could in theory pardon himself and make the federal cases go away but can't do anything about the state ones. If the SC were to rule he's immune, the state courts can't touch him either.
Honestly, I think the judges are just trying to figure out how they can rule narrowly enough to make sure Trump walks away scot-free while also ensuring that Biden and other future presidents don't get the same treatment.
Trump was not president for the crimes in NY or the retention of documents AFTER he was president. Of course it'll be delayed and litigated, but "president is immune" does not make trumps problems go away unless they go "president is immune for the rest of their lives" which is even more insane.
Alito pretty much did argue that.
He said presidents won’t leave office peacefully if they aren’t able to retire to security without threats of prosecution.
4 justices have to vote to hear a case at the Supreme Court. I don't understand why they'd ever choose to.
Why not have Biden just assassinate Trump then? He likely wouldn’t have to deal with a long drawn out court decision. He can be done with it and move on. It’s horrible to consider, but I’m so so so so so so so so so sick of Trump. Everyday I’m bombarded with orange pulp. 😆
Just put them in a jail. And put enough Republican congresspeople in jail to have the majority. And then declare they can leave as soon as a bill is passed making the stupid "immunity" shit illegal.
You can demonstrate the issues without killing anyone.
The kicker for the immunity is that he can be impeached and convicted by congress...
So you're only immune if you're a republican and you have enough votes in the senate... Lord knows Democrats would convict each other but republicans will toe the line.
But you can just remove the members that don’t support you. No impeachment after that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Ba'ath_Party_Purge
So he orders him killed just before leaving office
I'm sure they'll frame it in a way where this only applies to Trump, and no former or future presidents will have that ability.
Same as Bush v Gore
They'll stick that in their opinion and say that this case isn't binding on future cases therefore it doesn't set precedent.
That's a paradox. The only precedent it set was that a decision could withhold setting a precedent.
I know that's what I would do.
If the Supreme Court were to greenlight this, it becomes the only logical choice in terms of preservation of the self and the state..
I'm not even American so I can't be president, I just want to the fucking Cheeto dead and his family.
Trump? He's just the start. I'm cleaning House, and Senate!
And SCotUS.
You know as well as I do that we'll sit on that high horse of morality, sniffing our own farts, while we get sniped right the fuck off that horse by a Republican who has no issues whatsoever with abusing that power.
If this is okayed then the next government will presumably be the last. So if that’s not Biden then he is comfortable handing over the torch to whomever wins. That doesn’t seem like a particularly nice choice to have to make.
The bad part is that a normal person wouldn't order that, and Biden is quite normal. Only the radical MAGAts or worse would.
Biden doesn't have the balls for that...Trump, unfortunetely does (or he's just too fucking stupid to realize the ramifications of it).
Biden should just send Seal Team 6 to whatever courthouse Trump's hush money trial is at and tell them to sit on the steps. If anyone asks why they're there, just saying "Waiting for the Supreme Court ruling". Maybe park another team on the Supreme Court steps with a sign that says "Waiting for Clarence Thomas."
Biden would not be committing an illegal act. He'd be ordering the teams to sit on the steps and wait. Further orders would only come after the Supreme Court ruling, so Biden would be covered by the very same Presidential immunity that Trump just fought for.
He pretty much has to, or else Trump will imprison him an execute him in the next 12 months.
I mean shit, if I knew there was a fifty percent chance my neighbor would kidnap and murder me in the next year..... I'd be making contingency plans.
Unfortunately that's not how Democrats work. For good or for bad they stick to morality (except when it comes to Israel for God knows what reason) and they'll take the "high road" that just so happens to lead off a cliff, but it's the high road so they need to take it even if it means their certain death.
We're a joke, doomed to die for the sake of the moral high ground that we have no right to even assume we have (see previous Isreal comment.)
Edit: but also, from the article, this isn't the actual desire. They already got what they wanted and that was a delay.
I sort of agree, but at some point, Biden has to understand his own self, and his family, and all the colleagues he has worked with in his career are at risk. Trump is seriously escalating a dangerous game that only SCOTUS or Biden can put an end to. Politics is eventually violence, and Biden must know that.
Trump is hiring expensive, smart people, to argue at the last peaceful authority in the country, that he will regain the power of judge jury and executioner. This is fucking chilling.
This should help left leaning voters reconsider gun restriction laws since most of them are enforced in blue areas, while red areas are all allowed to have essentially entire armories.
If you live in New York or California, you can't find a gun store within 100 miles of where you live that can only sell extremely restrictive features that would give the most battle hardened Navy Seal issues hitting targets, but in Idaho and Texas there's a gun store on every fucking corner selling easy to shoot highly ergonomic firearms that allow morbidly obese boomers to effortlessly hit the dick off a fly at 1000 meters.
Begging to differ, I'm sitting on my toilet in California and a quick Google shows there's 3 gun stores within 5 miles of me. I'd have to pass the legitimate restrictions (which I easily could) and one of them looks very upscale and expensive, but physical access is not a problem at all.
I’m in blue Oregon and we make and sell most of the tannerite people use for shooting.
Fair point, but I'm sure you are only able to be sold a very specific set of authorized firearms, that when compared to what similar stores in other states happen to also sell; will reveal the differences are orders of magnitude.
Case in point: a Cali compliant AR-15 is a horrible thing to shoot (I own this one).
Biden actually has control of the arsenal.
Unless you are a leftist, committed to dying in a revolution, there's no comparison to Biden's position. Clinton and Obama? Maybe
Of what arsenal?
He's the commander in chief. Can a local socialist militia stops the tanks?
Why don't you ask the Taliban or NVA?
About 12x as many dead Taliban as coalition.
You are correct. How does that change who won in the end?
Depends on how you determine victory. Their criteria was "invaders go home". For your local militia a better comparison would be asking David Koresh how things worked out.
Conservative justices rule that the president is immune from prosecution
President has conservative justices assassinated
President appoints more progressive justices
Progressive justices reverse ruling
Would the president be liable for the prior assassinations at that point?
Not a lawyer but I wouldn't imagine so. Anybody who got an abortion in Arizona prior ro Dobbs isn't suddenly being charged with child murder (I hope)
Then we have a clear path to defeating fascism that will never, ever happen.
The father of the F-16, John Boyd, would tell up and coming officers that in their career they would have to face choices where they could do something or be somebody. And we are facing the consequences of having our country’s leadership full of people who wanted to be somebody.
Isn't that double jeopardy?
No, because he was never prosecuted the first time. Looks like it would be ex post facto, which is illegal in the US.
Subtle
Bonus points if their orders include the phrase "stand back and stand by".
While funny to imagine...please let's not. I got a kid to raise, I don't want to raise one in a civil war. I know for sure some of the "SEAL team 6" members wouldn't very much like being turned on government officials, especially if their politics align.
To be a seal, you will do what orders you are given. They aren't going to go rogue. The ones that will are the cannon fodder anyways.
Clarence: “I was watching a porno about this just this morning… I will meet you gentlemen in my chambers in 5 minutes.”
That doesn't work because the intimidation is still illegal until the ruling.
Is the President also in charge of the Secret Service?
Not some random courthouse. Just the steps of the Supreme Court.
Decisions like this should have immediate consequences for those deciding. If you want to make the President above the law, well, enjoy your stay in Gitmo.
Sotomayor should have asked about assassinating “corrupt” Supreme Court justices, in case some of her colleagues need help connecting the dots.
The argument has been that the president can be charged, but only after they're impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. And in the meantime, they're still president. So theoretically they could continue to have House members assassinated until there isn't enough votes to impeach. And theoretically they could also assassinate Senators until there aren't enough votes to convict. And I really don't understand why no one's making that argument to the Court, because that's exactly where the "they can kill anyone who disagrees with me because they're obviously a political rival" argument leads.
The argument has been made from the beginning. It's the whole "Seal Team 6" argument. They may not be saying it outright, but I think everybody understands that everybody on both sides of the argument knows that the argument would also cover a President ordering the assassination of rivals en masse.
Project 2025 anyone....
Rooting out political enemies from within government being a core part of it?
No? Anyone? Bueller?
Or, they could do one assassination and then step down, thereby dodging any impeachment and being immune to any further litigation.
Watching from an outside of the U.S. perspective, it leaves me speechless seeing how staggering the transition was from 'bastion of democracy and the free world' to 'increasingly malfunctioning society with russian-like values'
America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that "Bastion of Democracy and Free World" veneer gets.
We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have "sheriff's gangs" in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they're supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we're functionally at war with, who we can't put on trial because we broke their brains but we can't let go because we're still scared of them.
Dig into the history and you find out about Nixon's CIA sending arms to the Khmer Rouge. You learn about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's sex trafficking island. You learn about our century of atrocities in Haiti and Guatemala and Panama. You learn about the Tuskegee Experiments. You learn about that time George Bush Sr set up an teenager to sell a DEA agent crack directly outside the White House for the purpose of inflating fears of a drug epidemic.
Just really ugly despicable stuff. And its been happening for a long while.
Don't forget, a lot of the early free trade, free press rhetoric was because the US stood to benefit the most from it. Of course the country with mass printing technology wants everyone to be able to buy their printed propaganda. Do they want to share the technology? Not so much.
Propaganda works. Always has, always will.
The US has always been a hive of scum and villainy.
The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.
What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.
As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn't help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.
It's a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they're hard to see until you're living with them.
Oh this place hasn't ever been a bastion of democracy. There's so much inequity, vote surprising, gerrymandering, racial oppression, and straight up lying going on that even we have a hard time figuring out how much of our own history is a thick-ass layer of sugar.
I know it was probably a typo for suppressing, but vote surprising sounds like a jab at the electoral college.
"Surprise! Your vote doesn't really matter due to the electoral college."
It's almost as if hostile nation states are manipulating public opinion to destabilize western democracies and alliances.
Hey! They are against universal education. And universal healthcare. These are most anti-russian values I ever seen. I know what I am talking about.
If this is validated by the SC then hopefully Joe makes immediate use of it.
"Only for Republican Presidents"
Yes, kill Trump's lawyer. He said he's cool with it
No…that still ruins the country
The best thing to do would be an amendment that removes immunity
He could use it to fix the court and then have the court abolish the ruling.
If Trump wins the election, he's going to do what he wants regardless of the Court's ruling. Let's stop pretending that "Even when it accomplishes nothing, following the rules to the bitter end is the noble thing to do." Why the fuck does the Captain need to go down with his ship?
And then the next Republican President does the same thing
If your goal is no Republican President ever again then you don’t need to worry about the ruling anyway
So first kill Trump, then kill some of the SC judges, so that they won't oppose you when you move to make the president bound to uphold the law.
Why would you think it would end after that?
Right now, it's looking like the Supreme Court is going to say "that's not allowed" but do it in a way that prevents Trump from being tried before the election. This lets them say "we're good and ethical" while protecting Trump from the consequences of his criminality:
Well before this hearing I had the impression this SC is looking for ways to stack delay on delay without taking too much flak themselves. It showed in the weird narrow beam wording of their restrictions when they took on this case. It showed in the extra weeks they took to plan this hearing. And it is now showing in the questions they ask ...
I will not be surprised if they proclaim "a president has no total immunity, and only immunity in presidential matters, but the lower courts need to figure out if Trump's actions were (for) personal (gain) or presidential."
And with that the ball is dropped and it rolled in a sewage drain where it's hard to reach before the elections are in the rear view mirror.
It even includes another time loop for when it eventually does resurface back on the SC's lap for them to decide if his actions were presidential.
But by that time there will be a "Year one Dictator", proclaiming himself to be America's first great dictator, while ordering his rivals to be imprisoned, indicted and or shot.
And the people will loudly wonder, "Who is there to stop him? Where are the checks and balances?" But loudly will turn into a whimper then a whisper until it is a small voice in an empty room.
I don't get it, are they really arguing that Biden can just have Trump killed? And it would be perfectly legal!
No, rules only apply to the out-group.
If Trump wins the election, the SCOTUS will agree and let Trump do whatever the fuck he wants. If he loses, then SCOTUS will not let the ruling go through. The SCOTUS will conveniently wait until after the election to make a ruling on this.
This.
Plus they are arguing this knowing Biden won’t do that and so if it passed then Trump will have free rein if he wins and he will likely try to exercise that option is my guess.
Well no it's dumber than that. If a president can have sometime killed he could then have someone banished or imprisoned. They're literally arguing that the argument they're making is pointless because a president can do whatever they want.
I'm not sure they can realistically run out that clock. But they can absolutely just ignore a past ruling, if they want. Also, Biden just wouldn't do that. He's a shit, in a lot of ways, but not that kind of shit. Buuut the important point is that this argument is effective, accurate or not. Scare the MAGAts about what Biden, or, say, a future President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez might do. It doesn't have to be a realistic threat, just play into their existing narrative.
Why just Trump? add the supreme Court, the senate and the house as an opening act.
They don't think very far ahead do they?
Yep.
“The most powerful person in the world could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Hard to make any disincentive when the ones running for office are in the twilight of their lives. If only there were any choice to the matter.
The right question to ask is whether the president can decide to assassinate a supreme court justice. Then it becomes plenty clear to the supreme court fucks how obviously insane the rationale is.
Thing is, they are asking the questions and I rather suspect that they don't want to put that out there.
The main Trump lawyer defense has been to say that the military has it's own rules against executing such an order. But if Trump promises them pardons, those rules wouldn't be enforced, and the whole thing would be "legal".
The pardon power is kinda the root of all evil here, because even if the court finds that Trump isn't immune (which they almost certainly will), that just brings up the next question which is can the president pardon himself? I'm amazed that after the Trump years and his corrupt pardons there's been no effort to limit the pardon power.
The pardon power should be eliminated, and that's been clear since Nixon was pardoned. Sure, just about every president has a feel-good set of pardons, people who were railroaded by bad laws and bad court practices, but those corrections are only a tiny fraction of the outrageous injustices committed by our system, and their existence is used to justify the injustice in the first place - "oh but surely there will be a pardon for people who really need it" - as if depending on a single King-figure at the top to make good decisions, instead of improving systems, was ever a good idea. But in the meantime, just about every president also has a list of political pardons they trade for favors, or use for people who committed crimes on behalf of the president, or the party. Why the fuck does it make any sense at all to say "hey, this person was elected head of the executive branch, they should be able to just shield people from the rule of law", if the rule of law is an important basis of a free democracy? It's weird, when you think about it. End the pardon.
So this means someone could come in, kill the sitting President, and claim the presidency by right of conquest?
Murica!
That has never happened ever in history. Novel idea!
One more step towards President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho.
Only one way to find out!
For legal purposes, this comment is a joke.
"... In minecraft"
My 5yo approves this message
What in the fuck is going on down there?
Fascists
Bad shit. Send help.
We're IVing stupidity!
I don't understand how these absurd arguments aren't laughed out of court.
Who is John Sauer and why does anyone take this unfounded nonsense he's saying seriously?
Thats what is most concerning here: not so much the crazy reality that trump’s team is proposing, but the 5 conservative justices that are hand waving it off and are set to send it all back to the lower courts, giving trump the delay he needs.
They're being treated seriously because they're made by Republicans, who are part of the same patronage machine as the judges.
Because it's an opportunity to slow down prosecutions of Trump that the court's 6-3 Republican majority wants to halt. That and (rampant speculation) I think John Roberts in particular wants to write one of those historical opinions they talk about in law schools, and this is an opportunity to do that given the lack of clarity on presidential powers and immunities.
Trump's lawyer...?
"Your honor I submit to the court..our own rules instead the current ones, what say you!?"
So Biden could kill Trump?
My gut tells me Trump’s lawyers don’t actually want the president to be immune. They already won by having the Supreme Court take up this absurd case allowing his other trial to be delayed until this issue is resolved. Likely after he’s president.
Lol, that's exactly what the article says. Literally the last three lines summing it all up:
What luck, to be alive for the history class future generations will hate the most
Exactly. No one thinks presidents should be able to commit crimes with impunity. This is a delay tactic and we feel for it hook, line, and sinker. When you have money to pay for lawyers, you can delay justice indefinitely. Sure Trump is on trial for the Stormy Daniels coverup payments right now, but if he serves a single day in prison for it, I will gladly eat my hat.
It's just bizarre to listen to...
Kagan: If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?
Sauer: If it's structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
It's the only argument he can make. If he makes any other argument, his position on complete and total immunity is dead on the spot, as he would be conceding that the President isn't completely and totally immune after all.
Any concession, no matter how ridiculous the example, would invalidate his entire case immediately and he knows it. And if you ever hear him say "He would have to be impeached and convicted first", you'll know that he damn well knows how ridiculous his own arguments sound.
Judge: If President Trump were to run around the White House naked with a rubber glove on his head yelling 'Hi, I'm a squid! Nuke Montana so I can take out my rival octopus and his herd of glitter cows!', would that be an official act he would have immunity under?
Sauer: If it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
Doesn't matter what scenario you put there. Sauer's options are to repeat that line or essentially lose the case.
Alright you goddamn fascist enabler, explain how the fuck breaking the law either by stealing nuclear secrets or assassinating political opponents could be "structured as an official act." Explain the exact case law and legal mechanisms that explicitly give the office of the President this authority. And then, while you're exhaling the CO2 that some poor plant is gonna have to clean up, explain how private citizen Donald Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for committing these acts while he wasn't in office.
You fucking jackass.
Classified documents aren't a great example, as classification authority is delegated by the executive.
There is a law that describes the process. And it exists for exactly this reason: there is no evidence the files Trump stole had been declassified, and by the time it was discovered he had them he was no longer occupying the office.
I haven't read it. Mind linking it? I know the training I've been through makes it clear how classification authority is delegated down.
The Brennan Center gives a pretty easy lay explanation here.
Thanks.
The very next question should have been "And if he has 1/2 of the House of Representatives killed at the same time?"
why only half? isn't it more efficient to kill all members of all other branches along with all identified successors?
Because the other half would be his supporters.
well maybe now but if you want to be sure then double down and clean slate that shit.
While you're at it, write an executive order dissolving Congress and establishing the President as a dictator. It's an "official act" so it should be fine, right?
exactly. and no worries. we can still have elections. just like russia or north korea or china.
Now consider that Trump is already speaking in interviews as if he has the guaranteed immunity in his pocket...
He already promised he'll take nasty revenge on his rivals, have people removed who are thwarting him now. Promises drilling drilling drilling (I assume for oil) from day one, regardless if there's a law or rules against that which would normally need to be overturned first...
Somehow he is riding on the done deal he can do whatever he wants the moment he is "elected" and there will be no one to stop him.
I think that was covered under the coup question.
You know, I'm honestly not sure why everyone's thinking this is part of some plan for the future they have. Fuckhead was already president. Given this guy's track record, it's far more likely that he didn't get to finish covering his ass for something the first time around.
Any likely candidates that disappeared 2016-2020?
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein springs immediately to mind. But they definitely have a plan for the future, anyhow.
A bold move for the council of the current president's political rival, but alright bet. Pretty sure the lawyer just wants a way to escape the current client while saving face.
Are these people really this fucking stupid? If the sitting president has total immunity and having political rivals killed is an "offical" act, then what's stopping Biden from having Trump executed?
You know. If I was an asshole puppeteer who held trump’s strings….
I’d get myself a new puppet, then make this argument, maybe then do a false flag and have the trump-puppet executed in a manner that looks like Biden had it done….
Something to think about.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In another hypothetical, Justice Elena Kagan asked if the president would be immune from prosecution if he sold nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.
In February, D.C.’s Federal Court of Appeals summarily rejected the arguments made by Trump’s attorneys — including that the president would be protected from prosecution even if he had his political opponents assassinated.
The three-judge panel unanimously determined that Trump is not shielded from prosecution for potential crimes committed in office related to the subversion of the 2020 election.
Trump has long been ranting about the matter in his public statements and on social media, effectively making the immunity issue a plank of his presidential campaign.
Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land.
“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Feel like theyre trying to setup as a given that "official presidential acts" are immune from prosecution.
Like "alright assassinating a political rival is a step too far but now we're discussing a much more tame action as president."
No go back a step, there is no law granting the president immunity from the law. It doesnt matter what is or isnt an "official act"
Orangefucks lawyer is as stupid and evil as he is
The best one is that he argues only the senate/congress can rule he's broken the law, and only while he's president. So in his world he could assassinate someone, leave the presidency and then get away Scott free.
Fucking wild they used Ben Franklin as a basis of defense lol.
(Fake newsclip I made in jest of the absurdity of it all)