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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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I am not convinced. As best I can tell the court of appeals is correct that there is no precedent for criminal immunity for the president. Even if they had decided to make up some line I'm skeptical the line they made up would be one that satisfied 6/9 of the justices on the Supreme Court.

As best I can tell the court of appeals is correct that there is no precedent for criminal immunity for the president

And where once the closest thing to a serious criminal prosecution of a president was a speeding ticket, now there's precedent saying there is zero criminal immunity for anything.

Even if they had decided to make up some line I'm skeptical the line they made up would be one that satisfied 6/9 of the justices on the Supreme Court.

I'm skeptical that Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch would have jumped at an interlocutory appeal had the lower court precedent not writ destiny that they'd be seeing two or three Presidents facing criminal charges within their remaining terms.

I'm curious what you think the content of the circuit's decision would be so that SCOTUS doesn't grant cert.

If the circuit says "there exists some presidential immunity for constitutionally granted powers but Trump's conduct is outside that" do you think they grant cert?

I think a district court opinion that actually tries to separate individual official acts from those of a private actor or political candidate, and recognizes the extent various immunities are intended to protect the papers and deliberations of official acts, would made it much harder from Trump to get cert. A lot of courtwatchers who like Trump even less than I do take that tack.

There's no guarantees, but without that blanket permission slip for charging every other living President, there's just nowhere near the urgency. Whether criminal or not, the majority of acts in the indictment here fall outside of the outer bounds of the President's roles, some even by Trump's own defense's own admissions. There's none of the time pressures that were present for the ballot rules, so on. I don't think it would have been good to punt, but this court absolutely is willing to punt whenever possible.

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