President Trump through his lawyers is invoking immunity from prosecution again. In essence, he is saying that for as long as he is President, he is above the law. He could commit a crime while in office, and cannot be prosecuted or impeached particularly if he has a partisan majority in the senate - as is the case now. Even if he was impeached, and removed from office, he would be immediately pardoned by the man he selected as his running mate and vice president, so then he is above the law.
To which of the current chief executive’s various and sundry imbroglios does the OP refer?
"Trump’s lawsuit against Vance and Mazars is the boldest step his administration has taken against prosecutors who wish to investigate him. His lawyer Jay Sekulow said in a statement that the lawsuit is “to address the significant constitutional issues at stake in this case.”
The lawsuit states that “virtually ‘all legal commenters agree’ that a sitting president of the United States is not ‘subject to the criminal process’ while he is in office.” It asks a federal judge to prohibit Vance and Mazars from enforcing the subpoena until Trump leaves office."
This has always been the case. Remember Nixon? Ford wasn’t even elected.
~Max
He can be, but that would require the Republicans to “turn” on the president (unlikely). Also, the House does impeachment.
Reading through Clinton v. Jones (1997), I think it might be possible to sue the president in a private civil case for actions taken during the presidency, so long as such actions are not official, and the private lawsuit does not interfere with the President’s constitutionally assigned duties.
~Max
The republican party has decided that America is no longer a country ruled by law; it is a country ruled by dictatorial mandate. Trump plays dictator and Congress is held back by the republicans from stopping him. And as long as they can gerrymander their 35% popular support into a majority, they can carry on this way.
Trump’s probably not their first choice of dictator, but you work with what you’ve got.
And there is no reasonable reading of Article 1 that supports that fucking OLC memo. That thing is completely absurd and is the executive branch taking on the judiciary role. Pisses me off. Oh shit, this isn’t BBQ?
My understanding that the President cannot be indicted federally by DOJ policy, and that there is no specific law against it. So why would DOJ policy apply to a state?
And even it it does, if a president cannot be indicted while sitting, does that mean a crime can’t be investigated? Crimes are usually (always ?) investigated before indictment.
My concerns about charging and investigating a sitting president are the following:
[ul][li]What are you going to do to him? It’s not like you can send the president to jail.[/li][li]You might not even be able to compel his appearance in court[/li][li]The president can fire any federal prosecutors at will[/li][li]Good luck finding an impartial jury[/li][li]The president handles sensitive information that should not be available to just any prosecutor[/li][li]The president in his official actions is definitely immune from personal liability[/ul][/li]
~Max
Add to this that he has promised pardons to folks who obey his orders, but by doing so break the law, and you have a dictatorship.
Donald’s lawyers contend that he cannot be prosecuted or even investigated for anything, no matter what the offense, as long as he is in the White House. Interesting theory. So he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, and the local police would have to say "We’d like to arrest him, but he’s got this yellow card that says “Get out of prosecution and investigation free”.
The Republican Party has taken the attitude that it doesn’t matter that the president is a criminal, the only thing that matters is getting those right wing judges appointed, gutting regulation, and cutting taxes. They don’t mind despotism, as long as it is their despot.
That’s a bit hyperbolic. It’s not “Congress held back by the republicans”, but rather that the Republicans control one house of Congress, while the Democrats control the other.
And while I’m not a Trump fan, it’s the people’s job to vote in more sympathetic Senators if they so desire the Senate to go along with the House on impeachment. There’s no gerrymandering in the Senate, as they’re at-large within each state.
The “gerrymandering”, as it were, is built in to the senate. 50% of the US population is represented by something like 18 or 20 out of 100 senators.
It is not a coincidence that every idiot making the argument “the USA isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic” is a Trumpist. It’s now so common a thing to see online that I’m convinced the Republican Party and its Russian paymasters are spreading it to convince their peons that the USA doesn’t need fair elections.
I think the United States is not a democracy, but a republic. But I’m not a “Trumpist”. Does that mean I’m not an idiot either? What point are you trying to make here?
~Max
You don’t seem to get the Senate… it doesn’t and isn’t supposed to represent the people.
It’s NOT supposed to be proportionately representative. It represents the States as sovereign entities within our Federal system, not as variable sized collections of people. That’s what the House’s purpose is.
In other words, the California House delegation is 53 people, while Wyoming’s is one. But as sovereign states within the Federal system, Wyoming and California are equals, which is why each gets two senators.
It’s specifically designed to give smaller states an equal voice in that particular legislative body, which I think you have to have in a Federal system. It’s also designed to be a brake on the “fickleness and passion” of the House as the Founding Fathers saw it. That function is more manifest in it being a smaller body with members having longer, staggered terms of office, and originally by its members being chosen by state legislatures.
It’s not hyperbolic; it’s fact. The republicans are indeed holding Congress back. This is not to say that there aren’t also Democrats in congress, but those democrats alternate being totally blocked and merely worried about the political viability of them attempting to do anything due to the high probability of blockage.
Suffice to say, were there NOT republicans in congress holding things back, Trump would either be much, much more constrained, or just a faint memory.
Oh, there’s definitely gerrymandering - it’s just that it was intended to be regional gerrymandering, not party gerrymandering. The fact that the political parties have fallen out as being an urban/rural split just makes it work out in the republican’s favor.
In any case there’s also a fair bit of district-level gerrymandering going on too.
There are two definitions of “democracy” being used here. One is a broad category of, loosely speaking, “governments by the people” and the other is a more particular description of the more general form. So, depending on the context, calling the US a “democracy” can be an absolutely correct descriptor or it can range from an oversimplified description to a disingenuously incomplete one.
If someone takes issue with calling the US a “democracy” in the broad, general sense then they are being unnecessarily pedantic. However, if the particular features of US democracy, that it is the “Constitutional Federated Republic” sub-type of the broader type “democracy” for example, are germane to the discussion then not only is not pedantic but potentially extremely relevant. And in those types of discussions people who repeatedly insist that the US is simply a “democracy” are usually trying to gloss over or even completely ignore those particular features because they contradict whatever point they are advocating for under the broader rubric of “democracy.”
The President of the United States is not above the law.
Donald Trump is getting away with breaking the law because his fellow Republicans are refusing to act.
Sheriff Roscoe may have never arrested Boss Hogg but that didn’t mean Boss Hogg was above the law.
We don’t need to change our legal system. We can solve this current problem by replacing the people who are in office.
Please explain the practical difference between “The law will not touch you” and “The law cannot touch you”.