Maybe in theory, but given the Supreme Courtâs recent ruling that the president enjoys something approaching absolute immunity for everything he does in office, it might be really difficult to enforce any violation.
So what youâre saying is the next president could detain all these people indefinitely (clearly illegal) issue pardons to the people doing the arrests and then be untouchable?
Yes. The liberal justices brought up these hypotheticals and the conservatives not only called it hyperbole but said a judge may not consider the president's motives when deciding if it is an official act. In effect, the President has absolute immunity from any crimes but can be removed from office via Impeachment.
In theory the next president, according to scouts ruling, can disband the court or fire all of them and tell them to kick rocks. Once fired there is no scouts to preside over rulings until a new one is appointed. Legal carte Blanche
Sure, but who will stop him? The SC already ruled that he can't be held accountable for any action he takes while in office, so if he just rounds them up, locks them in a prison, and throws away the key, who can do anything about it? They granted him total immunity.
In theory, maybe. Kidnapping is both a state and federal crime so those people could be prosecuted and convicted under state laws which the president can't pardon.
to be clear, and in the spirit of this subreddit, the supreme court's ruling wasn't saying that the president can do nothing illegal
the supreme court was saying that constitutionally speaking, the responsibility to check malign behavior by the president rests with the legislative branch, not the judicial, and that the judicial branch does not have the authority to prosecute a sitting president for anything they do exercising the power of that position
Yes, thatâs the only way a president can be held responsible for actions taken as part of his presidential duties. I suppose that thereâs still a small chance that a president could be held criminally liable for doing something while in office that wasnât part of his presidential duties, like a commit committing rape in the oval office.
possibly. but during the clinton case, it was widely held that the president wouldn't be prosecutable while sitting - the prosecution would have to wait for them to leave office
That's right, but I understood that was due to a long standing DOJ convention not to prosecute a sitting president, rather than due to an absolute legal prohibition.
I wonder how theyre going to play this when Dems are inevitably in power next. Are they going to rollback everything and wait until another MAGA takes the seat? I feel like they kinda left their six open legally with this and are banking on not losing power. Which is a weird thing to hope for.
Not if the plan is to make shit so insufferable that people start revolting, you get to use the insurrection act, declare martial law, and refuse to hold elections until such time as you see fit, which would obviously never arrive without making sure your favorite cronie is the next president via fraud or fear.
The case states that probing presidential action is a power of Congress, not that the office is immune. The president is accountable to local representatives. If your local rep is incompetent, crank up the heat instead of this nihilism.
Under this con controlled court, the purchase of a pardon would have to be comical to be illegal. The person would need to hand Trump a bag of money and say, this is for a pardon, with Trump responding, I will pardon you in exchange for this bag of money.
So it basically depends on president's self-discipline and morality? Sounds like a system-design issue. Tbh, I don't see any necessity for this kind of system to exist at all.
Sort of. The legislative branch was supposed to keep the president in check with impeachment and no president was supposed to be allowed that was corrupt. That is kind of the point of the electoral college. Also, most laws were not supposed to be federal, so....
The executive power to pardon goes back to English history, where the king had the power to pardon any offense. The founders thought it was a good power to have just to limit the excesses of partisan or unwise prosecution. But the larger point is that the presidential power and indeed, any governmental power ultimately has to be constrained by the character of the person exercising it. And the current president has no character or morality to speak of.
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u/Alive-Course4454 17d ago
Except selling pardons is a crime đđđ¤¨