• Akuden@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    In 1982 SCOTUS made a decision on this:

    “We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.”

    The media, the Democrats, but I repeat myself, have all been lying to you. This has always been the case. Nothing has changed.

    • paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      This most recent ruling wildly expanded the immunity, added presumed immunity for adjacent actions, and phrased everything in such a way that actually prosecuting the president for literally anything will take years.

      Say the president does something you think is illegal and should be prosecuted. Stop. Before you can take him to court over that, you need to determine if what he did was “official” or “unofficial.” SCOTUS didn’t give deterministic guidelines to differentiate, so you need to have a separate court case just for that. Alright so let’s have the court case that determines whether what the president did was official or unofficial. Let’s introduce some evidence—

      Stop. Evidence from official acts cannot be introduced in a case to prove something was unofficial. So you actually need to have a separate court case to determine if that evidence is official or unofficial. Once you have your results, one party won’t like it and will appeal it up and up to the supreme court. Repeat for potentially every single piece of evidence.

      Okay now that we know what evidence we can and can’t introduce, we can finally determine if what the president did was official or unofficial. Once we have a result, one party won’t like it and it will be appealed all the way up to the supreme court again. Only when SCOTUS rules the action was unofficial (IF they rule it was unofficial) can you then BEGIN the process of actually taking the president to court over that action.

      This will take years, not to mention the supreme court is appointed by the president and it recently ruled that taking bribes after you do something instead of before is perfectly legal actually. This is all by design. The point is to keep this all tied up in court for years, which effectively gives the president full immunity for everything. And he can also pressure the courts or judges to rule his way via any number of threats (if you think that’s an unofficial act, feel free to take him to court over it).

      This is pretty clearly designed to functionally protect the president from all culpability (which the dissenting SCOTUS opinions agree on, ergo their dissent).

      • Akuden@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Before prosecuting a president you have always had to stop and determine if what was done was in an official capacity or an unofficial capacity. It’s been like that for 200 years. That’s why you can’t charge bush 1, bush 2, or Obama with war crimes. Furthermore, the court made their stance on Trump quite clear. They did not dismiss any of his cases. If they were in his pocket, and he had this absolute immunity as you claim, all cases would be dropped.

        Folks, it’s quite clear what the president can and cannot do. He can pardon, appoint, dismiss, and instruct the military to take actions and has full immunity to do so. Which of course the president must have full immunity for those actions. If you or I send a missle to kill people we would get charged. The president would not.

        Moreover, presumptive immunity leaves the door wide open. The ruling says that any action taken with presumptive immunity may be challenged and that the burden is on the government to show that the action was not within the presidents duties, and failed to uphold the constitutional oath taken. If the president blatantly breaks the law that burden of proof would be childish to gather. The president is not above the law, and never was.

        • hglman@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          You can’t charge them for war crimes bc war crime isn’t a US law. This didn’t exist before and the official unofficial distinction was explicitly created in the ruling. The above post outlines exactly the process now established to block any case, suggesting that because a more ridiculously comically corrupt version of a ruling exist that this isn’t it nonsense and clearly demonstrative of your goal to spin propaganda.

          Your post is a lie, self contradictory and explicit propaganda. Your account should be blocked and banned.

        • toddestan@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          The thing is, this country has existed for nearly 250 years without this ruling and the president having any sort of immunity. The idea that we suddenly need this is ridiculous. So what changed? Well, Trump of course. And yes, this is all about Trump. This ruling didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from Trump making claims about immunity, the lower courts dismissing the claims as nonsense, until the supreme court took it up and here we are.

          • Akuden@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Let’s follow that logic.

            You locate a terrorist. You just so happen to have a couple guys who can bomb that terrorist. You murder the terrorist. You are charged with murder because the laws of this nation do not allow murder.

            Same scenario, but now it’s the president. Please tell me what the difference is. Why can the president not be charged with a crime but you can? What would you call that?

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Nope, the real lie was SCOTUS was becoming liberal instead of just making a few liberal rulings here and there. This was used as a battle cry to put in more conservatives, remember the “activists” judges they were wringing their hands about. So now we don’t even get a few liberal rulings sprinkled here and there.

      Full stop, SCOTUS has always been conservative. History has already proven this

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Well when we have a Right Wing party (Democrats) and a Fascism Party (Republicans) one of those is preferable to the other

          • Akuden@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Why do you consider the Republican party racists? What makes the party as whole this way to you?

    • Infinite@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      “We hold that the petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.”

      Specifically, immunity from civil damages. The president couldn’t be sued by randos claiming he cost them a job or whatever.

      This is a new class of fascism. Keep on trollin’.

      • Akuden@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The president has always enjoyed immunity for performing official duties. Obviously.

          • Akuden@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            No? Can the president be charged with murder for telling the military to drone strike someone? No they cannot, because they are immune. They have to have some immunity in order to execute their duties.

      • Akuden@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I copy and pasted from the 1981 ruling. Anyway, hope you have a good one!

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          He’s pointing out what you posted says damages liability, which means something completely different. Basically means I couldn’t have sued Regan for fucking over 90% of the American populous financially. It doesn’t mean he has immunity to everything that is an official act. Big difference.

          • Akuden@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Indeed it does. The president has always had immunity. This is civil immunity. There is also criminal immunity because you can’t prosecute the president for ordering the deaths of thousands of people. Unlike say, you know if I was responsible for thousands of deaths. Or even one death. The president must have some immunity to carry out their duty as commander and chief. We have laws against murder. Ever find it funny you can’t go after the president for murder? No, you never once considered it.