Trump may not have as much "immunity" as he thinks.

[Billiejeens]

I’m not sure who this delay benefits. Merchan extended the sentencing…but didn’t the trump team ask for them to delay the sentencing?

It helps Merchan
He sees the writing on the wall.

 

[Godboy]

The purpose of this hearing of course will be to determine which of convicted felon Trump's attemts to overturn the 2020 election qualified as "official duties."

What you are calling "an attempt to overturn the election", is just hyperbole. What he did was make phone calls and appeals to courts. He also set up alternate electors in the case that he won his legal battles. Every single bit of that falls under the "duties of the president". Safeguarding elections is literally part of his duties as Commander in Chief.

You can claim that he was just trying to save his own ass in the election, but it doesnt matter. This SC ruling specifically states that you cant take the presidents motivations into consideration. His motivations could absolutely be unethical and self serving, but it doesnt matter. You cant charge him.

 

[Godboy]

While literally not making any material change.

Yep, things are now back to the way they were before democrats introduced lawfare into US politics.

 

[frigidweirdo]

FDR's 9066 imprisoned American citizens in concentration camps. Bush Sr. is responsible for the murder of the wife and son of an innocent American who was targeted by a rogue federal agency, Clinton is responsible for the incineration of 80 men women and children. Hussein is responsible for the death of of at least one American and possibly hundreds of innocent Mexican citizens. Nixon might have been involved in a 2nd rate burglary but investigative reporters turned it into a media circus. The point is the Constitutional protection of presidents from criminal charges. Be careful what you wish for.

What I'd wish for is presidents who know there are consequences to actions. Don't you?

 

[Billiejeens]

What you are calling "an attempt to overturn the election", is just hyperbole. What he did was make phone calls and appeals to courts. He also set up alternate electors in the case that he won his legal battles. Every single bit of that falls under the "duties of the president". Safeguarding elections is literally part of his duties as Commander in Chief.

You can claim that he was just trying to save his own ass in the election, but it doesnt matter. This SC ruling specifically states that you cant take the presidents motivations into consideration. His motivations could absolutely be unethical and self serving, but it doesnt matter. You cant charge him.

His motivation was probably not singular
But is irrelevant.

 

[Godboy]

What I'd wish for is presidents who know there are consequences to actions. Don't you?

You want our presidents paralyzed with fear and not able to act when necessary? Some incident goes down in the world and before he can act, the president has to hire a bunch of lawyers to figure out if there is a legal angle for the political opposition to send him to prison for? Wouldnt it just be safer to not ever act? If we have back to back "play it safe" presidents, the world is going to become a very dangerous place.

We give police immunity for the same reason that we give presidents immunity. They cant do their job without it.

 

[tyroneweaver]

Although it is clear this recent SCOTUS immunity ruling sets a dangerous precedent for any future POTUS' with tyrannical inclinations, the benefit to convicted felon Trump before election day may be minimal.
Placing the onus on the lower courts to parse out the definition of "official acts" from private ones actually means that convicted felon Trump has failed in his attempts to first, minimize and discredit the work done by The House Select Committee on January 6, and second, to postpone his election interference trial until after the November election in the hope that he will win and will then be able to use his Justice Department to shut the whole thing down.
It is important to remember that even IF convicted felon Trump is able to defeat whomever Biden's replacement ticket turns out to be he would not take office until January 20th 2025.
Over six months from now.
Meanwhile Judge Tanya Chutkan will most likely be holding an evidentiary hearing in United States District Court D.C. beginning in September.
Now, throughout the fall and probably right up to the election, voters are going to be fed a steady diet of the same testimony that was presented to us in the J6 Committee hearings in 2022.
You can be damned sure that any voters who didn't bother watching in 2022 will be paying attention this time around!
The purpose of this hearing of course will be to determine which of convicted felon Trump's attemts to overturn the 2020 election qualified as "official duties."
By the end of the hearings the answer at least in the minds of voters likely will be "none of them."
Judge Chutkan may rule this way as well.
Then of course convicted felon Trump's legal team will appeal Chutkan's ruling once again to his corrupted SCOTUS but it won't matter.
The damage will be done.
Voters will have the information he has worked so hard to keep hidden from them until after November.
And what about his 34 felonies?
Nothing has changed. Merchan, in postponing his sentencing date has only continued dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" on an air-tight, appeal-proof, slam-dunk case against convicted felon Trump.
Obviously paying off a porn star and then illegally concealing the payments to interfere in an election is certainly NOT an official duty of a POTUS.
Besides he wasn't even POTUS when these crimes were committed.
And now the Georgia election interference case?
Same as the federal J6 case.
There are still six months to hold the evidentiary hearing and bring all the information convicted felon Trump has tried to suppress, into the light.
As for the espionage charges that's still a wild card with Eileen Cannon running interference for convicted felon Trump.
That one may not ever see the light of day.
But take heart.
This SCOTUS ruling, like most legal rulings, is a blade with two edges.
On one side it may APPEAR to be a sort of "victory" for convicted felon trump, but on the other side it has completely SCREWED his efforts to control the narrative and keep the evidence against him out of sight of voters until after the election.
Now, because of this ruling, it's all going to be dominating the news cycles from September until election day....and then beyond until innauguration day.
When all is said and done even IF convicted felon Trump is able to eke out a narrow victory in November.....there's a good chance he wouldn't even be able to take office in January anyway.



Merchan has postponed Trump’s sentencing in Manhattan to September 18 to allow time to rule on the motion, stating that he will do so by September 6. When that happens, the convictions should not and almost certainly will not be disturbed. The Supreme Court opinion does not affect Trump’s 34 felony convictions stemming from the 2016 election conspiracy and cover-up.


Nor will the ruling save Trump from facing accountability for conspiring to change the outcome of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. In both instances, the alleged actions related to his campaign were purely personal and political and are clearly unofficial conduct not “within the core of his official duties” as president. And as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

Let’s begin with the Manhattan case. Conspiring to unlawfully interfere in the presidential election as a private citizen by paying hush money to an adult film actress and then falsifying business records to cover it up is not even “within the outer perimeter” of a president’s official responsibilities, as Trump’s team argued. Trump was not yet president in 2016 when he tried to influence the election by keeping Stormy Daniels quiet about her allegations of a liaison with him (which Trump denies). And although he was president in 2017 when he reimbursed his private attorney for fronting the money to Daniels, his falsification of Trump Organization business records was certainly not part of his presidential duties.

These private acts have no resemblance to those the Supreme Court indicated are official, such as Trump considering replacing the attorney general or allegedly pressuring Justice Department employees to make false voter fraud claims to state officials.

alleged campaign corruption and cover-up were purely personal and political, not official: “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties,” wrote US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Regardless, the court explained that Trump had “expressly waived any argument premised on a theory of absolute presidential immunity.” Trump abandoned his appeal of that decision, so as a matter of law he is barred from wasting more time raising this claim again.

Despite his loss in federal court, Trump next argued unsuccessfully in state court that presidential immunity protected him from prosecution. Like the federal court, Merchan swiftly rejected this claim, explaining that Trump, who waited until after the state court’s deadline for such motions, had plenty of opportunity to raise it sooner.

Trump’s Monday letter to Merchan also fails on the merits. His argument that some evidence was related to official conduct flops if you look at the specifics.

First, Trump’s 2018 Office of Government Ethics financial filing disclosing the payment to his former attorney Michael Cohen was properly admitted because, even if completing it was an official act for which Trump cannot be prosecuted, it is a public record — and as the Supreme Court explained, “Of course the prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act.” Introducing this type of routine publicly available filing poses absolutely no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch” that the opinion is concerned with.

Second, the prosecution introduced at trial some of Trump’s tweets, likely all of which reflect private, not official, conduct and thus were properly admitted in evidence. Many of the tweets from Trump’s time in office involved Trump’s private, personal attorney, Cohen — such as discussing Cohen’s retainer, the reimbursements to him and the non-disclosure agreement between Cohen and Daniels. These kinds of tweets clearly concern Trump’s personal affairs, which makes them admissible as unofficial, private conduct.


Finally, Trump may seek to challenge testimony from two prosecution witnesses who worked in the White House: Trump’s former executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout and communications director Hope Hicks. But again, their testimony focused on their knowledge of Trump’s personal, not official, conduct — including the process by which Trump reimbursed Cohen and what Trump thought of Cohen’s purely non-governmental activities relating to the hush money. There is no credible argument that any of that constitutes official conduct that would be off-limits to the jury.

What of Trump’s other election inference case — the Fulton County prosecution in Georgia? Here, too, the “official acts” exclusion in the immunity ruling is his bane.

Just as a mini-trial in DC on the 2020 election interference federal charges would indicate substantial unofficial conduct including his contacts with state authorities and private parties, so too would an evidentiary hearing in Georgia. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett observed in her opinion concurring in part with the majority, “The President has no authority over state legislatures or their leadership, so it is hard to see how prosecuting him for crimes committed when dealing with the Arizona House Speaker” (whom the federal indictment alleges that Trump pressured on election fraud claims) would be off-limits. The Georgia indictment similarly focuses on Trump pressuring state officials, including the infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump said he had to “find 12,000 votes.”

Although Trump will argue that he was merely ensuring the integrity of a federal election, the “close analysis” of the federal indictment’s “extensive and interrelated allegations” that the Supreme Court requires will show this was personal and political, not official, conduct. Indeed, the federal courts have already held that the conduct at issue in the Georgia indictment is political, not official, in the context of a failed effort by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to remove the case from state court (albeit on other legal grounds).

Trump is not immune in his 34 felony convictions in Manhattan or the Georgia prosecution, and his current and coming efforts to invoke the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in both places will surely fail.

As for those who are frustrated that Merchan is holding things over until September in New York City — don’t be. The judge taking his usual methodical approach has the incidental effect of eating up the runway Trump needs to get this issue to the only court dishonest enough to say immunity may apply here: the Supreme Court. After the trial court rules, there will be two layers of time-consuming state appellate review before the deeply conflicted justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and their colleagues gets their bite at the apple. That almost certainly won’t come until 2025.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/03/opinions/trump-immunity-limit-new-york-georgia-eisen/index.html

what's sad is if the dems gain control of both houses the election won't be worth 2 cents cuz the dems will impeach him right out of office

 

[Billiejeens]

You want our presidents paralyzed with fear and not able to act when necessary? Some incident goes down in the world and before he can act, the president has to hire a bunch of lawyers to figure out if there is a legal angle for the political opposition to send him to prison for? Wouldnt it just be safer to not ever act?

We give police immunity for the same reason that we give presidents immunity. They cant do their job without it.

These internet attorneys have never understood anything more complicated than a bazooka Joe bubble gum wrapper.

 

[Billiejeens]

what's sad is if the dems gain control of both houses the election won't be worth 2 cents cuz the dems will impeach him right out of office

Impossible

 

[Godboy]

what's sad is if the dems gain control of both houses the election won't be worth 2 cents cuz the dems will impeach him right out of office

His VP will just make him be in charge anyway. He will openly have civilian Trump at every big meeting, always defer to civilian Trump, let civilian Trump take over honorary duties that usually only the president does, State of the Union address, etc.

 

[Billiejeens]

His VP will just make him be in charge anyway. He will openly have civilian Trump at every big meeting, etc.

No.
He wouldn't be removed.
Because - math.

 

[Godboy]

No.
He wouldn't be removed.
Because - math.

Im going under the hypothetical of dems winning the Senate and Congress, though im hearing political experts actually suggest that the opposite may in fact happen. They believe Biden is going to drag down left wing Senators and Congressmen with him.

 

[MagicMike]

What you are calling "an attempt to overturn the election", is just hyperbole.

Wrong. You obviously haven't read The Jan. 6th Committee's report so you're basically clueless on what you are trying to discuss here.

What he did was make phone calls and appeals to courts. He also set up alternate electors in the case that he won his legal battles.

Again, what could someone who never watched a single Jan. 6th Committee hearing OR even bothered to read the final report, wven know about any of this?
The EVIDENCE they presented, much of it from people like his own staffers, attorneys, and AG show that enough proof had been presented to convicted felon Trump that there was zero chance he could not have known that he had legitimately lost the election, yet he persisted in his attempts to overthrow the results.
Don't worry though, you won't be clueless forever.
You're going ti get to see all this testimony and evudence again when it is presented beginning in September in Judge Chutkan's courtroom.

Every single bit of that falls under the "duties of the president". Safeguarding elections is literally part of his duties as Commander in Chief.

Really?
So if Biden's replacement invalidates the election results before Jan. 20th should convicted felon Trump steal the election then that's ok because hey....it's part of the "duties?"

You can claim that he was just trying to save his own ass in the election,

Yes

but it doesnt matter.

Oh yes...it does.

This SC ruling specifically states that you cant take the presidents motivations into consideration.

His actions are enough to convict him.

His motivations could absolutely be unethical and self serving, but it doesnt matter. You cant charge him.

Are you ok with applying this standard to Democrat presidents as well?

 

[Godboy]

Wrong. You obviously haven't read The Jan. 6th Committee's report so you're basically clueless on what you are trying to discuss here.

Again, what could someone who never watched a single Jan. 6th Committee hearing OR even bothered to read the final report, wven know about any of this?
The EVIDENCE they presented, much of it from people like his own staffers, attorneys, and AG show that enough proof had been presented to convicted felon Trump that there was zero chance he could not have known that he had legitimately lost the election, yet he persisted in his attempts to overthrow the results.
Don't worry though, you won't be clueless forever.
You're going ti get to see all this testimony and evudence again when it is presented beginning in September in Judge Chutkan's courtroom.

Really?
So if Biden's replacement invalidates the election results before Jan. 20th should convicted felon Trump steal the election then that's ok because hey....it's part of the "duties?"

Yes

Oh yes...it does.

His actions are enough to convict him.

Are you ok with applying this standard to Democrat presidents as well?

No, no, no, no and no.

Its all a moot point anyway. Trumps DOJ will be dropping all charges in a few months, Jack Smith will be dismissed, and that will be the end of it.

 

[rampart]

Although it is clear this recent SCOTUS immunity ruling sets a dangerous precedent for any future POTUS' with tyrannical inclinations, the benefit to convicted felon Trump before election day may be minimal.
Placing the onus on the lower courts to parse out the definition of "official acts" from private ones actually means that convicted felon Trump has failed in his attempts to first, minimize and discredit the work done by The House Select Committee on January 6, and second, to postpone his election interference trial until after the November election in the hope that he will win and will then be able to use his Justice Department to shut the whole thing down.
It is important to remember that even IF convicted felon Trump is able to defeat whomever Biden's replacement ticket turns out to be he would not take office until January 20th 2025.
Over six months from now.
Meanwhile Judge Tanya Chutkan will most likely be holding an evidentiary hearing in United States District Court D.C. beginning in September.
Now, throughout the fall and probably right up to the election, voters are going to be fed a steady diet of the same testimony that was presented to us in the J6 Committee hearings in 2022.
You can be damned sure that any voters who didn't bother watching in 2022 will be paying attention this time around!
The purpose of this hearing of course will be to determine which of convicted felon Trump's attemts to overturn the 2020 election qualified as "official duties."
By the end of the hearings the answer at least in the minds of voters likely will be "none of them."
Judge Chutkan may rule this way as well.
Then of course convicted felon Trump's legal team will appeal Chutkan's ruling once again to his corrupted SCOTUS but it won't matter.
The damage will be done.
Voters will have the information he has worked so hard to keep hidden from them until after November.
And what about his 34 felonies?
Nothing has changed. Merchan, in postponing his sentencing date has only continued dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" on an air-tight, appeal-proof, slam-dunk case against convicted felon Trump.
Obviously paying off a porn star and then illegally concealing the payments to interfere in an election is certainly NOT an official duty of a POTUS.
Besides he wasn't even POTUS when these crimes were committed.
And now the Georgia election interference case?
Same as the federal J6 case.
There are still six months to hold the evidentiary hearing and bring all the information convicted felon Trump has tried to suppress, into the light.
As for the espionage charges that's still a wild card with Eileen Cannon running interference for convicted felon Trump.
That one may not ever see the light of day.
But take heart.
This SCOTUS ruling, like most legal rulings, is a blade with two edges.
On one side it may APPEAR to be a sort of "victory" for convicted felon trump, but on the other side it has completely SCREWED his efforts to control the narrative and keep the evidence against him out of sight of voters until after the election.
Now, because of this ruling, it's all going to be dominating the news cycles from September until election day....and then beyond until innauguration day.
When all is said and done even IF convicted felon Trump is able to eke out a narrow victory in November.....there's a good chance he wouldn't even be able to take office in January anyway.



Merchan has postponed Trump’s sentencing in Manhattan to September 18 to allow time to rule on the motion, stating that he will do so by September 6. When that happens, the convictions should not and almost certainly will not be disturbed. The Supreme Court opinion does not affect Trump’s 34 felony convictions stemming from the 2016 election conspiracy and cover-up.


Nor will the ruling save Trump from facing accountability for conspiring to change the outcome of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. In both instances, the alleged actions related to his campaign were purely personal and political and are clearly unofficial conduct not “within the core of his official duties” as president. And as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

Let’s begin with the Manhattan case. Conspiring to unlawfully interfere in the presidential election as a private citizen by paying hush money to an adult film actress and then falsifying business records to cover it up is not even “within the outer perimeter” of a president’s official responsibilities, as Trump’s team argued. Trump was not yet president in 2016 when he tried to influence the election by keeping Stormy Daniels quiet about her allegations of a liaison with him (which Trump denies). And although he was president in 2017 when he reimbursed his private attorney for fronting the money to Daniels, his falsification of Trump Organization business records was certainly not part of his presidential duties.

These private acts have no resemblance to those the Supreme Court indicated are official, such as Trump considering replacing the attorney general or allegedly pressuring Justice Department employees to make false voter fraud claims to state officials.

alleged campaign corruption and cover-up were purely personal and political, not official: “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties,” wrote US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Regardless, the court explained that Trump had “expressly waived any argument premised on a theory of absolute presidential immunity.” Trump abandoned his appeal of that decision, so as a matter of law he is barred from wasting more time raising this claim again.

Despite his loss in federal court, Trump next argued unsuccessfully in state court that presidential immunity protected him from prosecution. Like the federal court, Merchan swiftly rejected this claim, explaining that Trump, who waited until after the state court’s deadline for such motions, had plenty of opportunity to raise it sooner.

Trump’s Monday letter to Merchan also fails on the merits. His argument that some evidence was related to official conduct flops if you look at the specifics.

First, Trump’s 2018 Office of Government Ethics financial filing disclosing the payment to his former attorney Michael Cohen was properly admitted because, even if completing it was an official act for which Trump cannot be prosecuted, it is a public record — and as the Supreme Court explained, “Of course the prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act.” Introducing this type of routine publicly available filing poses absolutely no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch” that the opinion is concerned with.

Second, the prosecution introduced at trial some of Trump’s tweets, likely all of which reflect private, not official, conduct and thus were properly admitted in evidence. Many of the tweets from Trump’s time in office involved Trump’s private, personal attorney, Cohen — such as discussing Cohen’s retainer, the reimbursements to him and the non-disclosure agreement between Cohen and Daniels. These kinds of tweets clearly concern Trump’s personal affairs, which makes them admissible as unofficial, private conduct.


Finally, Trump may seek to challenge testimony from two prosecution witnesses who worked in the White House: Trump’s former executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout and communications director Hope Hicks. But again, their testimony focused on their knowledge of Trump’s personal, not official, conduct — including the process by which Trump reimbursed Cohen and what Trump thought of Cohen’s purely non-governmental activities relating to the hush money. There is no credible argument that any of that constitutes official conduct that would be off-limits to the jury.

What of Trump’s other election inference case — the Fulton County prosecution in Georgia? Here, too, the “official acts” exclusion in the immunity ruling is his bane.

Just as a mini-trial in DC on the 2020 election interference federal charges would indicate substantial unofficial conduct including his contacts with state authorities and private parties, so too would an evidentiary hearing in Georgia. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett observed in her opinion concurring in part with the majority, “The President has no authority over state legislatures or their leadership, so it is hard to see how prosecuting him for crimes committed when dealing with the Arizona House Speaker” (whom the federal indictment alleges that Trump pressured on election fraud claims) would be off-limits. The Georgia indictment similarly focuses on Trump pressuring state officials, including the infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump said he had to “find 12,000 votes.”

Although Trump will argue that he was merely ensuring the integrity of a federal election, the “close analysis” of the federal indictment’s “extensive and interrelated allegations” that the Supreme Court requires will show this was personal and political, not official, conduct. Indeed, the federal courts have already held that the conduct at issue in the Georgia indictment is political, not official, in the context of a failed effort by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to remove the case from state court (albeit on other legal grounds).

Trump is not immune in his 34 felony convictions in Manhattan or the Georgia prosecution, and his current and coming efforts to invoke the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in both places will surely fail.

As for those who are frustrated that Merchan is holding things over until September in New York City — don’t be. The judge taking his usual methodical approach has the incidental effect of eating up the runway Trump needs to get this issue to the only court dishonest enough to say immunity may apply here: the Supreme Court. After the trial court rules, there will be two layers of time-consuming state appellate review before the deeply conflicted justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and their colleagues gets their bite at the apple. That almost certainly won’t come until 2025.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/03/opinions/trump-immunity-limit-new-york-georgia-eisen/index.html

the way the questions should be asked at an evidentiary hearing.

was gathering and inflaming an angry mob to obstruct the counting of ballots one of your official duties?

and walk that through every count.

 

[MagicMike]

what's sad is if the dems gain control of both houses the election won't be worth 2 cents cuz the dems will impeach him right out of office

Yep.
Rhat'll REALLY be one for the history books too.
Only person to ve umpeached THREE times....and finally convicted on the 3rd!

 

[Godboy]

Are you ok with applying this standard to Democrat presidents as well?

This has ALWAYS been the standard! What world have you been living in?!!! For fuck sake man, presidents have done some wild shit. All of them have. Trump making fucking phone calls isnt shit compared to assassinating foreign leaders, executing US citizens, torture, blowing up oil pipelines, illegally spying on every American's email, etc.

 

[progressive hunter]

But Nixon and Watergate.... Nixon would have gotten away with that now.

they were going to impeach him,,
if you dont know what that means its that they were going to revoke his immunity with due process,,

he resigned to maintain his immunity,,

they could have still impeached him but chose not to,,

 

[MagicMike]

No, no, no, no and no.

Its all a moot point anyway. Trumps DOJ will be dropping all charges in a few months, Jack Smith will be dismissed, and that will be the end of it.

Hey simp.
EVEN if convicted felon Trump squeaks a narrow victory out in November he wouldn't take office until Jan. 20, 2025.
He wouldn't have any control over DOJ until that date.
It'll still be Biden (or his replacement's) DOJ.
And IF convicted felon Trump does become President Elect look for the outgoing admin.'s DOJ to go full militant on his illigitimate ass before January.
Remember, they'll be saving our republic.
Official duties.
Full immunity.

 

[Godboy]

Hey simp.
EVEN if convicted felon Trump squeaks a narrow victory out in November he wouldn't take office until Jan. 20, 2025.
He wouldn't have any control over DOJ until that date.
It'll still be Biden (or his replacement's) DOJ.
And IF convicted felon Trump does become President Elect look for the outgoing admin.'s DOJ to go full militant on his illigitimate ass before January.
Remember, they'll be saving our republic.
Official duties.
Full immunity.

You are living in a dream dude. That is not happening. There isnt enough time for the Jack Smith case. Democrats timed these cases for the election, but they didnt consider Trumps delay tactics, so now youve run out of time. You guys lost.