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Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to pun

Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. There are reasonable disagreements on where Presidential authority begins or ends on many topics, and you want the limits to be either through separation of powers (e.g., the Judicial Branch can bring an end to actions, the Legislative can impeach and remove the President) or through the ballot box. This does not mean, including from the majority opinion, that anything the President does is immune from challenges. If the President directs a cover-up for his campaign (Nixon) or directs a Governor to find enough ballots for him to win or directs "alternate electors" via fraud (Trump), this is not an official action. Trump's lawyers admitted as much in the oral arguments.

afavour 2y ago
> Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. Hrm. Surely the implication you're outlining here is that the President will be breaking the law while carrying out "the roles of the office"? Is that not a concern?
- dustincoates 2y ago
  The next sentence addresses that—there are reasonable disagreements to the extent that some actions are legal or not.
  - afavour 2y ago
    Why is a court the wrong place to settle those disagreements? That is to say, why is it preferable for a President to face the possibility of impeachment by Congress over a jury of everyday citizens? Seems considerably easier to rig the former than the latter.
    - dustincoates 2y ago
      Let's take Biden's student loan forgiveness as an example. Some say that he overstepped his authority. The courts should decide if that act is legally permitted, but it would be a tough pull to think that he should be personally responsible for that, including potential jail time. Now egregious cases that fall outside of the reasonable expectations of the role of the President. Sure, those should go to the courts. But I don't think this case prevents that. Most of what Trump did after the election, IMO, was clearly as a candidate, not a President.
      - mrkeen 2y ago
        If Biden disregarded the court's ruling and went ahead and made it happen anyway, then yes, personal jail time please.
    - steadfastbeef 2y ago
      Because the people are stupid?
      - afavour 2y ago
        Why do we even let them vote at all? Hello, slippery slope.
  - camgunz 2y ago
    Yeah but your argument ignores the fact that this all has to be hashed out after the fact. Before this ruling, presidents could ask counsel if something was legal or not (ex: there are tapes of Trump doing this during his attempt to steal the election) and they could answer based on statutes and case law. Now the answer always has to be "depends on what judge we get, there are no precedents". Jackson makes this argument in her dissent, and I think she's right that this is a sea change in the relationship between the US and its president.
mlinhares 2y ago
The court never defined what are or aren’t official acts and it should be straight forward for the president to say that spying on his enemies, that are also the enemies of the state/government, is an official act, as they are protecting the constitution from those that would do it harm. Presidents are effectively kings now, won’t be long until one declares himself one for good.
- blue_dragon 2y ago
  > it should be straight forward for the president to say that spying on his enemies, that are also the enemies of the state/government, is an official act This would be challenged in court by the victims of the President's spying, and the court would ultimately decide whether or not the spying constituted an "official act".
  - CapcomGo 2y ago
    So now the process is to wait years to see if something a president does is technically an 'official act' or not. Seems like there should have been a better way to solve this.
    - Lord-Jobo 2y ago
      Yup, presidents will enjoy the "presumption of immunity" for practically any action, and the only chance at consequence is years and years down the line after jumping through massive courtroom hurdles, in which it will almost certainly need to be in front of the supreme Court again, where the court majority will forgive 'their' president or convinct the 'other' president. Years of zero consequence. Imagine what an egomaniacal, unethical, vengeful, unempathetic, asshole could do with all of that power.
    - techdragon 2y ago
      There was, we called them elections.
  - notacoward 2y ago
    If the court gets to decide what is or is not an official act, then they effectively get to control what the president can or can not do. They've already shown that they don't care about precedent, so they'll make those decisions based on their own (or their patrons') momentary convenience. That makes the executive the puppet of the judiciary. Instead of one king we have nine. Happy 4th of July.
lesuorac 2y ago
W.r.t. SCOTUS's ruling, you'd claim the main problem is that "Both the District Court and the D. C. Circuit declined to decide whether the indicted conduct involved official acts.". If the lower courts had claimed the conduct wasn't official when they denied the motion to dismiss then SCOTUS wouldn't have vacated the lower rulings?
denton-scratch 2y ago
> You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. Why? In the UK we of course have no president; all government actions can be subjected to judicial review, whichever minister was in charge. Judicial review is a civil procedure, not a criminal one. All the court can do is order the government to reverse the unlawful decision, and make good its consequences.
- Maxatar 2y ago
  The UK parliament is not subject to judicial review. Judicial review in the UK only applies to crown corporations or specific public institutions. Such a position would be considered repulsive to the vast majority of Americans.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. No, we do not. That's the whole point of the checks and balances. If his political opponents are able to prove their case before the courts, showing that the president broke the law, then they should be able to.
- claytongulick 2y ago
  Are you willing to see Biden go to jail because an activist DA in TX used an obscure law that no one had ever been prosecuted under, in a 90+% "red" venue, with a complicit judge and jury? This ruling is meant to protect the office from precisely these types of politically motivated attacks.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Better than the alternative. I would imagine that such a case would be appealed anyway (just as Trump has appealed his cases).
  - camgunz 2y ago
    > Are you willing to see Biden go to jail because an activist DA in TX used an obscure law that no one had ever been prosecuted under, in a 90+% "red" venue, with a complicit judge and jury? This has always been possible (Nixon v. Fitzgerald) but has never happened. Choose whatever reason you want: any amount of decency, any sense of shame, low odds of winning, likelihood of terrible retribution from generally good people.
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    Sure. One-off's of loose checks and balances are better than codified law(s) and ruling(s) that we don't have any at all.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Bribing a porn star to keep quiet about your extramarital sex and breaking accounting/campaign financing laws by trying to disguise the payments before you are president should be considered an official act by the president? Weird argument to make.
philjohn 2y ago
Except doesn't the "can't enter things into evidence" clause of the ruling mean that bringing the prosecution against Nixon would never have had a snowball's hell in chance of being argued and won?
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I'm curious how that one gets interpreted in subsequent lower court (and Supreme Court) opinions. It feels like once an act is to be classified as unofficial, then evidence of same cannot be covered, regardless of whether it's personal or not. So maybe whittled down to "You can't go on an investigation of the President's personal/private documents because you have a suspicion of an unofficial act." Which feels more like the Supreme Court's intent.
camgunz 2y ago
> Trump's lawyers admitted as much in the oral arguments. Trump's counsel did admit this, but the opinion contains no such carve out. It says "he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts" and declines to define what separates an official from an unofficial act, leaving it up to courts on a case-by-case basis. The dissent--rightly--points out that this is way more than Trump asked for: > Inherent in Trump’s Impeachment Judgment Clause argument is the idea that a former President who was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for crimes involving his official acts could then be prosecuted in court for those acts. See Brief for Petitioner 22 (“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts, but only if that President is first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate”). By extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official- acts immunity even more expansive than the one Trump argued for. On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a former President whose abuse of power was so egregious and so offensive even to members of his own party that he was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate still would be entitled to “at least presumptive” criminal immunity for those acts.

afavour 2y ago

> Sure. You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. Hrm. Surely the implication you're outlining here is that the President will be breaking the law while carrying out "the roles of the office"? Is that not a concern?

dustincoates 2y ago
The next sentence addresses that—there are reasonable disagreements to the extent that some actions are legal or not.
- afavour 2y ago
  Why is a court the wrong place to settle those disagreements? That is to say, why is it preferable for a President to face the possibility of impeachment by Congress over a jury of everyday citizens? Seems considerably easier to rig the former than the latter.
  - dustincoates 2y ago
    Let's take Biden's student loan forgiveness as an example. Some say that he overstepped his authority. The courts should decide if that act is legally permitted, but it would be a tough pull to think that he should be personally responsible for that, including potential jail time. Now egregious cases that fall outside of the reasonable expectations of the role of the President. Sure, those should go to the courts. But I don't think this case prevents that. Most of what Trump did after the election, IMO, was clearly as a candidate, not a President.
    - mrkeen 2y ago
      If Biden disregarded the court's ruling and went ahead and made it happen anyway, then yes, personal jail time please.
  - steadfastbeef 2y ago
    Because the people are stupid?
    - afavour 2y ago
      Why do we even let them vote at all? Hello, slippery slope.
- camgunz 2y ago
  Yeah but your argument ignores the fact that this all has to be hashed out after the fact. Before this ruling, presidents could ask counsel if something was legal or not (ex: there are tapes of Trump doing this during his attempt to steal the election) and they could answer based on statutes and case law. Now the answer always has to be "depends on what judge we get, there are no precedents". Jackson makes this argument in her dissent, and I think she's right that this is a sea change in the relationship between the US and its president.

mlinhares 2y ago

The court never defined what are or aren’t official acts and it should be straight forward for the president to say that spying on his enemies, that are also the enemies of the state/government, is an official act, as they are protecting the constitution from those that would do it harm. Presidents are effectively kings now, won’t be long until one declares himself one for good.

blue_dragon 2y ago
> it should be straight forward for the president to say that spying on his enemies, that are also the enemies of the state/government, is an official act This would be challenged in court by the victims of the President's spying, and the court would ultimately decide whether or not the spying constituted an "official act".
- CapcomGo 2y ago
  So now the process is to wait years to see if something a president does is technically an 'official act' or not. Seems like there should have been a better way to solve this.
  - Lord-Jobo 2y ago
    Yup, presidents will enjoy the "presumption of immunity" for practically any action, and the only chance at consequence is years and years down the line after jumping through massive courtroom hurdles, in which it will almost certainly need to be in front of the supreme Court again, where the court majority will forgive 'their' president or convinct the 'other' president. Years of zero consequence. Imagine what an egomaniacal, unethical, vengeful, unempathetic, asshole could do with all of that power.
  - techdragon 2y ago
    There was, we called them elections.
- notacoward 2y ago
  If the court gets to decide what is or is not an official act, then they effectively get to control what the president can or can not do. They've already shown that they don't care about precedent, so they'll make those decisions based on their own (or their patrons') momentary convenience. That makes the executive the puppet of the judiciary. Instead of one king we have nine. Happy 4th of July.

lesuorac 2y ago

W.r.t. SCOTUS's ruling, you'd claim the main problem is that "Both the District Court and the D. C. Circuit declined to decide whether the indicted conduct involved official acts.". If the lower courts had claimed the conduct wasn't official when they denied the motion to dismiss then SCOTUS wouldn't have vacated the lower rulings?

denton-scratch 2y ago

> You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. Why? In the UK we of course have no president; all government actions can be subjected to judicial review, whichever minister was in charge. Judicial review is a civil procedure, not a criminal one. All the court can do is order the government to reverse the unlawful decision, and make good its consequences.

Maxatar 2y ago
The UK parliament is not subject to judicial review. Judicial review in the UK only applies to crown corporations or specific public institutions. Such a position would be considered repulsive to the vast majority of Americans.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> You want a President to be able to carry out the roles of the office without concern that his or her political opponents will use the courts to try to punish those actions. No, we do not. That's the whole point of the checks and balances. If his political opponents are able to prove their case before the courts, showing that the president broke the law, then they should be able to.

claytongulick 2y ago
Are you willing to see Biden go to jail because an activist DA in TX used an obscure law that no one had ever been prosecuted under, in a 90+% "red" venue, with a complicit judge and jury? This ruling is meant to protect the office from precisely these types of politically motivated attacks.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Better than the alternative. I would imagine that such a case would be appealed anyway (just as Trump has appealed his cases).
- camgunz 2y ago
  > Are you willing to see Biden go to jail because an activist DA in TX used an obscure law that no one had ever been prosecuted under, in a 90+% "red" venue, with a complicit judge and jury? This has always been possible (Nixon v. Fitzgerald) but has never happened. Choose whatever reason you want: any amount of decency, any sense of shame, low odds of winning, likelihood of terrible retribution from generally good people.
- HaZeust 2y ago
  Sure. One-off's of loose checks and balances are better than codified law(s) and ruling(s) that we don't have any at all.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Bribing a porn star to keep quiet about your extramarital sex and breaking accounting/campaign financing laws by trying to disguise the payments before you are president should be considered an official act by the president? Weird argument to make.

philjohn 2y ago

Except doesn't the "can't enter things into evidence" clause of the ruling mean that bringing the prosecution against Nixon would never have had a snowball's hell in chance of being argued and won?

ethbr1 2y ago
I'm curious how that one gets interpreted in subsequent lower court (and Supreme Court) opinions. It feels like once an act is to be classified as unofficial, then evidence of same cannot be covered, regardless of whether it's personal or not. So maybe whittled down to "You can't go on an investigation of the President's personal/private documents because you have a suspicion of an unofficial act." Which feels more like the Supreme Court's intent.

camgunz 2y ago

> Trump's lawyers admitted as much in the oral arguments. Trump's counsel did admit this, but the opinion contains no such carve out. It says "he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts" and declines to define what separates an official from an unofficial act, leaving it up to courts on a case-by-case basis. The dissent--rightly--points out that this is way more than Trump asked for: > Inherent in Trump’s Impeachment Judgment Clause argument is the idea that a former President who was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for crimes involving his official acts could then be prosecuted in court for those acts. See Brief for Petitioner 22 (“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts, but only if that President is first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate”). By extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official- acts immunity even more expansive than the one Trump argued for. On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a former President whose abuse of power was so egregious and so offensive even to members of his own party that he was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate still would be entitled to “at least presumptive” criminal immunity for those acts.