The stark question was posed to Trump’s attorney John Sauer by Judge Florence Pan: Was a president immune from prosecution for any unlawful act, at all? Could a president order his political rivals to be assassinated by Seal Team 6 as an official act? Could he sell pardons at his pleasure if he saw fit and then face no consequences for his actions?
“He would have to be impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied,
How on EARTH did the judge miss his chance to ask the obvious follow-up.
“Does this apply to Biden also? Can he murder his political rivals under your legal theory? Can he murder your client?”
“Why not?”
The judge definitely called out Trump’s lawyer tho
Judge Henderson cited this specifically on Tuesday when hearing arguments from Sauer.
Trump, she told him, said he couldn’t be prosecuted while he was in office, but he also conceded that he could be prosecuted once he was out.
Logic doesn’t work with trumpets tho, they just say whatever happens to help them the most in the moment.
Here pretty soon they’ll start saying it’s too close to the election, so this has to be postponed.
If he wins, they’ll say it has to wait till after, then they’ll start over in the beginning.
trumps lawyers are just going to stall as long as they can.
Whoa, hey, trumpets are cool. Don’t despoil them like that!
Trumpanzies?
still unfair to the intellectual and emotional capabilities of chimps
Trumpsters
The blow
“That depends. Are you going to force his estate to pay the rest of my legal bills? If so, then yes. If not, then no.”
Jokes on him. He ain’t getting paid regardless.
At this point, if you’re working for Trump for anything less than cash in advance, then you’re a fucking idiot and you deserve to get screwed later.
Well the real answer is because this isn’t about Biden and bringing a whataboutism into court would be incredibly unprofessional of a judge. That’s something one of Trump’s idiot appointees would say and we would all be wondering how the case isn’t being thrown out for unprofessional commentary
Whataboutism is shifting focus away from something person A did, by bringing some action by person B into it when it doesn’t belong.
Asking how a legal theory would apply in some other context, to highlight the absurdity of what the lawyer is saying because the answer would be absurd, is a very different thing.
I can see maybe saying it without the word “Biden” but focusing it on Trump would be better, yeah. E.g. asking if some other president would be allowed to murder his political rivals (specifically including Trump), without opening to door to complications. Obviously the answer is that Trump thinks he should have a special set of rules that don’t apply to anyone else, but the closer you can get to forcing his lawyer to explain out loud that that’s what they’re asking for seems like it’d be a good thing.
Well the real real answer is the judge actually asked something in that same vein.
Could a president order his political rivals to be assassinated by Seal Team 6 as an official act?
It’s not a whataboutism when you’re questioning the legal precedent a certain ruling would set.
Whataboutism: when you ask if your assertion of rights also applies to other people.
Whataboutism is Russian propaganda. These are legal arguments.
I saw it more as pointing out how the claim fails by Proof of Contradiction
Oh wow, what a big fucking surprise. Trump’s team is now arguing he can’t be charged because he wasn’t impeached. Yet 4 years ago, the cowards in the GOP said they couldn’t impeach him and it was up to the courts to take responsibility for punishing Trump.
Who could have guessed that these slimy fucks would do that? Everyone?
Also, if the court sides with Trump, and he gets impeached again, the GOP will use the exact same excuse and ignore this ruling entirely and not convict.
Taken to it’s logical conclusion, this idea would basically posit that all the president must do to become a dictator is take out the whole Senate at once, or just have absolute loyalists in enough of the seats, or a combination of the two. If there’s no Senate, the president can’t be impeached and convicted, and if the president cant be held accountable for anything unless that happens, then they can illegally stop any new elections to get new senators with no consequences (or a new president for that matter) and act with impunity.
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They have a much more rigorous plan for this now. The following is a link to the published 970 page manual on how the GOP intends to take permanent control of the US.
https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. Welcome to the mission. By opening this book, you are now a part of it
Fuck.
Hey they invited us, they never asked me if I was gonna fuck it up on purpose.
Yeah, everything about this document is horror show material.
You just lost THE GAME 🙄
What in the fuck Is this? This may as well be The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 2.0
This is the plan created by the most influential members of the GOP, the most influential organizations on them, and the most influential individuals on them. Over 50 of the most important organizations to the GOP published this thing. If you read it there are whole paragraphs that have been, almost verbatim, said by Trump, and other GOP members, since it’s publishing. This is their schematic to build a modern fascist state. They aren’t hiding it. This isn’t a document they are passing around in tight circles, hiding it from outsiders. This is a publicly posted manifest on their plans to take control of the US government, dismantle the checks and balances of power, and take complete control.
They even acknowledge that methods they intend to use are legally dubious, then acknowledge that that is why they stacked the USSC.
That’s also why they stockpile guns and ammo. They know that if or when they seize power there is going to be a justified popular uprising against them.
I tell people as often as I can, especially trans and PoC friends: start meeting like-minded people now, get some basic medic training (field medics really just need to stabilize people), get a gun or two (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. This isn’t a joke, the time is now, the police will not protect us and the world will simply watch as the U.S. sinks into the weird Christian-fascist-corporatism that seems to be growing.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was written by folks making shit up to try to stir up antisemitism. Project 2025 was written by actual “conservative organizations”: https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/
What I’m meaning to illustrate is that this reads like “The Protocols” in that it seems to be filled with fear mongering of a deep state that the world needs to be protected from. Promoting a call to arms for conservative voters.
I see. I was thrown because the “Protocols” took the form of a fake leaked document revealing a fictitious plan for world domination, claiming to be written by Jewish elders, but actually written by an antisemitic propagandist. So given that this is also a plan for world domination and is horrifying those who read it, it seemed like you might be suggesting it was a fake created by left-wingers to discredit the right. Sadly, it’s all too real, and it’s not leaked–it’s all out in the open for those who bother to look.
Yeah, I can absolutely understand the confusion. I made the comment while I’m at work and was trying to be concise instead of making my comparison perfectly clear.
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Didn’t they sorta try that 3 years ago?
No, they tried to take out the House of Representatives. It’s clearly a totally different thing. \s
Murders all the way down.
Hmm sounds like the whole “balance of power in the 3 branches of government” is being completely ignored by this dumb lawyer.
The executive branch must be held accountable by more than just the Senate… Otherwise there might as well only be 2 branches of power and the justice system would fall under the umbrella of the executive branch.
It’s also being ignored by SCOTUS, so… Doesn’t seem the government cares about corruption what so ever.
Then go on Biden. Do your thing Mr. King.
This is basically trump arguing for the return of the Divine Right of Kings
We have a speaker of the house that said he was ordained by God to be Moses for Republicans sooo I guess you’re not too far off
What kind of trash lawyer is this lmao. He got served a bait question and took it.
I’m starting to think he’s sharing lawyers with Alex Jones
Anybody know where our buddy Bobby Barnes is?
Does Norm still have his trousers on?
Of course it’s a trash lawyer. Do you think a lawyer of any intelligence or repute would still be working for Trump?
Yeah because that’s the sign of a healthy democracy… Red flag #47653.
If he has to be impeached and convicted by the Senate then his lawyers would argue that he can’t be prosecuted afterward because of the double jeopardy clause. This would completely nullify the constitution and the United States of America would cease to exist as we know it. That’s the Republican endgame.
Putting aside the whole Republican duplicity thing, I don’t think this is double jeopardy.
Impeachment is, in essence, a political procedure to remove someone from office. There doesn’t need to even be a crime (see Biden’s impeachment for an example).
So assuming for a moment that a president was impeached, that trial is to remove him from office, not to try him for a crime.
And even then, impeachment trials are civil where there is no jeopardy.
My point is not about the merits of the argument
I look forward to how SCOTUS Bush v Gore’ing this, granting Trump immunity, and saying “this is not a precedent”.
Sounds like watering time to me. The tree of liberty is half dead.
Not the flex they think it is…
Is this the lawyers way of saying “please kill my client Mr president”.
