Here’s a question.

Is it even possible to bring charges against a sitting or former president at all now, based on this ruling?

As of right now, “official acts” are absolutely immune from prosecution or investigation, and evidence gathered from such communications cannot be used against him in any way. And anything the President does is an official act until the Supreme Court deems otherwise. Which means that somebody has to bring a case against the President. Which means you need evidence. Which you can’t get because it’s covered by the President’s absolute immunity. And you have to have standing.

Who would have standing? The DOJ? The one with the decades-long rule of not charging a sitting president? The one that takes direct orders from the man he’s supposed to be investigating? Good luck even attempting to file charges while remaining employed after lunch. And what kind of evidence could they bring? If Trump called ST6 and ordered a hit on Dolly Parton, how can you prove that when the call to ST6 would be classified in the first place, the mere existence of the phone call cannot be used against him, and he can tell the prosecutor to go pound sand if he starts snooping around? “Your Honor, I believe that the President ordered a hit on Dolly Parton…Yes, I know the President denied that a phone call was even made, yes I know his phone records are protected by absolute immunity and he doesn’t have to acknowledge the existence of the phone call let alone what was said…No, there’s no other way I can prove this phone call even took place…”

No standing + No evidence = no case. Ironically, the only person who would even have standing to sue would be the POTUS himself if he finds that he somehow needs more power.

You could well be right, but I have a hard time believing that any court - even this grotesquely corrupt one - would attempt such rulings.

gestures broadly

Have you been paying attention lately?

So far, while obviously a significant threat, their immunity rulings have actually been broadly in line with established precedent. And they specifically stated that the precise definition of an “official act” was something that was going to have to be worked out in future rulings.

Here’s the problem. Attempting to prosecute someone based on that logic borders on entrapment. Based on the way the ruling is worded, Trump could call Seal Team 6 tomorrow and "tell them to take out <insert legitimate threat here>. Oh, and by the way, take out Dolly Parton on the way there. " , and nobody could do anything about it. Since he was in the midst of carrying out an official duty, he can’t even be asked about the contents of the phone call, let alone if he ordered them to take out Dolly Parton. " Sure, the Supreme Court may very well rule that it was not an official act…years from now, after it’s made its way through the rest of the court system. But you can’t go back and charge someone with a crime for committing an act that was perfectly legal when it was committed. And right now, based on the wording of the Supreme Court ruling, the President would be absolutely immune from even being investigated for it, let alone prosecuted – until they say otherwise. Which would be fine for whoever is #2 on Trump’s hit list, but it would still suck to be Dolly Parton.

Even with as cynical as I am, I find it hard to believe that they actually intend to rule that anything that might be done in the midst of carrying out some entirely and completely unrelated official act is afforded the same protection as that official act. That would rather obviously make it so that the president could, for instance, pause in the middle of signing a bill and do literally anything - absolutely anything at all - and be entirely immune from any and all consequences.

Yes - it is possible that they’ll rule that way, but again, even as cynical as I am, I can’t imagine that they actually will, if for no other reason than that that would empower the president to order the summary execution of all Supreme Court justices.

That’s pretty much exactly what they said would happen. They spelled it out in great detail. If the President is engaging in an official act, he cannot be investigated for it, and the act and anything related to it cannot be used as evidence against him, even if it’s evidence of an unrelated crime. Which means yes, right now he can literally pause in the middle of signing a bill, order the military to nuke Wisconsin because he hates cheese, finish signing the bill, and nobody can touch him.

They really went out of their way to cover for Trump, except for the part where Biden would probably have immunity for having him killed.

Plot twist: This is all an elaborate plan by the deep state to have Trump killed, mafia style.

Ever seen Goodfellas? Remember when they said Tommy was going to be a made man, but in reality he showed up and got the back of his head blown off? Same thing here. The Supreme Court rules for Presidential immunity. Trump thinks he’s just been crowned a king. Meanwhile, Biden is covertly ordering the Secret Service to instruct Trump’s bodyguards to take him out. Trump gets offed by his own security team, Biden is untouchable because they can’t even ask him if he called the Secret Service, let alone oredered the hit. Dark Brandon emerges, putting his sunglasses on CSI style, while a thundering YEAHHHHHHHHHH can be heard in the background. Later, rumors circulate that while Clarence Thomas and Joe Biden don’t see eye to eye on many things, they both agreed that Trump had to go.

Actually, it’s much more simplistic than that.

Some of the checks he signed were signed at the WH. And if I recall correctly, he signed them with a bunch of other stuff. What this means is that him signing the checks was part of an “official act”, even if signing those specific checks wasn’t. Which means based on the SC ruling, he can’t even be questioned about signing those checks, nor can he have the fact that he signed them used against him even though they weren’t part of his official duties. Take out him signing the checks at the WH and you lose a good chunk of the crime he was committed for, which will likely be used as the basis for throwing the case out.

I don’t like Trump as much as the next guy, but this ruling does effectively make him a king that cannot be prosecuted. Every single one of his cases is going to go away as a result of this ruling:

• The NY case, as I said above, will likely be thrown out because some of the crime was committed while in the WH.
• The GA case, Fani Willis’ conduct not withstanding, will likely be thrown out on the basis that Trump calling the GA SoS was an “official act”. The contents of the call, criminal as it is, will likely be deemed untouchable since it happened while he was committing an official act.
• The Florida case was never going to go to trial anyway because of Cannon’s continuing interference, but I suspect that she’ll just follow the step-by-step blueprint that Clarence Thomas gave her to just have the whole thing dismissed. And I expect the DC case to be dismissed by the supreme court once they rule that special counsels are invalid.

Whether or not it’s “what democracy should look like” is an opinion often based on whether you’re on (or think you’re on) the giving or receiving end of the oppression.

Great. Now do Florida’s.

Not that it matters. Not a single case is going to be heard before the election, and the chances of a trial being held before the inauguration is essentially zero, especially after the recent Supreme Court ruling. If Trump wins the election, there is exactly nothing that would be able to stop him from being a free man, immune from all further prosecution, and literally able to do anything he wants with impunity when he wakes up in the morning on January 21, 2025.

Anyone saying this now is guaranteed to not even be employed by lunchtime on that morning, let alone pursuing a case against him.

And pretty soon, there won’t be a conviction. As written, the Supreme Court ruling invalidates some of the evidence that was used against him, which invalidates the conviction. The guy’s going to get away with the whole god damned thing, and there’s a very real chance he’s going to get a 4 year victory lap as well.

May you find solace wherever you seek it, because we’re all gonna need a lot of it pretty damn soon.

And that review will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where they just got finished saying that acts taken in office can’t even be used as evidence against him in unrelated cases. By that logic, it’s pretty open-and-shut. Trump received documents and signed checks while he was president and taking care of official business. The fact that he signed those checks in office makes him signing them inadmissible evidence, and without that evidence a lot of the case falls apart. His convictions will likely be thrown out.

They’re not upending it. They’re basically shitting all over it.

In the past couple of weeks alone, they’ve:

• Ruled that people who participated in the J6 insurrection to obstruct the counting of votes cannot be charged with obstruction.
• Made bribery legal
• Made the President a king that is above the law (unless they say he isn’t)
• Put Trump’s state conviction in serious jeopardy by ruling that evidence collected while he was in office is inadmissable
• Given judge Cannon a roadmap to dismiss the Florida case against him with their blessing.
• Stated that they don’t actually have to abide by any code of ethics and can basically do what they want.
• Neutered Congress’s regulatory authority, forcing it to cede even more power to the executive branch

These people could literally spend the 4th of july decreeing that the 2020 election was stolen, and Trump is therefore president for life and it wouldn’t even get me to raise my eyebrows at this point. Rulings across the country seem to be doing nothing more than paving the way for Trump’s return and making sure what few restraints existed during his first term are now gone.

Until it eventually hits the Supreme Court and they decide what is and isn’t an official act based on what political party the President is affiliated with.

His team claims that the evidence used was gathered during the presidency, when he was immune.

If I read the ruling correctly, this is where the problem is. If I interpreted the ruling correctly, any evidence gathered during his presidency is considered privileged and therefore can’t be used against Trump. Since at least some of the crime was committed (him signing the checks) and some of the evidence was gathered while he was in office, this ruling makes that evidence inadmissable, and therefore the verdict invalid.

Who says he can’t? The Supreme Court just said that he’s immune from “official acts” without even defining what that would mean. Who determines what is and isn’t an official act? The President? The Supreme Court? Right now, as this ruling is worded, all bets are off. There’s nothing stopping a sitting President from just arbitrarily declaring someone as a threat to national security and having them picked off by ST6 as an “official act to prevent a terrorist attack against the United States”, then just having the details classified.

Having something criminal declared as an “official act” is piss-easy, especially when you’re in charge of the branch making the decision and you have one of the other branches in your back pocket, possibly both.

I don’t know who the answer is - my personal preference remains Bernie and I think he would be an easy sell

I have to disagree here. All Biden had to do was alleviate fears among independent voters about his age and health by simply not walking out there looking like a dementia patient that wandered off again. He failed at that, miserably, which only magnified and reinforced the exact fears among independent voters he was supposed to be alleviating. And, as expected after that disastrous performance, there were a lot of people waking up this morning saying “See, I told you. He’s too old for the job.”

Regardless of Sanders’ mental fitness, health, competence, political positions, etc., replacing Biden on the ticket with somebody even older than he is would absolutely be the most tone-deaf thing they could do.

Policies aren’t the problem. If these people cared about policy, they’d just stick with biden regardless of age.

And until he says something more memorable than answering the first question with a bunch of stuttering, ums, uhs, and then a random “I beat Medicare!”, whatever that means, then none of that will matter to most people. That soundbyte was an absolute disaster that he may not recover from.

Serious question, for anyone masochistic enough to still be watching: Has Biden’s performance improved enough to negate the moment that will be on every GOP attack ad for the next 5 months, or does he still look like he needs to be walked back into his room and told that no, it’s not 1975 any more…

Good god, I had to stop watching after the abortion question.

Trump actually has managed to keep his composure so far. Sure, he’s spouting out lie upon lie that CNN is allowing to continue un-fact-checked. But he at least sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, and is showing something resembling energy.

Biden looked like a nursing home patient that should’ve been guided out by his nurse. He sounds even worse. That freeze-up at the end with him stuttering and just blurting out a random “I beat Medicare” or whatever that was is going to fuel the entire Republican campaign for the next 5 months. That is literally the exact moment Biden lost this election, mark my words. The man is performing like he’s sundowning.

If he gets better, God bless him. But I cannot see how anyone can have confidence in that man after that performance. He doesn’t look like he’ll make it another 4 months let alone another 4 years.

Excuse me, your honor. I think we need to have a hearing on what the definition of fact-finding is. Actually, I think we need three separate hearings. One is to define the word fact, then the word finding, and the last to define fact-finding with regards to the scope of this case. Oh, and that reminds me…we need to define the word scope as well. I mean what kind of scope? A periscope? A telescope? And how do we define definition anyway? I think we need a hearing on that as well…and what does constitute a hearing, anyway? Has that been defined anywhere? See how complex this case is? You’re confused, your clerk quit an hour ago, and even your stenographer confessed to Nixon’s disappearance and went to jail rather than suffer through this any more. So how do you expect a jury of my peers to undestand this. And what do we mean by “peers” anyway…

From the article:

“There is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress,” Cannon wrote.

Yeah, you fucking cunt. You’re doing the former while trying to call it the latter and using Trumpian doublespeak and circular logic to justify it.

Trump’s lawyers say they believe the wording used in the search warrant to authorize agents to seize “national defense information” and “Presidential Records” wasn’t specific enough, and Cannon agreed that there were “ambiguities.”

“The Court determines that some of the terms in that document do not carry ‘generally understood meaning[s]’ such that a law enforcement agent, without further clarification, would have known to identify such material as ‘seizable’ property,” the judge wrote on Thursday.

I don’t even know where to begin here. Is she literally entertaining the idea that FBI agents are too stupid to know what national defense information and Presidential records are? What the fuck is that?

I can’t even…seriously…I just can’t. This is a level of stupid that I did not think was achievable by sentient human beings that are allowed to go outside without adult supervision.

Please, PLEASE tell me that this is finally an appealable issue. It HAS to be, right? Right? The 11th circuit or whatever appeals court oversees her will be able to bitchslap her again and hopefully remove her from the case, right? Or is all hope truly lost and we’re destined to spend the next several months trying to figure out if the FBI knows what national defense information is until she finds the next excuse to delay the case for another eleventy billion years?

Yeah, because when that doesn’t work, and it won’t, there’s no way both she and the violent Trump cult retaliate against him for trying 🙄

And what at this point could they possibly do that they’re not doing already?

Yeah, because an already belligerent judge becoming openly hostile helps his case and he isn’t getting enough death threats already 🙄

She has scolded the prosecution publicly every step of the way. She bends over backwards to rule in Trump’s favor. She’s already said she was going to delay ruling on some motions until after the trial starts, putting the case at high risk of double jeopardy. She has long since passed being “openly hostile” and is neck deep in “intentional sabotage”. How much more hostile could she possibly get without calling for his assassination in the town square?

There’s no chance this case is going to trial before the election

And thus no chance it ever happens unless Trump loses again and the inevitable second coup attempt isn’t successful.

Which could at least possibly have been avoided if Smith had filed a motion to recuse when it became obvious the fix was in.

She’s already as hostile as she can be towards the prosecution

Wanna bet? A thousand bucks says she’s still trying (unsuccesfully) to appear impartial and will become much worse in reaction to him stating the obvious facts to the contrary.

So she’ll bend over backwards to rule in Trump’s favor, ignore the obvious fact-based arguments brought up by the prosecution, give them a tongue lashing at literally every hearing for the most trivial of matters, rule against the prosecution at every turn, then give the jury instructions that would basically guarantee an acquittal.

How is that different than what she’s doing now?

And she’s holding hearings regarding having him removed from the case

Does that sound to you like the action of a well-adjusted person who won’t react to valid criticism by abusing the power she has over him and the case?

Which means his options are to (a) take it on the chin and virtually guarantee that Trump walks because the fix was in all along and she dismissed the case first chance she got once double jeopardy attached, or (b) Motion for her recusal and have at least a chance of having it reassigned to an impartial judge.

He literally has nothing to lose

Except for one of the most important and on paper strongest court cases in the history of the country. Just tiny things like that.

Which is 100% guaranteed with Cannon in charge. Smith has no chance of winning already as long as she’s on the bench.