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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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And the president talking to his executive officers is explicitly a power granted by the constitution.

At this point, the President would have invoked executive privilege, and Congress would have launched an impeachment inquiry, or campaigned on doing so.

But again, this does nothing. There's no declarative requirement for the President to e.g. invoke executive privilege. The President has absolute immunity for seeking opinions from his officers, it's not something he has to argue, he just says he was seeking an opinion and that's the end of the discussion; you can't subpoena parties or submit records of the conversation as evidence, and without that, you have no evidence of bribery. And as far as I can tell, impeachment (even after leaving office, which is out on a limb at best) doesn't strip absolute immunity. There is no legal battle, because the required evidence to prove a crime or any circumstances under which immunity wouldn't apply, impeachment or otherwise, cannot be considered by the court.