Just wondering (IANAL), if the president's duty is to “faithfully execute the laws”, then wouldn’t subverting those laws be outside of his official duties, and therefore prosecutable? I know it sounds like the kind of ridiculous argument Trump's lawyers would make, but still… #SCOTUS
@AltonDooley EXACTLY, and that's exactly what the Supreme Court ruling tried to emphasize, that so many people are missing.
SCOTUS emphasized in their opinion that subversion of laws is no grounds for immunity. The president only has immunity from prosecution for actually legal things.
So many don't understand what this case was about, since there was so much misreporting about it.
@Hyolobrika well, they explained at length, but some key quotes may be:
"The parties before us do not dispute that a former President can be subject to criminal prosecution for unofficial acts committed while in office."
"If the President claims authority to act but in fact exercises mere “individual will” and “authority without law,” the courts may say so."
The ruling is absolutely clear: if the president subverts laws he is prosecutable.
This case was never about subversion of laws, though a lot of loudmouths claimed (and claim) otherwise.
[1] Although I do have citizenship and family who live there.
@Hyolobrika sure, I just wanted to make sure to cite my source.
But I go one step farther, as the SCOTUS emphasizes that only legal acts can be official.
Therefore, I phrase it as, "immunity for [legal] acts"
It's not the sky falling to say that.
It's procedural. It always was.
Here's a key thing to emphasize that's CONSTANTLY left out of descriptions:
This is NOT immunity from punishment.
It's immunity from *prosecution*.
To put it a different way, the Court says the accused doesn't have to go through a trial and wait for conviction and wait for the appeal to get the case overturned, no, the feds can't haul a person into trial in the first place under certain flawed accusations.
It just gives a shortcut to fixing a flawed--or overreaching--prosecution is all.
@Hyolobrika sorry for the double-reply, but I realized an analogy that might be clarifying:
Trump falsely claims that he was tried and convicted without being charged. That would not have been legal prosecution. Actually it would have been insane.
IF it was true, he could have appealed quickly, *before* trial, to get the prosecution itself declared invalid. Courts could have nipped such insanity in the bud.
Same thing here. This isn't about guilt, but about whether the prosecution itself is legally valid, before trial predicated on potentially invalid legal process.
Unlike Trump's claims, these were reasonable, and the Court said some charges were valid and some weren't. The valid claims can proceed to a valid trial.
