Trump’s immunity claim going up in flames

Well, if this extremely dark version of Biden were to succeed in this murderous mission there would not be enough political rivals left for him to be "impeached by the house and convicted by the Senate.”

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Okay, well, that’s his words, and we know we can’t trust what he says often times. And we know cops will do this kind of thing anyway, even US marshals. He could just be taking credit for what the marshals did for political gain. So… :woman_shrugging: I’m really not sure if that actually counts as HIM ordering an extrajudicial killing so much as taking credit for one that the marshals happened to carry out at a high profile protest.

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I understand that position, but he literally tells us what he’s doing and done and people just don’t believe him. In this case, he basically took credit for ordering a extrajudicial execution, and in this trial, he’s claiming that the president has complete criminal immunity from everything.

As someone who lives in Portland and saw stories about their friends being black hooded and shoved into unmarked vans by unmarked feds, that scares me.

ETA:

Also. This didn’t take place at a protest. The US Marshals used stingrayed phones to triangulate on him, did not inform local police, and chased him down half a state away after he did an interview.

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tribunal

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Witness tampering, threatening Senators… a President could do all sorts of illegal things to make sure that an Impeachment doesn’t result in conviction.

I think that’s a pretty easy intellectual exercise that’s a whole lot better than this Seal Team 6 nonsense at demonstrating how stupid absolutely immunity would be.

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drunk rock of love GIF

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How is it a position?

Because he often lies to make himself look tougher in the eyes of his followers…

It’s just not the same thing as directly ordering that. He wants to be seen as an authoritarian strongman by the MAGA crowd. But unless there is evidence of him actually telling the marshals directly to execute protesters, then it’s really still just conjecture.

I get that. It was scary to hear about and we should all be up in arms about it… but this wasn’t Trump, necessarily, this is the state cracking down on what they see as a systemic threat to public safety. They could have been doing that without Trump directly ordering them to do that. Not like there hasn’t been a long-standing tensions between protesters and law enforcement in the PNW for literally years now. That predates Trump, of course. they don’t need a strong man to tell them to do this kind of thing, because it’s been something that they’d want to do anyway, because the left in that region has long been seen as a problem. :woman_shrugging:

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Again, I see that.

But again, I"m saying:

HE said he did it.
His lawyers are telling the court that he WOULD be allowed to do it.
He said he’d be a dictator on day one.
IF the court agrees with him, it means he will not be criminally liable for it.
He’s literally making the case NOW that he should be immune from prosecution for this exact kind of situation, a situation he has confessed to committing already.

I get that he wants to be seen as a strongman, but he’s also making the legal argument that he IS an authoritative strongman, and that NOTHING he did while president is illegal. ANd his lawyers are extending that,to, conditionally, having his opponents murdered by SEAL TEAM SIX or other federally available options.

To me whether he’s bragging about things he didn’t really do is irrelevant when he’s telling us a) that he’s going to and b) actively seeking immunity for it all and c) has lawyers arguing that he’s perfectly immune from it in real life cases happening right now

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I’m saying that we can’t take him at his word. :woman_shrugging: I think it’s plausible, but unless there is some other evidence to say that he ordered this guy’s extrajudicial execution, we should take his word with a grain of salt, since we know he pumps himself up for the MAGA crowd.

I’m well aware of the threat he poses. I’m unsure how you can have read my words over these past 8 years and NOT know that I know the threat he poses.

Not really. It matters to figure out what he actually did, other than what he says he did. The bragging tells us what he and his movement WANT to do, but they might not be the truth of what he did.

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Exactly.

The bigger point @anon61221983 is making: there are many bad actors at work here. Police and Marshals on one hand, and TFG on the other. They’ve all done terrible things.

One risk of focusing on TFG is letting the Marshals off the hook.

Another is giving gravitas to TFG’s words, when we know his relationship with truth is distant at best.

Sometimes focusing on a person is helpful, but there’s a hell of a lot of value in keeping the big picture in sight.

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Gotcha. And I agree.

But the bigger picture here IS the one person. If the President of the United States is immune from any crime committed while in office period unless they are impeached and convicted, then that only covers one person and will only ever cover one person at a time.

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Trump’s immunity claim going up in flames

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Nbc Sigh GIF by New Amsterdam

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It’s going to fail. It clearly wasn’t a real argument to support that. Just a delaying tactic.

I would even argue he doesn’t want it to win, just to be a delay.

As a delay, it increases the chances that he will not be convicted prior to a chance to win the election and then pardon himself. This is the goal of the delays. Followed by, just delay forever if the pardon isn’t available.

If he wins this quickly instead, and the court rules “the President of the United States is immune from any crime committed while in office”, then we’ve already had our last election.

Given the choice between allowing that guy back in office and all the damage that would result or going against his instinct and breaking all the laws, I believe Biden would choose to remove the risk. A position I believe Biden would struggle internally with. This would still be a loss for the rest of us, as immunity is a disaster no matter who is president at the time it becomes the policy.

From the detailed reporting though, the appeals court is likely to deny the appeal and say he doesn’t have immunity. Then, the SCOTUS will not take up the case leave the appeals court decision in place.

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Sure didn’t seem that way… at least not until another male presenting member chimed in.

:thinking:

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It seems that way, but we should wait until they rule to be sure… Yes, he’s trying to delay, but he’s also seemingly interested in getting a ruling that says he can act with impunity. He wants both, I’d argue, but he’ll take delay.

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The next steps

Judge Florence Pan immediately peppered Trump’s lawyer with hypothetical situations in which, under Trump’s theory, presidents could not be prosecuted. Could a president, she asked, be prosecuted for selling pardons or military secrets or for ordering the assassination of a political opponent? “I understand your position to be that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for any official act that he takes as president even if that action is taken for an unlawful or unconstitutional purpose. Is that correct?” Pan asked.

D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, responded that such a prosecution can take place only if the president is impeached and convicted by the Senate first. The position taken by prosecutors “would authorize, for example, the indictment of President Biden in the Western District of Texas after he leaves office for mismanaging the border allegedly," Sauer said.

from Judges skeptical of Trump’s immunity appeal at court hearing in 2020 election interference case

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What are you talking about?

You are correct, and I’m sorry.

I don’t know if you believe me or not, but I did not know nosaj was male presenting at all. It never even occurred to me until I hovered over the pic that it was Jason backwards. However, I will work on my biases , unconscious or otherwise.

I’m taking a break from here for a bit.

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Did you read the whole exchange? It’s all right there. Seems pretty clear to me what I was talking about? Could you be more specific on what part of anything I wrote that was confusing? :woman_shrugging:

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