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This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. “In its ruling, the Supreme

• unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
  SCOTUS said there was an extra procedural step, namely impeachment and conviction by the Senate. Ultimately the Senate would decide factually, whether that hypothetical action was an appropriate basis for further criminal prosecution. Prosecuting a president fundamentally is a political act, and why would we think a random DC bureaucrat better qualified to make a consequential political act than the Senate itself?
  • dashundchen 2y ago
    Why does the president deserve some fundamental immunity with a very high political bar to clear, compared to average citizen or politician? Carving out some special protection strikes at the heart of the idea that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      Because the government kills people all the time and destroys their lives and businesses. And because nobody is combing through the criminal law books trying to convict the average person for something. I mean, the former governor of New York just said the New York prosecution against Trump wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else.
      • klyrs 2y ago
        > I mean, the former governor of New York just said the New York prosecution against Trump wouldn’t have been brought against anyone else. Trump is flagrantly corrupt and coordinates crime through lackeys, many of which have been convicted of felonies. No, you don't catch old kingpins on the stuff you get everybody else with. There's definitely a two-tier justice system going on, but it bends in Trump's favor at every turn.
        • rayiner 2y ago
          “Trump actually did all these bad things! But we can’t prove any of them, so we’ll prosecute him for influencing an election by covering up an affair after he already won the election. Don’t sweat the details, you gotta get creative with these kingpins.” This is persuasive to nobody that doesn’t start from the assumption Trump is a criminal. The irony is that I used to share that assumption, because I’m a pretty trusting person. But after almost eight years of the smartest lawyers in the country going after him, I’m not so sure. My former boss at a white shoe law firm in New York helped engineer the New York case, and it’s the same kind of contrived legal theory the firm would use to help a corporate client make it seem like all their income was earned in Bermuda. Utterly unpersuasive.
          • intended 2y ago
            Isn’t trump convicted ? And you mean to say his entire defense team was so bad that they couldn’t protect him from a contrived and tormented case ? Against a jury of peers? And the defendant is Trump, someone who is famously associated with the quote “Lordy, I hope they are tapes.” No one has to persecute trump. He just has to stop doing things which make everyone republican President before him cry in sorrow. What was it you said ? You can only think this if you start from the position that everyone else is corrupt except Trump
          • transcriptase 2y ago
            As a Canadian who keeps up on the news but has no skin in the game, from up here it does look petty when after seemingly hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to prosecute Trump, their “we got him now” case amounts to “he expensed an invoice from his lawyer to a business instead of paying it personally”.
    • mrangle 2y ago
      Because average citizens and politicians don't generally attract (unceasing) partisan lawfare that is tantamount to systemic corruption. When prosecutors campaign on pursuing an individual, when such efforts are multipolar and unending, and when the sum effort looks corrupt to a large portion of the country, then it seems obvious to suggest that outrage at a resultant SC ruling, which would not have otherwise come under consideration, is crying over one's self-inflicted medicine. I don't think that it is healthy that this was put to the SC. But it was absolutely inevitable given the various prosecutorial efforts and the norm breaking they represent. Even ignoring the open political corruption, and lies, involving them. Though, these aspects aren't necessary to ignore. In short, breaking norms to pursue Trump was worth the squeeze for them. They were squeezed. That's it. Assuming that these aren't crocodile tears over a ruling that will protect others from actual accused crimes of the past, or what might come in the future. That these prosecutions weren't specifically brought to force this result. Which is entirely possible. Certainly, such a benefit will be had. If I understand this correctly, the core effect of this is to essentially transfer the gateway through which it is possible to prosecute a president from any AG's office to Congress. I suspect which will serve to further entrench establishment power, of which Biden's camp is a part. Presidents within Congressional graces will be effectively immune, crime or no crime. Presidents outside of them may not be so much. Whomever lived through 2016-2020 and thinks that Trump will have some kind of Congressional carte blanche either hasn't thought this through or is being deceptive. Compare the improbability of Trump being able to swerve out of his lane, as far as Congress is concerned, and what Obama was able to legally get away with without stirring Congress. Now predicated on the precedent of Obama's extrajudicial action, Trump may have been able to carry out extrajudicial acts during his term. But no one who was watching thinks that anything without a precedent would have resulted in anything except another Trump impeachment.
      • tomrod 2y ago
        Did you really refer to charging Trump for several felonies for which there is abundant evidence, "lawfare?" That is a weird way to say "consequences for breaking the law."
        • pyuser583 2y ago
    • unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
      Normal criminal prosecution is not a good check on a president's authority because the president indirectly supervises the prosecutors. So as a system to ensure "equality in the eyes of the law" the criminal justice system already is not very functional in anything like real time. The DOJ threat of criminal prosecution only becomes functional when the president becomes a private person, at which point the president no longer has the ability to act in an official capacity anyway. As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority. [1] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/what-is-a-military-duty-to-disobey/ https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/what-is-a-mi...
      • AndrewKemendo 2y ago
        I’m not a NSW operator but I was an operator for HVT ground and helicopter assault missions in Iraq with the teams. There are a non trivial subset of Tier1 operators who would absolutely take whatever mission they were given by the president and do not view their role as being political Yes it’s in the training, but it’s not something that is expected because operations like this touch hundreds of people who ARENT operators (generals, joint staff, analysis, strategic planners etc…) that teams rely on to wave that flag through the targeting and JPOE process
      • pyuser583 2y ago
        The President also has the power to pardon, including himself.
        • ttyprintk 2y ago
          For Federal crimes, not state. He still needs to cover up crimes in blue states.
      • Hammershaft 2y ago
        > As for SEAL Team 6, they have a "duty to disobey" unlawful orders[1]-- which every member of the team probably knows off the top of their heads-- and which is a much more effective real-time check on a president's authority. This is an incredibly flimsy check on power: - What if the president uses a drone strike instead? - What if the president staffs the military (and seal team 6) with loyalists? - What if the president uses this power to threaten and extort officials into doing his bidding?
    • refurb 2y ago
      This is quite common. British parliamentary systems offer immunity to members in their official acts. Why? Because, and this is purely hypothetical (lol), an opponent could try and convict politicians with spurious charges to get them out of power. Singapore’s ruling party loves this tactic. Political opponent is charged with defamation, and if fined more than $5,000, they are no longer eligible to run for office. It’s a commonly used political weapon which is why most democracies offer immunity.
      • xorcist 2y ago
        Absolute immunity does not make for a credible juridical system. While most democracies have some sort of restrictions, a full out absolutely immunity is not very common. Wikipedia has a (non-inclusive) list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_immunity
        • refurb 2y ago
          The Supreme Court decision wasn't absolute immunity? So...kinda the same?
    • goatlover 2y ago
      The office of the presidency is certainly not equal under the law to everyone else's professional position. The president is in charge of the military, for one thing, and can act in the interest of national security.
    • pyuser583 2y ago
      Why should the President be allowed pardon his friends and allies?
    • ClarityJones 2y ago
      It's not about what the president deserves, but what the people deserve. The founders (after overthrowing one government, forming another, deciding it failed) were tasked with forming a government that can "long endure"... with structuring an office that can both facilitate liberty, but also contend with major enemies foreign (and domestic). The scale of the question is beyond one life or death, but operates on centuries-long timelines. It deals with the equities that face millions of people, not merely the single person holding office.
• creer 2y ago
  > why not Yeah, it seems this would hinge on whether it was done to protect democracy (official duty?) vs win an election (not but who knows by now). If Biden gives up on running anyway, that removes that question. Then it may not matter much because it's not clear which testimony, recording or other evidence might be admissible where. Then it may not matter because the issue is not even whether that would be illegal or not - just whether the president would have immunity in case it is illegal - and there is evidence - and someone attempts to charge something Interesting rough overview of that question is here: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hypothetical-scotus-presidential-immunity/story?id=111583216 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hy... Some positions seem more absurd than the usual. For example someone argues "SEAL team 6 would obviously not accept that illegal order" Which seems irrelevant every which way: presumes it's illegal and focuses too much on this one specific example. And accepts SEAL Team 6 for more than a meme - there are obviously lots of outfits other than that one.
• rayiner 2y ago
  Okay, but invert that hypothetical. The American President orders a lot of people killed, including sometimes U.S. citizens. More commonly, they order things that result in significant loss of life, which could be prosecuted as negligent or reckless homicide. Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions? Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing. Heck, part of the J6 prosecution against Trump somehow involves an Enron-era document shredding law. What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country with pretty much unrestricted discretion to stitch together vague criminal laws into criminal charges against former presidents. Why should we place such trust in prosecutors?
  • hypothesis 2y ago
    > Why should we place such trust in prosecutors? Why should we instead trust a single person with an absolute immunity for vague “official acts”? Said person is way more powerful than any of the prosecutors.
    • lupire 2y ago
      Because we live in a democracy and at some point we have to respect the pesky will of the pesky people to elect their pesky leaders. If you assume that the people don't want the rule of law, then you must conclude that the people don't want a government.
      • diffxx 2y ago
        I don't agree that this is what living in a democracy means. It has been known since ancient times that democracy is vulnerable to hostile takeover by a populist demagogue. Sometimes, paradoxical as it seems, it is necessary to overrule the people to preserve the democratic system.
        • 2y ago
• goodluckchuck 2y ago
  They said in effect that using Seal Team 6 would be presumptively immune, and at that point the court would have to consider whether prosecuting a president for assassinating his rival would impose a chilling effect that would impair future presidents ability to command the armed forces. Since killing your domestic rival is not an important part of tactical wartime decisions, the government would easily overcome the presumption.
  • f38zf5vdt 2y ago
    The President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Why would he have to stop at only his domestic rival when he could instead simply eliminate anyone who appears to be in the way, and whether or not that is the right decision is deferred to congress and the courts who now consist of people who are still alive and have fallen in line?
    • qingcharles 2y ago
      And presumably people who want to continue staying alive...
  • hedora 2y ago
    A future court might rule that. This court would rule that people upset about the president assassinating all their rivals should just get elected president and change the policy. After all, they already did say that women that want health care and the right to prevent (according to the court) overwhelmingly male politicians from messing with their lady bits should just run for Supreme Court and overturn their recent rulings.
  • sterlind 2y ago
    The presumptive immunity standard only applies to official acts that aren't "core" exercises of the President's constitutional authority. Any enumerated power is core and enjoys absolute immunity, regardless of motive; anything unenumerated but "official" has merely presumptive immunity. The President's power as Commander in Chief is enumerated, so having Seal Team 6 whack DeSantis would be absolutely immune to prosecution.
• paulddraper 2y ago
  > This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Immune from judicial prosecution. Not immune from Congressional prosecution. --- This isn't a unique concept. For example, if SEAL Team 6 improperly kills someone on a mission, they aren't prosecuted in criminal court; they are court-martialed. There is accountability, but due to the unique nature of the profession, it has a specialized venue.
  • foogazi 2y ago
    > Not immune from Congressional prosecution. SEAL Team 6 can take care of that too how can SEAL Team 6 even refuse a presidential order ?
    • quartesixte 2y ago
      Because they swear loyalty to the US Constitution, not POTUS, and can refuse to obey unlawful orders.
      • DEADMINCE 2y ago
        It's no longer unawful for the commander in chief to consider an opponent a threat to the country and have them killed. That's the problem.
        • TeeMassive 2y ago
          That's not what the judgement says.
          • Hammershaft 2y ago
            It in Sotomayer's dissenting opinion of the judgement.
            • 0xBDB 2y ago
• jeegsy 2y ago
  I think we need to remember that Presidents have gotten away with a whole lot in the past. Many a blind eye before Trump came on the scene. Now that the seal has been broken, we were on course for a whole lot of these post presidency prosecutions in the future. I think the SC was sensitive to that and wanted to nip it in the bud.
  • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
    Agreed, the interesting part is that all of Trumps dirty laundry is open to the air. In the past we would have no idea about it.
  • EasyMark 2y ago
    I think are hedging bets that Trump is likely to win and become a dictator.
• georgeplusplus 2y ago
  If you have to resort to such an extreme scenario then the ruling probably is a good one.
  • Hammershaft 2y ago
    That scenario is from the dissenting opinion of justice sotomayer in the pdf brief. Trump's lawyers argued that immunity extends to assassinating political opponents.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • georgeplusplus 2y ago
      Source?
  • RavingGoat 2y ago
    It makes the president a king. If Trump gets reelected do you think he will ever leave office? If you think that's far fetched then you haven't read Project 2025 where he can replace weather service employees that don't make forecasts he likes.
    • jasomill 2y ago
      Short of a civil war, yes, because the text of the 22nd Amendment is unambiguous and requires considerably more process than a supermajority in the House and Senate to overturn.
  • mcphage 2y ago
    Did you seriously just argue that "if this decision has the potential for extreme negative consequences, then it must be a good decision"?
• TeeMassive 2y ago
  I don't think this is the case. All military members of all branches are taught that they must not obey unlawful orders. Killing elected officials is clearly unlawful. And the president is still subject to impeachment.
  • spacemanspiff01 2y ago
    It may be unlawful, and it may fail because lower level officers refuse. But it seems like in that case the president cannot be charged. Lower level officers that go along with it could, but the president has the ability to pardon them. So even if I some case they fail, there are no consequences so people can try again. Yes there is also political considerations, but if the president feels confident enough to plan assainations of a rival, or for instance a coup with others in the executive branch, then he must feel he has that handled.
  • spiralk 2y ago
    Is this not a problem given impeachment votes will follow party lines? A party with the presidency and with >1/3 of the senate would have unchecked power. As long as there are individuals who are willing to execute the orders (who can later be pardoned), the president could delay elections or eliminate political rivals indefinitely. The system of checks and balances were put in place by the founders assuming each party will serve their own interests. Politics aside, if this immunity is given to the president, the current system would provide no checks for the executive branch of a party willing to exercise the full extent of those powers. People would essentially be expecting on good faith each election that the president will not become a dictator; there would be no procedure to actually prevent that.
    • TeeMassive 2y ago
      If that happens then at this point you have other problems that any 2/3rd majority could not solve anyway.
      • spiralk 2y ago
        My concern is the immunity allows for perpetual, single party rule with only a 1/3 of senate seats and the presidency. There would be no checks in place at the federal level if the party was willing to exercise power to interfere with elections or opposing candidates.
• scelerat 2y ago
  The Seal Team 6 example keeps getting batted around and that's unfortunate because it would be an extreme and obviously outrageous attack which would attract much unwanted attention. Part of the ruling was that conversations between DOJ and President constitute the President's official duties and "therefore" (per the three judges appointed by Trump, one who expressed sympathies with Jan 6 rioters, and yet another whose wife was an active endorser and planner of aspects of the coup) those conversations are protected and cannot be entered as evidence in a criminal proceeding against the President. The more insidious outcome is that the President can now, because these conversations are official, officially order the AG to investigate and prosecute political opponents. Maybe some court can review it on down the line, years later. Given the number of judges appointed by Trump, maybe not. Either way, the federal government and rule of law was massively, severely crippled yesterday by the Supreme Court
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    Agree with your sentiment. But overseeing elections is not the official duty of either Trump or Biden, that goes to individual states. And using the military to neutralize political opponents is only extreme if Biden does it. Trump openly wants military tribunals for treason against his opponents, which is his way of grasping for jurisdiction in ordering military intervention in the halls of power.
  • kaba0 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • Obscurity4340 2y ago
      Good-faith exception evidence against thee, not mee (Trump probably)
    • rangestransform 2y ago
      Nope, excluding illegally obtained evidence, period, end of story, is the only way to keep governments from being incentivized to surveil the masses I would argue that even allowing the inevitable discovery argument or parallel reconstruction is insufficient privacy protections The government should never be able to benefit from illegally spying on citizens
• willmadden 2y ago
  That's wrong. The President can still be impeached and convicted by Congress. What this prevents is the weaponization of partisan courts anywhere in the Country against a President for actions they took while in office.
  • chkn 2y ago
    Yes the courts are clearly more partisan than Congress
    • willmadden 2y ago
      It doesn't take all courts. It takes only one court across the entire country to disrupt the executive branch. In total, there are nearly 1,770 judgeships authorized across the 209 courts in the federal court system alone, and thousands and thousands of state courts. Having any one of these courts being able to disrupt the executive branch of government is not a feature of a stable governmental system. That is why the impeachment process exists. The SCOTUS merely reaffirmed what was already the law.
      • datavirtue 2y ago
        That was my take. Judging by the media response I was looking for orange Satan to emerge from a portal and subjugate us all.
      • ModernMech 2y ago
        > Having any one of these courts being able to disrupt the executive branch of government is not a feature of a stable governmental system. It appears so stable that it actually hasn't cause any of the damage you fear in over 200 years. That the chief executive is not above the law has produced the most stable democracy that's ever been conceived.
  • stevenAthompson 2y ago
    The president may now murder anyone in congress who disagrees with him, as long as he writes the order on presidential letterhead, so they aren't much of a real threat are they?
• stevenAthompson 2y ago
  Did they forget that Biden is currently President? What's to stop the sitting President from just rounding up the former President and all of his supporters athen locking them in a cave until after the election? Couldn't he just make up some BS about a national security threat to make it "official"? Did we just become a monarchy?
  • gdilla 2y ago
    well it's a lot closer to a monarchy than before. All the president has to do is use the official stationary, it seems.
• dantheman 2y ago
  You mean like Obama assassinating a US citizen?
  • atoav 2y ago
    To be honest I'd rather live in a world where Obama¹ assassinating an US citizen would land him and everybody involved in prison than in a world where it does not. ¹ Obama and any other person in the same position
    • dantheman 2y ago
      Completely agree :)
  • rsr 2y ago
    Yes.
  • adriand 2y ago
    I assume you are referring to the killing of alleged al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike. The major difference between that situation and the situation going forward is that Obama had a legal justification. Assistant Attorney General David Barron justified the action as follows [1]: --------- To justify the Awlaki killing, Barron relies heavily on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the law that Congress passed to permit striking al-Qaeda post-September 11th, and which was used to justify the US-led investigation of Afghanistan. Awlaki, according to Barron, was a leader in al-Qaeda's Yemen-based branch, which is known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The intelligence supporting this claim is redacted from the memo. But Barron claims that, because Congress authorized using "necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaeda, the AUMF would thus give the US legal cover to target Awlaki. "In consequence," Barron concludes, "the operation should be understood to constitute the lawful conduct of war and thus to be encompassed by the public authority justification." He also writes that the AUMF argument makes the killing justifiable under international law as a defensive use of force. One possible counter-argument is that this is unconstitutional: the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the killing of US citizens without due process of law. Barron argues that this case is an exception because capturing Awlaki was impossible — for reasons that are again redacted. If capturing Awlaki was "unfeasible," as Barron says, then killing him to prevent him from threatening the US becomes the only option. --------- You may disagree with that interpretation of the law, but it seems — given that Obama was not prosecuted for this action — that the legal system does not agree with your disagreement. Now the point is moot, since any president can order up the killing of anyone they like, because there is no longer a consequence for criminal behaviour. If you think the al-Awlaki killing was unlawful, I hope that you are gravely concerned by the fact that administrations no longer need to even attempt the appearance of complying with the law. 1: https://www.vox.com/2014/6/23/5835602/anwar-al-awlaki-memo https://www.vox.com/2014/6/23/5835602/anwar-al-awlaki-memo
• exabrial 2y ago
  You should probably start widening your reading material. All the court is saying is Obama can't be sued for signing Obamacare into law.
  • DarknessFalls 2y ago
    How is Obamacare like assassinating someone? What is your reading material that likens a program meant to bring affordable healthcare to millions to government-sanctioned killing?
• hagbard_c 2y ago
  > This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. That is what the media - the same media who until a few days ago told you your current president was in no way diminished in his mental capacity - wants you to believe, they in turn were prompted by a 'progressive' judge - Sotomayor. It was clear from the outset that the media was lying about Biden and it is clear from the outset that this ploy about presidents being able to order hit jobs on their political rivals is a lie. In short, think for yourself and you have a much better chance avoiding becoming a useful idiot as Lenin called those who blindly followed what the Party told them.