The former president is now highly unlikely to stand trial in the Justice Department’s election interference case before November
The Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a massive victory on Wednesday by agreeing to rule on whether he is immune from prosecution for acts committed while he was president. The court will hear arguments on April 22 and won’t hand down a decision until June — which means it’s unlikely a trial in the Justice Department’s election interference case will commence before the election. If Trump wins the election, he’ll of course appoint an attorney general who will toss the case, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules this summer.
By Wednesday night, Trumpland was celebrating.
“Literally popping champagne right now,” a lawyer close to Donald Trump told Rolling Stone late on Wednesday.
Call me old fashioned but it seems like a flaw in the legal system if it takes slightly longer than one 4-year presidential term to prosecute someone for interference in a presidential election.
The real screw up here was appointing a fucking conservative as attorney general.
Never, ever show kindness to conservatives. Politeness and professionalism? Sure. But a conservative sees kindness as a weakness to exploit. That is just who they are at their core.
Reaching across the aisle by appointing Merrick Garland was an extremely stupid move that could cost us our democracy.
Yes, very. Federal judges have huge case loads, and expanding the size of the federal bench would be one way to fix that. At least doubling it, and quite possibly doubling it again.
Democrats haven’t touched this because they’re spineless and don’t want to be seen to be stuffing the bench after Republicans already stuffed the bench.
Democrats haven’t touched this because they’re spineless and don’t want to be seen to be stuffing the bench after Republicans already stuffed the bench.
I don’t even know if it’s just that they’re spineless. Part of me thinks that the majority of people in Congress don’t really mind a conservative judicial system.
The vast majority of people in Congress are affluent white people, and they really have nothing to gain by replacing a conservative judge with a liberal one. A conservative judicial system isn’t going to stop them from leaving the country for an abortion, or change what the private schools teach their children. While a liberal judge may increase their taxes, make it harder to accept bribes, or even ruin their businesses by implementing labor laws.
I just don’t really see anything that would really motivate anyone in Congress to enact a more fair judicial system.
Yeah, it seems to me that Democrats are in a pretty nice position for themselves - they can claim to be for the people, while lamenting that they’re unable to make the big changes that the people want due to conservatives holding them back. If they didn’t have that excuse, they might actually need to coordinate those changes, which they likely don’t want to do.
That’s certainly true for the neoliberals, who are the majority of the DNC. Unfortunately, we don’t have a viable progressive party. We have a conservative party and a more conservative party.
I don’t even know if it’s just that they’re spineless. Part of me thinks that the majority of people in Congress don’t really mind a conservative judicial system.
Sadly, I think you’re right. Occams razor would suggest that’s what we’re seeing here. IMO, it’s far more likely that politicians are being self-serving (power corrupts) than being a bunch of shrinking violets in circumstances where it hurts everyone else.
Didn’t the turtle Mitch refuse to fill hundreds of members of the federal judiciary?
Yes, that’s exactly why Trump was able to fill so many. His administration was very slow to fill vacancies at other federal agencies, but not judges. Shows exactly where they had their priorities.
Charles Manson never personally murdered anyone. There was no video of the crime. It took 2 years from the day his cult murdered people to Manson being sentenced to jail for life.
3 years later after a live televised insurrection and not even a trial.
Garland was gonna let him skate. It wasn’t until he refused to give back the classified documents that he crossed the line and Garland have the go-ahead to prosecute him for that. And once you’ve given permission to prosecute an ex-president for one thing, you can’t tell the other prosecutors who want to nail him for other crimes ‘no’.
Garland should never have been picked as AG. He’s literally the guy democrats pick when they want to tell Republicans “Hey, we see you, we love you, and you have nothing to worry about from us. So please just be normal 💕”
it seems like a flaw in the legal system
Oh no, this is exactly how it’s designed. The rich are above the law.
he’s about to win and make the country permanently more autocratic
And we slip even closer to fascism
People forgetting we didn’t win the revolution through voting.
Of note, this has nothing to do with the $450,000,000 and $83,000,000 bonds he needs to put up very soon
It doesn’t matter. He can hold off on liquidation until November and if he wins, (which would mean there’s a strong chance the Senate flips), have his cronies pass a, " lol god emperors don’t pay for summary judgements" bill.
No he can’t. The Special Monitor overseeing his assets and watching his books has the authority to start seizing assets until he’s satisfied the monetary requirements to appeal, and she can do that right now. And, there’s interest running on the meter until he does.
He’s gonna pay whether he likes it or not.
Yes he can. Unfortunately. We all get to watch this birth of a dictator unfold in slow motion if Trump wins.
How? Given the powers that the Special Monitor has, how could he possibly avoid paying?
RNC certainly doesn’t seem like a likely option right now, and nobody else has ponied up the money.
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I always figured the Jan 6 ones were a long shot, but these other two cases are done. He’s going to have to pay, and he can’t get an appeal unless he pays, thanks to NY law.
That’s why it’s different from the federal ones.
ETA: and he can’t just not pay, because the Special Monitor has a court-ordered obligation to ensure he pays his court debts. She’ll just seize his assets, which she has the power to do.
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He can pardon himself. And he will.
I thought both were state charges and only federal charges could be pardoned?
That’s correct. Only the NY Governor can pardon state crimes in NY
These are state crimes. He can’t pardon himself from them.
ETA: I was referring to the conversation context, which is his financial crimes, not the article, which are federal crimes.
You cannot pardon a judgement in a civil case.
okay what has he seized so far? Trump’s already stated he’s not paying that amount
I don’t know what she has seized. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t or won’t. It just means we don’t know.
But it doesn’t matter what Trump has said publicly, because he’s obligated to pay, and it’s not just up to him or his accountants whether he does.
You’re operating under the reasonable logic of how this is supposed to work. But nothings gone how it’s supposed to work for Trump. He’s had a decade of very public crime and been found guilty in several different ways, but has so far not had any consequences enforced. guilty of rape, tax fraud, defamation, campaign finance violations, and bribery, and so far not a penny, much less jail time.
I would argue that the two NY cases have gone exactly as you’d expect. Nothing has happened in them that was particularly unusual. Typical rape case + defamation and a corporate fraud case. All already with judgments.
And as far as collections go, it’s not like buying groceries. He doesn’t have to pay the full amount all at once (and probably can’t). He does have to front the money if he wants to appeal, though, and all he’s done is file for one. They won’t take it up until he’s paid up.
typical rape case???
and she can do that right now.
If she hasn’t, then she won’t. We all know what could and should happen, and we all know none of it has.
She can do that until March 25th, and she will act as soon as she is able to.
And you got your law degree from where, exactly?
He wouldn’t even need to do that. He would just need to sell a few of those Top Secret documents to MBS, and all of a sudden the Trump Org has another 2 billion worth of business in Saudi Arabia
This judgment has far more frightening implications, if the president is above the law.
They don’t have the money for champagne.
Sure they do, the RNC is likely buying it.
The RNC has only 8.7 millions in bank.
Your Grandma just sent him $50
Do they even have enough to pay for the national convention this year?
Edit: according to this:
Their fundraising in 2016 netted $65.7M to cover RNC costs. This could get interesting.
I don’t know how much you think champagne costs, but it’s significantly less than 8.7 million dollars.
Even on a lower $4.35 million budget, why spend half of your money on a bottle of champagne?
It’s piss anyway, he’s into that.
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You’re right, only one thing can be true at a time
Get out of here. It’s possible to criticize more than one thing. It’s possible to say one thing is bad while recognizing another thing is worse.
Sorry mate, that’s just not how things work in the “information age”.
it’s what they were installed for. trump gave us a corrupt court that will last for decades, regardless of him not being in office.
“Literally popping champagne right now,”
Is that what people call snorting coke now?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a massive victory on Wednesday by agreeing to rule on whether he is immune from prosecution for acts committed while he was president.
If Trump wins the election, he’ll of course appoint an attorney general who will toss the case, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules this summer.
“Literally popping champagne right now,” a lawyer close to Donald Trump told Rolling Stone late on Wednesday.
For months, Trump’s lawyers expected the federal trial to start this summer, and they have actively prepared for that scenario.
During oral arguments before the D.C. Court of Appeals in January, the former president’s lawyers argued that presidential immunity should cover everything, even having political rivals assassinated.
The court disagreed, unanimously rejecting Trump’s immunity claim earlier this month.
The original article contains 437 words, the summary contains 129 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
During oral arguments before the D.C. Court of Appeals in January, the former president’s lawyers argued that presidential immunity should cover everything, even having political rivals assassinated.
Maybe Biden should take one for the country. You know the court would rule against absolute immunity for something Biden did. And he’s old enough, that he probably wouldn’t even see jail. No more Trump, no question as to if the president is above the law. Win win.
The second they rule in Trump’s favor, Biden basically has free reign to do whatever the fuck he wants.
Yea give presidents immunity, Biden can use it exactly once, and then cancel it all together
Edit spelling
Oh… Wait… why have I neither thought nor read this? That’s… Smart.
Elie Honig had an interesting take on this on his podcast. While I’m not sure that I completely agree with Elie, I feel like he tends to say things that, emotionally, I wish weren’t true but that are very factually true.
Elie said that, as supreme court cases go, even important ones, this is a very accelerated timeline. They are asking both sides to prepare their arguments quickly but want to allow both sides to construct their arguments. He also suggested that this is exactly the kind of case that the supreme court should hear. It is an issue of first impression with dire impacts for our country, both in the short and long-term. He argued that this kind of decision shouldn’t be left to an appeals court simply because it is simply too important. It requires the weight of the supreme court.
Totally valid. That said, it’s unreal that the question is even being asked. It was never a question before Trump. The fact that he is actually the GOP nominee when this is a question before SCOTUS because of him blows my mind.
Mostly likely, the conservative majority will affirm the lower court ruling and agree that the president doesn’t have that sort of immunity. But they can do so late enough to kill the case, which is the goal here.
Democrats could have precluded this whole thing by finding him guilty as a result of the impeachment.
This should have been a bipartisan conviction, but the Democrats were the only ones that cared for there to be accountability. But you know that most likely. It’s common knowledge.
