"When The President Does It , It Is Not Illegal"
"When The President Does It , It Is Not Illegal"
Richard Nixon
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Richard Nixon was proven right yesterday.
“It's going to be forgotten.”
That was President Richard Nixon's first assessment of the Watergate break-in on June 20, 1972, three days after five men were apprehended for unlawfully entering Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Despite declaring "It's going to be forgotten" to aide Charles Colson, Nixon must have felt some trepidation. Because three days later, he discussed the FBI's investigation with his chief of staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman. The Bureau had already connected the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, who reported directly to Colson.
Nixon agreed to let Haldeman and another aide, John Erlichman, instruct the CIA to thwart the FBI investigation. The plan was captured on a voice-activated taping system in a recording that came to be known as “the smoking gun.”
Watergate: The Cover-Up | Miller Center
Nixon's conversations with his official aides Haldeman and Erlichman , according to the 2024 Supreme Court , were official acts, and immune from prosecution.
Had Nixon been able to argue that at the time, even the threat of impeachment that hung over him might have dissipated, and he may have been able to continue on in office.
But Nixons concern with the Watergate break in was not an official act, you might say. Much like an attempt to subvert an election is not an official act. But thats not what the Supreme Court said yesterday.
Trump instructed DOJ officials to "say" that there was fraud in the 2020 election,
Trump to DOJ last December: ‘Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me’
There is a striking similarity between Nixon's agreeing to use the CIA to quash an investigation into Watergate and Trump asking the DOJ to help him subvert the 2020 election.
So now, we can return Nixon to his rightful place among the "Mt Rushmore" of American presidents.
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I think its fair to say that today only a minority of American voters know that Trump said
'‘Just Say That The Election Was Corrupt And Leave The Rest To Me’'
to his DOJ officials in an Oval Office meeting. Only a certain amount of people followed the J6 hearings, and the media has done a piss poor job of revealing things like this over the past 3 years.
Now this information is BARRED from being used in a Trump trial.
we live in a degraded country
Is there any actual credible proof he said any such thing....like video or audio tapes? Or is this just more "he said" hearsay by "someone close to the matter"?
Courts rely on eyewitness testimony hundreds, if not thousands of times every day. If you knew anything about the J6 hearings you would know that this was testified to under oath by the DOJ officials who were there when Trump said it.
I'm going to slightly amend this post. The statement by Trump was not made in an oval office meeting but rather during a phone call to DOJ officials.
January 6 hearings live updates: What to expect on Day 5 with focus on Justice Department (nbcnews.com)
Proving Democrats and leftists still don't understand the ruling.
But then they think that using the FBI to spy on a political opponent is just fine- so long as they are the ones doing the spying.
Really? Explain the practical difference between Nixon giving the go ahead to using the CIA for his own political purposes and Trump trying to use the Department Of Justice for his own political (and personal) purposes.
That led to Trump being found to have been supported and connected to Putin's Russia, with Russia being provided lists of voters and where they were located, as well as many from Trumps camp indicted and found guilty of having ties to Russia, and Trumps hero, Putin,
Read the final bi-partisan report on Mueller's findings then attempt to explain Trumps' innocence, and how this investigation wasn't legit, cause between Cohen and Manafort and the umpteen others Trump pardoned, there's', nothing to see here right ?
The amount of people Trump surrounded himself with who've been found guilty of something or other is ridiculous, just like your claims.
Not one allegation in Mueller's investigation aka as the "mother-of-all-hoaxes" has ever been proven to be true.
BULLSHIT GREG!
Have you ever actually read the report ?
Do you contest that multiple members of Trumps' team were implicated by Mueller's investigation ?
Do you realize that if Trump were not a sitting US president, He would have been charged just as Cohen was ? As Trump was listed as a coconspirator to Michael Cohen, and Cohen served time in prison, just like Trump should, but blinded cult followers refuse to consider this, because as stated, they are blinded cult followers.
Why should Trump be in prison? He has yet to be convicted of a serious, real, crime.
No need to get personal.
You do realize Trump was a co-conspirator in the same crime that his former fixer and one who testified against him in his 34 indictment case, Michael Cohen. Mikey went away for the same crime they chose not to charge Trump with, for the ongoing unwritten rule of not charging a sitting president. The stolen Top Secrets Documents' case, if adjudicated by a non biased jurist, is a plain and simple slam dunk case,as Trump has many times over, declared that he had NO documents, then he stated he returned ALL of the documents, then he stated he declassified the documents, then when brought to his attention that he hadn't any documentation, stated he had declassified the documents by just thinking about it, (too funny), then he stated they were all his, cause he said so ! Trump admitted to possessing top secret documents that he could never legally posses, after he was no longer potus. Not even gonna get into the January 6th mess. He is a CRIMINAL !
Was Nixon spying on democrats different from Obama spying on the Trump campaign?
What was the difference?
Turns out Trump is just like Nixon. That has to be a blow.
You can thank the Supreme Court for illuminating these similarities.
Only to you.
Nixon was unspeakably awful. Trump is horrible almost beyond compare. Yep, you're right.
Read: Supreme Court's Trump presidential immunity opinion
>>>>> You're welcome.
My take (see below). What's yours?
Two points from this opening pulled from the document:
1. Trump argued, and has won at SCOTUS, a president has official immunity from criminal prosecution to ask questions of federal and state officials on a question/s he believes to be of concern to directing and guiding of the country as part of his official duties.
Though, the 'trouble' I see is not the ask per se, it is the leading of state officials to take actions that go beyond the 'ask' itself into potentially illegal grounds of acting.
2. I can now understand why SCOTUS took this case. It is 'needful,' since a president or former president has FINALLY landed in a criminal court proceeding, for the high court to separate what are official and unofficial duties of a president from being intermingled and 'twisted' haphazardly together as a means to prosecute a former president.
My 'work' (a labor of 'love') of removing computer characters [ ] has been completed.
A real traitor would try to tarnish the reputation of the court just because they don't like the decision.
Are Trump haters traitors?
The despicable traitor Trump tries to tarnish the reputation of every court he appears in whether there has been a decision or not, except Judge Ass Kisser Cannon's court, of course.
No, everyone knows they're not. Trump cultists on the other hand give treason a whole new meaning.
The Court on Monday imbued former presidents with so much immunity from prosecution — some absolute, some presumptive, but with very little guidance about how to sort official acts into those buckets — that it’ll make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to make criminal cases against them going forward. This is, of course, most immediately relevant in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s long-stalled Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump.
Luckily for Trump, per the Court’s ruling, he seems to have led the Jan. 6 insurrection in a way that secures him near-blanket immunity. Even some actions Trump took that look a lot like unofficial acts — tweets that egged on the crowds, his speech at the Stop the Steal rally on the Ellipse — might just merit some immunity after all, Chief Justice John Roberts mused in his majority opinion.
“Some Presidential conduct — for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people, — certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision,” Roberts wrote, suggesting he saw himself to be casting a very wide net.
Under the Court’s new framework, acts related to “core constitutional powers” get absolute immunity. The rest of the official acts get “presumptive immunity.” And unofficial acts get none (assuming prosecutors manage to find some).
Roberts ticked through the charges of Smith’s indictment, giving preemptive “guidance” to the lower courts about how to sort through the acts.
In a total get-out-of-jail-free card, Roberts asserted that Trump’s attempts to bully and leverage his Justice Department into leaning on states to replace their slates of electors with Trump-friendly fake ones warrants absolute immunity.
“The President may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’” Roberts shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the torpedo he’d just taken to the Justice Department’s independence.
Trump’s threats to fire the DOJ’s noncompliant officials and replace them with low-level stooges? That also gets absolute immunity.
The Court then came to a charge more difficult to explain away: Trump’s pressure campaign to get then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the real Electoral College votes. Pence was acting in his role as President of the Senate, not in an executive branch capacity, Roberts grudgingly noted. But!
“Applying a criminal prohibition to the President’s conversations discussing such matters with the Vice President — even though they concern his role as President of the Senate — may well hinder the President’s ability to perform his constitutional functions,” he wrote.
Presumptive immunity it is, then, with the burden on the government to prove that the pressure campaign was an unofficial act.
On the fake elector scheme writ large, even Trump conceded that it had involved “private acts” before quickly backtracking. The majority, slipping from summarizing Trump’s argument to commenting directly, seemed to suggest that the plot should actually get absolute immunity — the highest degree under its new standard, which attaches to “core constitutional powers.”
“Of course, the President’s duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ plainly encompasses enforcement of federal election laws passed by Congress,” Roberts wrote. “And the President’s broad power to speak on matters of public concern does not exclude his public communications regarding the fairness and integrity of federal elections simply because he is running for re-election.”
And on the aforementioned tweets and speeches whipping up the crowd that stormed the Capitol, the majority is nominally leaving it up to the lower courts — but offered up a hearty helping of its own inclinations (“most of a President’s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities,” e.g. presumptive immunity).
In every example, the majority put a thumb on the scale for granting Trump some degree of immunity (it also tossed in some occasional hedging so as to not completely preclude the government’s arguments). Roberts gave no examples of Trump conduct the Court found to be unarguably unofficial. Smith will now surely do some reformulating, trying to find a path through the Scylla and Charybdis of absolute and presumptive immunity.
It’s rich, though, that a Court so dismissive of the Trump disqualification case — which took its thesis directly from the text of the Constitution — is so readily willing to cobble together a brand new theory of presidential immunity that just so happens to align beat-for-beat with Trump’s actions around Jan. 6.
The way I see this from the courts perspective is it is taking an absolute justice is blind approach-even while using Donald's name throughout its opining (re: all future presidents combined). That is, as a lawyer on "Morning Joe" put it, 'This immunity decision takes into account all present and future presidents who may be prosecuted at some point after s/he leaves office the same: : the 'righteous' and the 'vile.' (Note. The lawyer actually called Donald - "Vile" (as president). In his opinion.
It seems the Court takes the approach going forward this way: This fall and beyond the citizens of this country are so OBLIGATED to carefully, cautiously, and with great ponderance pick this nation's president . . . leaving less to chance of promoting and electing the wrong 'guy' or 'gal' to the highest office.
Because once in office such an individual will not be subject to prosecution on official head of state matters upon being expelled (through impeachment), "Article 25," or term ending/limitation.
Don't be upset. The democrats brought it all on themselves.
You did know that the malicious prosecutions would eventually have to stop, right?
Where is the PROOF these 'malicious prosecutions' are based upon anything but the facts of the case, or are you delusional enough to feel Biden is using the DOJ to go after Trump, for i will go with the latter you can't climb, the former you shall not provide, for it rings of calls to grease the rungs till traction of such bullshit alleged claims cannot gain, and the proof, again slips away, just like the fraudulent election claims and there is only the GOP and pos Trump so lame to blame.
You do realize, the Supreme Court basically is now saying a President can now weaponize the AG to do his bidding against whomever he likes, for some Dems, yikes. Just ridiculouse, this one called Trump has been to our country, our rule of law, and our division, as Trump continues to be the incision that cuts our citizens from the realities of the facts, and tethers they to an umbilical chord constant feed of, and here in, LIES a problem not easily solved, especially with these new rulings 'resolved', for they only help further the boundaries for the next unethical scoundrel to abuse to their advantage to breach that hump, that hump know as Donald Dick Trump.