The actual argument before the Supreme Court is extremely tame, but there's so much sensational misinformation circulating out there.
It is simply this: a former president cannot be held criminally responsible for OFFICIAL and LEGAL actions he undertook while in office.
That's right, it's saying you can't hold someone criminally liable if they didn't break the law, and this is specifically wrt a former president.
That should be obvious, right? So why are we talking about it? Meh, technical legal procedural issues triggered it.
@2cdff18bbefae63a191eca63e3ee7e5c2bb35430bcfd5ab436a4a358f95696da @sj_zero
@Hyolobrika to give a taste of the case, on appeal to the DC Circuit, that court issued a ruling with a sweeping claim rejecting the idea that civil immunity can be analogized to criminal immunity ever.
Not just about Trump or accusations about Trump, but ever.
So the question now is whether the DC circuit went too far, and people wondering why justices didn't focus on Trump don't seem to understand that procedural history.
This case doesn't let Trump off of any hooks. It just reviews whether the DC Circuit misread the rules, regardless of Trump.
@2cdff18bbefae63a191eca63e3ee7e5c2bb35430bcfd5ab436a4a358f95696da @sj_zero
@sj_zero well, I just try to emphasize that in most cases SCOTUS is sitting as a court of appeals, so it's naturally judging lower courts more than the individual people named.
@sj_zero yeah, I think part of what you're seeing is that different judges/justices use oral arguments for different purposes. As each has different goals with their exchanges, it makes things a little unpredictable.
Briefly, for example, while one justice might use oral arguments to voice the heart of the matter, another might use the time to help a speaker make the very best case they can, even though it's probably wrong, to show that the losing side had every chance--they weren't ignored.
The latter use might make the losing side sound much stronger that it really was, if you see what I'm saying.
It should be mentioned that I'm just a retard on the Internet, and so anything I say about damn near anything is as such.