• enbyecho@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Not arresting this man the second the Supreme Court gave Joe the opportunity will end with millions dead, we both know that.

    I think millions is an exaggeration but it’s also pretty irrelevant whether it’s a 1000 or 1 million, it’s gonna be very very bad. I’m very sympathetic to this argument and in a whishy hopey kinda way would have loved to see it happen…

    But: the SC ruling doesn’t allow a president to act with impunity. It’s way more complicated than that.

    It states that a president has “absolute immunity” for actions “within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and “presumptive immunity” for all official acts. The complete shitstorm that would follow an arrest of Trump “for reasons” would include significant debate about which one of these it was. I have to think that “because he will do bad things and for reasons” is going to push this to the second classification at best. And at that point a whole lot of lawyers are going to be working overtime to show that "applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

    (Opinion here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf)

    It would end up in the Supreme Court. What do you think would happen then? The SC would rule that Biden did not act appropriately and Trump would be released. I don’t have a lot of faith in running out the clock on him running or any other “good” outcome.