The SCOTUS, which had so recently ruled against him, would say “appeal denied, STFU.” The World Court can do as it pleases, but its authority would not be recognized by the US government under President Biden, and that’s even if they should be inclined to intervene (and they wouldn’t). Because the funny thing about international law is, like most laws, it’s meaningless without someone to enforce it. If Trump moved to appeal before an international court of some kind, they’d be most likely to invite him to head on over to The Hague to be tried for war crimes by the ICC. I suspect that’s true of most US Presidents, actually.
This is not a back and forth between SCOTUS and Trump ad infinitum. Trump goes before the SCOTUS, SCOTUS say “STFU,” and then that’s it. He can keep arguing all he wants after that, just not before the Supreme Court. The Justices don’t have to keep devoting months, weeks, or even seconds to coming up with reasoned responses to Trump’s arguments after that, they can be dismissed summarily, res judicata. With that out of the way, come Inauguration Day, the Chief Justice will swear in Joe Biden whether Trump cares to share a car ride with Biden afterwards or not. If he attempts to appeal to an international court, the US will not consider itself bound by the decision—indeed, will likely not even participate in the proceedings, if such proceedings even occur.
To what effect? The Cabinet are all presidential appointees who would expect to be “fired” with the end of the president’s term anyway. After January 21st, President Biden’s appointees would have no reason to listen to a deranged old squatter.
A somewhat analogous situation is currently happening with Citgo. Citgo is an American company that is owned by PDVSA which is wholly owned by the Venezuelan government. According to Venezuela, the Venezuelan head of state is Maduro. According to the US, the head of state is Guaido. Nominally, the CEO of Citgo, an American citizen, is following the orders of Guaido despite the CEO of PDVSA following the orders of Maduro.
Trump, personally, has very little power. He’s an old fat man who probably couldn’t take anyone in a fight, were he ever to have the courage to get in a fight.
“Power” as wielded by Kings and Presidents ultimately derives from the power of those loyal to the King/President. Trump is President right now because the whole apparatus of the US state agrees that he’s President. He will stop being President when and if a large enough percentage of that apparatus agrees that he’s no longer President. Normally that would be at the moment the new President takes the oath of office, but it might happen sooner or later, depending on what Trump decides to try to pull.
If the majority of the US military decided Trump was no longer President, there’s no force in this world that could stop them from rolling tanks into Washington to remove him by main force. Similarly, if they decided he still was President, and rolled tanks to protect him, who could stop that?
So it all comes down to the question of where the personal loyalty of those with the weapons lie. If their loyalty is to Trump, then Trump is President. If it’s to the US as a country or the Constitution, or some other conceptualization of the idea of the United States,then he won’t be President any longer.
If the military decides to remain neutral, then the question merely devolves down to the next layer of force, and so on - the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI, state law enforcement, local law enforcement, or the civil service. At some point, one layer will decide they care enough to act one way or the other, and that will decide the question.
So, it seems most agree the Supreme Court will have final legal authority. So what if a majority of the Supreme Court are under the corrupt control of Trump and perhaps Putin. They shock everyone by making an absurd judgement declaring Trump winner of the election.
Trump would claim legal authority Thanks to SCOTUS and order all troops who disagree to be immediately discharged of duties “to keep the peace while these complicated legal issues and widespread election fraud investigations are completed.”
People would then start wondering if SCOTUS is corrupted. Perhaps congress would move to impeach Clarence Thomas or Kabanaugh due to treasonously bad legal arguments… but this takes time…
TLDR: If Trump attempts to challenge the election to the Supreme Court and he has the court in his pocket, then there will be a situation…
We’re getting into sci-fi dystopia stuff here. I am ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that the current SCOTUS would never rule in favor of Trump winning the election if it was BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that he lost.
OK, so let’s go with it. RBG dies in a car crash, taking Kagan and Sotomayor with her. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are actually Putin plants; Thomas hears the dead voice of Scalia. It’s still 3-3. I trust Roberts, Breyer, and Alito to still be actual thinking beings, and they’re not going to randomly give the US to a Trump that lost the election. The only way that would work is if the car crash happened tomorrow, and Moscow Mitch had enough time to install 3 more Russian stooges before the election. Hey, Mitch, elections have consequences.
Successfully blackmailing enough judges to win a single verdict when you have decades to prepare (Putin and Trump) is not requiring any new technology. It could have been done at any level of technology. It’s just blackmail. Putin May have a naughty picture of Trump. So he may really enjoy the blackmail game.
But it sounds like you agree if Trump has the court in his pocket thanks to years of preparing for this moment, game over for legally stopping him- because our legal system will be fundamentally broken at its core.
On the other hand, if Trump only gets one Supreme Court Justice to say he is the election winner, say Kavanaugh has a huge binder of blackmail material in the hands of Trump and allies, then Trump will have a sliver of legal legitimacy to continue to claim presidential powers.
All Trump has to do is be committed to absolutely never conceding the election and then wait and see if the US Military has enough entranced fanatic civil war minded racists willing to follow him anywhere. And the goal might not be to win…the goal might just be chaos and Trump might just be following orders.
The military will obey whoever is the rightful elected president. If Biden wins, that’s him. If Trump wins, that’s him. Seems simple enough, really. Why would you think otherwise?
On Inauguration Day, the election is over, full stop, whether there is a certified result or not.
If Congress has certified a result (with or without SCOTUS help), then the winner becomes President.
If Congress couldn’t certify a result, then it falls to the presidential line of succession after Vice President (which is Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi). This is true even if it is tied up in Supreme Court, or if a candidate doesn’t accept a Supreme Court ruling.
The military took an oath to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is very clear about presidential succession, so there’s not a lot of scope for them to act confused about who is president on Inauguration Day.
Let’s not forget, although the military reports to the President, their paychecks and promotions come from Congress. I doubt there’s a single officer who wants to jeopardize their career by picking the losing side of a constitutional crisis where the stakes might include treason charges.
I agree. If anything, the Supreme Court might be politically motivated to vote against Trump. He’s doing a lot more harm to the Republican party than any Democrats is.
Crazy is the word for that thread, yes. Why do you keep wanting to tug on it? It seems like every time someone says, “But that would never happen,” your response is “Yeah, but if it did, it’d be crazy, right? Let’s talk about it some more!”
I’m not worried about any possibility that requires Trump to have made years of preparation. I have doubts that Trump could even name all nine members of the court.
Even if Congress and SCOTUS are transparently corrupt and playing a rigged game, they are the highest duly constituted authorities who are empowered to decide the matter. That’s who the military will follow.
As I already said, the Constitution is crystal clear regarding succession if the election fails. So this conversation is mostly about whether you think the military would suddenly cast off constitutional rule because they don’t like the incoming president. I think that’s extremely unlikely just due to the professionalism that exists in the US military. If that’s not reliable enough, you can rely that they like their wages and promotions too much to get into a losing fight with Congress (not to mention treason charges).
But yes, it’s a stark fact that if our duly constituted branches of government collude to choose their own President, they can do that. There is no check on this power other than our vigilance in electing good servants and holding them accountable. Once we stop doing that, game over.
Ah, so this is the thread for insane speculation. So, how about this:
Consider the case where six members of the supreme court suddenly develop polonium allergies, and with the aid of Moscow Mitch Trump appoints himself and his family to the supreme court. At which point the court rules that elections are for pussies and Trump is president for life, in accordance with a perhaps slightly arcane interpretation of the text of the constitution.
At what point do the wheels come of this wagon - or do they? I mean, the supreme court is authorized to interpret the constitution…
There is no check on this power other than Trump being as incompetent at staging a coup as he has been at every other activity he has ever attempted in his life.
At some point, all these speculative scenarios will come down to “…and that’s when the civil war started.”
If the Supreme Court uses legal shenanigans to overturn the will of the electorate, and there’s conflict among the various governmental agencies over who to support as President, and enough people care enough to Do Something about it, then all bets are off. The President will be the leader of whichever faction wins the day.
For this to happen, someone with standing would need to file a suit in federal court, and the plaintiff would have to argue that major parts of the Constitution are invalid. Then they’d have to lose and convince a series of appeals courts to take the case. The SCOTUS “originalists” would then have to rule that some very unambiguous parts of the constitution don’t say what they literally say.
I do worry about weird loopholes like Trump nominating himself to the Supreme Court, knowing Republicans haven’t gone against him yet. It seems outrageous, but McConnell has repeatedly proven that he has no shame in using corrupt loopholes that aren’t technically illegal.
