Trump can’t ignore the law - “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law" is NOT what the Supreme Court said - an alleged saying of emperor Napoleon - who ended up in prison for life
Trump isn't brilliant at history - not a great choice of quote from Emperor Napoleon.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Trump has little grasp of history.
wouldn’t want to emulate Napleon
ended up exiled to Eblba and then to St Helena for the rest of his life.
Napoleon MIGHT have said “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
It doesn’t make sense though.
Whether he violated laws or not, he ended up in prison for life.
It’s a bit like his bizarre improv about airports in the American war of independence. While still president on 4th July 2019, when his teleprompter conked out in rain, while talking about the American war of independence from Britain in the late eighteenth century, Trump said
"Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do."
Text on graphic: Trump is known for his bizarre impromptu ad libs
Donald Trump ad-libbing:”[in 1775] Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.”
Background image combines:
. File:The Battle of Lexington.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
. File:Spitfire - Season Premiere Airshow 2018 (cropped).jpg - Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}
This is just one of numerous ad lib gaffes.
He isn’t the only one to do bizarre ad libs. Politicians have to talk so many hours a day it’s not surprising they sometimes say bizarre things. Boris Johnson is famous for his ad libs about Peppa Pig World ad lib :).
I expect he was trying to compensate for when he said on Fox and Friends that "we don't need the votes". Here is what he said to Fox and Friends:
TRANSCRIPT We have lawyers at every poll booth. In fact my instruction. We don't need the votes. I am in Florida now and we drove to another house and every house has a Trump Vance sign on it, every single house. There is not a house that we passed that doesn't. We have the votes. What we have to do.
... It's amazing the spirit. And I say this, we have two elections. The first election we did great. The second election we did much better than the first election. But this election has more spirit than I've ever seen ever before. That's because they've seen how bad these people are at government ...
But Trump is like that almost all the time.
The president doesn't get to say what the law is, the Supreme Court does. TL:DR. If Trump does something criminal, e.g. orders a military or paramilitary to fire on civilians the people he ordered CAN be brought to trial and convicted. Trump himself can be impeached and convicted. If Trump is not convicted in an impeachment by Congress he can still be brought to the courts.
The Supreme Court decision said Presidential immunity is only presumed for official acts, none at all for unofficial acts and even though all agree he has absolute immunity for pardon, he is not immune if he uses his pardon power illegally. For instance he is no longer immune if he exchanges pardons for a bribe.
E.g. suppose a billionaire offered Trump $10 billion dollars to free him from jail. Presidential immunity wouldn't protect him if he accepted the bribe.
The Supreme Court discussed that example (not with any specific figure for the amount of the bribe). It was for lower courts to decide, and not clear exactly how the case would proceed since the pardons themselves couldn't be used as evidence - but they all agreed bribes for pardon can be prosecuted.
The decision is hugely misunderstood in the press. The Jan 06 case was still proceeding on election day. Trump would certainly have been brought to the courts if he had lost the election and likely been imprisoned.
When he won the election it no longer made sense to continue a court case for an insurrection. However the federal prosecutor Jack Smith asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to close the case "without prejudice". This means she didn't clear Trump of the charge of inciting an insurrection and the case can be resumed after his second term if the next president thinks he should be prosecuted. In practice that's only likely if he does more of the same this time around but if he did, the previous Jan 06 case could be added to whatever he does this time.
The Jan 06 immunity decision would NOT protect him if, say, he ordered the military or a paramilitary to fire at civilians.
That's by Trump's own team who argued with the Supreme Court that Trump would be impeached and convicted if he did something like that.
His own lawyers gave this example of him ordering a seal team to execute someone. Trump's own defence argued that he would be convicted if this happened, and they argued that since he wasn't convicted of Jan 06 that he should be immune for it.
The court disagreed. The Supreme Court in their deliberations said that even though he'd likely be impeached and convicted, he is not immune if Congress fails to impeach him. For example he might conduct a crime on the last day of his term. It makes no sense to say he's immune from prosecution just because he wasn't impeached. But generally - they all agreed that he is not immune from prosecution from things he did that he wasn't convicted for by Congress.
That decision - that a president can be prosecuted who avoided conviction in an impeachment trial - that is what kept the Jan 06 case open.
Both the prosecution and the defence and all the Supreme Court justices were in agreement that Trump would be impeached and convicted if he ordered an assassination. They were talking about assassinating a political rival if I remember right But that would include ordering soldiers or paramilitary to shoot at civilian protestors, it's much the same.
Trump's lawyers were surely correct. We see that the moderates in his own party are already uncomfortable with him not complying quickly with court orders. They would not stand for him doing something as illegal as this
Sotomeyer was hugely misunderstood. She didn't say that the court's decision would let Trump assassinate a rival. It was a more technical point.
The Supreme Court can't call witnesses, and can't hear evidence. Only lower courts can do that.
The majority said that any specific decisions should be left to the lower courts that have the power to call witnesses and hear evidence. They agreed that they expect the lower courts would decide that assassinating a rival would count as something he is not immune for. But they felt it was overstepping the division in duties between the Supreme Court and the lower courts to rule in advance for the lower courts.
Sotomeyer agreed on that basic point but she said they could use hypothetical examples such as a president ordering a seal team to assassinate rivals to give clear guidance to the lower courts.
The majority decision was that the president hadn't given such an order so it was a hypothetical about a case that hadn't happened and they shouldn't give any specific examples of hypothetical cases like that but leave that all to the lower courts. But it was clear from the discussions that all agreed that if the president did order an assassination that this is not part of the official duties of a president and he doesn't have even presumptive immunity.
So it's about protocol. That if a president ordered assassination of a rival, the lower courts would need to rule on that and the Supreme Court would only rule on it if the president appealed to the district and then to the supreme courts.
The Supreme Court then sent it back down to the lower courts and Judge Chutkan got Jack Smith to set out his case with all the evidence to review in a pretrial decision to decide what could be used as evidenced in the trial. And he found masses of admissible evidence. It was clear that Chutkan was going to accept much of it though we don't know how much.
But based on the guidance of the Supreme Court and what Jack Smith had - which has now been published in redacted form - then she had plenty of grounds to convict him.
Jack Smith asked Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the case withotu prejudice and Trump's defense agreed.
This means though it is suspended until the end of Trump's term, it can in principle be resumed by the next president if he or she wants to.
Probably wouldn't. But if Trump does anything similar this term, it could be combined with the Jan 06 case once he is impeached and convicted or after the end of his term.
For details see my:
Supreme Court justices all agree a president is NOT immune for crimes committed as president - Sotomeyer did NOT really say a president can assassinate rivals - details for lower courts to unfold soon
The Supreme Court decision doesn't mean what the click bait headlines say. Sotomeyer’s dissenting opinion was part of a slippery slope argument taken out of context and very much misunderstood.
This is one of the sections from my:
Remote chance of a constitutional crisis - certainty of legal cases - US remains a democracy - voters respond in special elections and mid terms - and legislators speak for constituents
Here a constitutional crisis does NOT mean the rule of law breaks down. The US Constitution continues as interpreted by the Supreme Court and they have sorted out how to interpret the law in almost all cases. There is no risk to the rule of law which helps order your lives and keep you safe.