[wernercd]

The problem with that is - as demonstrated by the RvW over turning - is that it's not what the law says - since there was never law backing RvW. It's what THIS court says vs what PREVIOUS courts said.

The good lawyers giveth... the good lawyers taketh away. Judicial activism overturned by judicial activism.

The trump immunity case put forth what has always been - Presidents aren't charged without being impeached first. Something the left was trying to change. because lets be real... others - ie: Clinton lying under oath. Obama bombing countries. Bush. etc. All have done "criminal" things. The only difference is both sides of elites don't like Trump so the left decided to try and treat him differently. Which got rejected as it should be.

and besides that... "direct contradiction to established law" is a direct contradiction to what actually happened. The left was trying to wrangle laws into directions not intended to be overly broad - like they are doing to jail "J6" people.

[piva00]

> The trump immunity case put forth what has always been - Presidents aren't charged without being impeached first.

In this case it means that the president is above the law as long as they have support of the Congress? That... Doesn't sound like a good thing.

[pintxo]

I'd have thought that lots of countries have immunity for representatives / members of the executive which can only be revoked by a vote in the legislature. Isn't this quite common?

It sounds reasonable to NOT allow just any member of the judiciary to prosecute members of the other branches, which might wreak havoc on the political process?

[ethbr1]

To be fair, January 6 people could also be prosecuted on lesser charges (trespassing, assault), but DoJ wanted a bigger charge they could apply to everyone.

[Volundr]

> The trump immunity case put forth what has always been - Presidents aren't charged without being impeached first.

Trump was impeached. He was not convicted. Funny enough in his second impeachment trail his own lawyer argued that he shouldn't be convicted in the Senate because he was not immune and could simply be tried in the courts.

McConnell made the same argument: "We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,"

And in fact there are plenty of examples of Presidents being assumed not to be immune, the pardoning of Nixon for example.

Futher the Constitution explicitly grants legislative immunity to legislators but does not mention any such immunity to the President, a circle this decision doesn't even begin to square.

The argument that the president has always been presumed immune goes pretty aggressively against history.

[wernercd]

"was impeached, not convicted" you're being pedantic and you know I meant convicted. Yes, he was impeached... but not convicted so that's the end of it. A democrat house impeached and a republican senate found him not guilty.

"his own lawyer" lawyers talk shit... we now know, per SCOTUS, the correc tpath.

"presumed immune" I don't think that the President should be immune, per-se... but the crux of the current problem is Democrats going after a Republican - and vice versa, if that was to happen.

Remember... Trump said "lock her up". Then didn't. (and yes, she's not the POTUS - thankfully - but my point stands).

Trump's response through the courts is in response to Democrats prosecution through the courts.

For example... he was charged with and became a "felon" for misdemeanor charges (no clue what those were) bumped up to felonies for "election interference".

Meanwhile: Hillary was charged with and actually convicted of those things - misdemeanor charges that she paid a $130k fine for (if I'm not mistaken). Doing stuff to influence an election. The exact thing that should have been turned into a "felony" per the law as being used by Democrats.

We are at this place, arguing about presidential immunity, which we haven't been to before because one side is actively persecuting a rival who they LITERALLY wouldn't be persecuting if he wasn't running for office again.

So the "the president isn't presumed immune" was never tested because the Justice System was never weaponized before.

[banana_feather]

> The trump immunity case put forth what has always been - Presidents aren't charged without being impeached first.

Can you point me to the part of the constitution describing the procedure for impeaching former presidents? If they do the crimes at the end of their term is that just water under the bridge?

> The trump immunity case put forth what has always been

I find this the most disturbing aspect of contemporary attempts at justifying the Supreme Court's behavior. When the court was full of liberals, they were doing judicial activism and that was bad and their decisions should be overturned. But now that those presidents who lost the popular vote got our guys in, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law isn't the product of biases and preferences held by political appointees, it simply reveals eternal truths set out by our most benevolent god-kissed founders.

[wernercd]

> When the court was full of liberals, they were doing judicial activism and that was bad and their decisions should be overturned

and now we are in a court full of conservatives who are doing judicial activist and that's bad and their decisions should be over turned, the courts should be expanded and those we disagree with should be charged with crimes, etc.

That argument goes both ways.

The reality is we are having the conversations as a result of the Justice System being abused SOLEY because one side is charging a political opponent with EVERYTHING they can think of by stretching laws in ways that were never intended.

Previous Presidents weren't presumed immune? That's never been tested because previous presidents weren't prosecuted - despite clear evidence that things have been done wrong but any president you can choose. Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc? Pick your president and we can probably find crimes worth prosecuting. Yet... it didn't happen previously.

What we have now is CLEARLY political persecution against a political rival. Crimes he's being charged with (IE: his "felony") are done by others (IE: hillary who was convicted of money crimes and paid fines to influence an election) and yet not thrown to the wolves via political persecution.

Why are we here? because of the weaponization of the court system.