Trump Immunity Pres

belated disambig

see rule of law concept ~ fascism

6-3 dissent? soto?

2025 amicus?

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immunity 6-3

the Supreme Court justices who dissented to Monday's ruling on former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim called it a mockery of the Constitution that reshapes the institution of the presidency.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented to Chief Justice John Roberts ruling that Trump was entitled to absolute immunity for actions carried out in his official capacity as president — but not all presidential actions were official.

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LTD? AN 10 26

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AN 10 26

On Tuesday,,President Donald Trump's desire for "absolute immunity" came under fire from a man very familiar with the disgraced fellow Republican president whose image Trump wishes to rehabilitate, Richard Nixon.

After reviewing a number of expert scholarly opinions Thomas B. Edsall, who contributes a weekly essay to The New York Times, quoted Philip Allen Lacovara, "a former deputy U.S. solicitor general and counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. Lacovara thinks the Supreme Court handed Trump "a virtual get-out-of-jail card"" with their ruling in 2024 that the president has a very high bar before being guilty of a crime.

Lacovara told Edsall, "Although the wholly unjustified and constitutionally unsound decision in the Trump immunity case in 2024 purported to leave open the possibility of prosecuting a president (1) for some official acts and (2) for any unofficial acts, these exceptions are largely illusory — at least so long as the current majority remains on the Supreme Court."

He continued, "The opinion in the case creates a virtually impenetrable barrier protecting Trump from being prosecuted for such things as corruption; complicity in unlawful, extrajudicial killing; selling pardons; soliciting contributions from prospective office seekers; awarding federal contracts to big donors; interfering with elections; and any of the other abuses in his rap sheet."

Edsall proceeded to mention that Lacovara has backed up his work and emphasized Lacovara's observation that the Supreme Court has made it potentially impossible to prosecute this president even when there appears to be significant evidence of quid pro quo financial transactions (bribery) using the president’s office to grant favors in return for personal financial benefits for himself and his family.”

Trump has developed a particular interest in rehabilitating Nixon's image because Trump supporters believe the prosecution of Nixon was a Democratic example of "law fare," or prosecution of a president for exercising his supposedly legitimate prerogatives.

"Trump is passing policies by fiat or by executive order, so he’s sort of acting like the legislative branch, because Congress isn’t doing these things," Luke Nichter, professor of history at Chapman University, who edited two volumes of Nixon's White House tapes, told AlterNet in terms of what Trump learned from Nixon's attempts to gain power through the executive branch. "Then the judicial branch is acting more like the executive. It’s acting as a referee: You can do this, but you can’t do that. And Congress is reduced to holding a lot of hearings and talking, but not necessarily taking leadership."

He added, "So they’ve become kind of the judicial branch. We’ve had a sort of corruption of the three branches of government, where none of them is really functioning the way our founders intended."

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an 4 26

Trump stalls J6 lawsuits from officers and lawmakers with immunity push: report - Alternet.org

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no lnx

Trump's $4 billion empire could evaporate — thanks to one judge's ruling

Sabrina Haake April 25, 2026

With all the ruin emanating from the Oval Office on a daily basis, it’s easy to fall into quiet despair. Following the news feels like monitoring a malignant tumor as it spreads outward from the epicenter of the free world, jumping oceans, URLs, and psyches, threatening the globe on macro and micro levels simultaneously. Only this sickness, this decidedly opportunistic cancer, has never been seen before. Certainly this level of rot has not been diagnosed in our 250 year history.

Trump’s singularly corrupt and destructive appetite, both fed and insulated by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, is hard to stomach. After SCOTUS handed criminal immunity to a psychopath, despondency set in as the world resentfully assumed that Trump would get away with his crimes against humanity forever.

Then, just there, on the unlit edge of the blackest cloud to have darkened the world in a very long time, a glimmering trace of silver peaked out. In a development that should have streaked across the headlines, but barely got a mention, a federal judge ruled that Trump will pay for at least one of his crimes: J6.

Trump will likely lose his ill-got gains

Measuring the amount of corruption lining Trump’s pocket is like shoveling on a snowy day. As of late January, Trump had pocketed upwards of $4 billion from untraceable crypto currency ventures, suspicious market manipulations, and outright bribery from foreign and domestic sources during his first year back in office. He’d better be thinking on how to hide it, because on March 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Trump. Is. Civilly. Liable for the damages he caused on January 6, 2021.

Judge Mehta’s cautious 79 page ruling (found here) denied Trump civil immunity through a careful analysis largely devoted to distinguishing between Trump’s criminal actions as an office-holder (official-acts immunity), and his actions in seeking office, which were not official acts and therefore are not immune. The decision carefully followed the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, and will allow claims against him from members of Congress and capital police officers to proceed to trial.

After a prior ruling that Trump’s speech on the Ellipse plausibly amounted to incitement, which is not protected under the First Amendment, Trump’s legal team sought to substitute the United States as the defendant under the Westfall Act, arguing that Trump’s acts fell within the scope of his employment as President. That motion was denied. The critical contextual question, following the 2023 decision in Blassingame v. Trump, was whether Trump was speaking or engaging in conduct “in an official capacity as office-holder or instead in an unofficial capacity as office-seeker.”

Applying the immunity ruling, the court observed that “many uses of the presidential bully pulpit fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of [the President’s] official responsibility” and are therefore immune. “The Court’s approach recognizes that presidential speech on matters of public concern will very often be official—and thus immunized.” But the immunity decision itself recognized that there may “be contexts in which the President, notwithstanding the prominence of his position, speaks in an unofficial capacity—perhaps as a candidate for office or party leader.” Trump, 603 U.S. at 629. Acting or campaigning to attain the Office of the President, is not an official function of the office.

Proving damages will be easy

The cause-damages link on J6 is obvious.

On December 19, 2020, Trump sent out a tweet targeting extremist groups, urging them to come to the U.S. Capitol to make their anger known about a “stolen” presidential election. In follow up communications, he teased a “wild” rally, and convinced 74 million supporters who had voted for him that their votes weren’t counted, which, predictably, angered them.

On Jan. 6, 2021, on the White House Ellipse where his summoned supporters gathered, Trump gave a fiery speech telling those in attendance, “We fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He then urged them to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to “take back our country.”

Following Trump’s instructions, the summoned people then marched to the Capitol Building, which they breached with unprecedented political violence seen around the world. Although many people pleaded with Trump to stop the violence, he safely enjoyed it on TV for over three hours before he told rioters to stop.

At least seven people died from the attack.

Trump will bring this same contempt to the courtroom when he is personally sued for billions over J6, when he falsely brays, again, that he won in 2020. Juries don’t like him, most Americans don’t like him. He has assaulted women, stolen from our nation, and put our fragile democracy on life support. No verdict will be too high, and Americans are here for it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

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GIFT KEEPS GIVING

AN 4 26

President Donald Trump has had no qualms about abusing his pardon authority during his second term, reportedly promising preemptive pardons to anyone close to him before he leaves office, but there are still legal avenues available to get around this "pardon-palooza" threat.

Kimberly Wehle is a legal scholar, author and professor at the University of Baltimore's School of Law. On Wednesday, she published a piece for The Hill breaking down Trump's corruption of the pardon system and his alleged promise to issue blanket pardons to his officials and allies. The president recently suggested he might offer them to " everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office," which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested was a joke, while also insisting that his pardon authority is "absolute."

Trump's quip should not be taken lightly, however, as Wehle explained that, if he were to go ahead with pre-pardons for "anyone who may have committed crimes at his behest," it is not likely that he would face much legal scrutiny, or at least, none that could stick.

"Thanks to his friendly majority on the Supreme Court, Trump is now likely immune from prosecution for many crimes conceivably committed in connection with his pardons. That is because in Trump v. U.S., the court manufactured a doctrine of criminal immunity for presidents. This effectively killed off former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment over Trump’s alleged role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol."

She continued: "In that ruling, the majority deemed the pardon power 'core' to the president’s constitutional powers and thus absolutely immune from legal scrutiny — possibly even if a pardon is issued in exchange for a bribe... Couple presidential immunity with the court’s view that pardons are a 'core' presidential responsibility and thus legally inscrutable — a notion likewise announced for the first time in that case — and the Supreme Court effectively greenlighted an organized crime spree in the Oval Office."

Wehle argued that legal accountability could still be pursued in jurisdictions where Trump's presidential pardons cannot reach, most notably in state-level prosecutions. Trump himself has reportedly fumed at his inability to do anything about his Manhattan "hush money" felony conviction for this very reason. His pardons also cannot "touch civil liability for wrongdoing, either, so money damages for executing unlawful presidential orders or programs are still on the table."

"Of course, any future state prosecutions would hinge on the existence of state governments willing to uphold law over party politics," Wehle explained. "Nor would every state have legal jurisdiction over crimes committed in Washington, D.C., for example. But if the goal in this moment is (as it should be) deterring Trump acolytes from risking their personal liberty out of loyalty to him, the threat of state criminal liability should be taken seriously now."

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AN 4 26

With its controversial 6-3 ruling in Trump v. the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court's GOP-appointed hard-right supermajority ruled that U.S presidents enjoy absolute immunity from prosecution for "official" acts in office but not for "unofficial" acts. Donald Trump applauded the ruling. But on Tuesday, March 31, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta — applying that standard — ruled that Trump's speech at a January 6, 2021 rally in Washington, D.C. was political in nature and therefore, is not protected from civil lawsuits related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

According to Politico journalists Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Mehta "delivered a serious setback" to Trump "in long-running civil lawsuits seeking to hold him liable for the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021."

Mehta, they note, "ruled that evidence produced so far in the litigation brought by police officers and Democratic lawmakers indicated that Trump's speech at the Ellipse that day was political in nature and not subject to the immunity the Supreme Court has found for a president's official acts."

Gerstein, in a March 31 post on X, former Twitter, noted that Mehta's "ruling could lead to a trial but appeal could lead to year-plus more delay."

Attorney Joseph Sellers, who is representing the Democratic lawmakers suing Trump in civil court, is applauding Mehta's ruling.

Sellers told Politico, "We're very pleased that the court recognized that President Trump cannot avoid accountability for his conduct on January 6, 2021. This decision, if it holds up, is going to pave the way to a trial in federal district court on these claims."

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an ah 10 25

When then-President George W. Bush chose John Roberts to head the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the combination of justices was much different from what it is today.

The High Court leaned conservative and had some hardcore social conservatives (Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia). But conservative Ronald Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy had strong libertarian leanings, joining the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in some landmark gay rights rulings. And Donald Trump's first presidency was more than a decade away.

In 2025, Roberts oversees a hard-right 6-3 GOP-appointed supermajority, half of which was nominated by Trump. Lisa Graves, who heads the judicial watchdog group True North Research, believes that Roberts is doing little to discourage the MAGA agenda — a point she emphasized in an interview with Mother Jones' Pema Levy published in Q&A form on October 3.

Referencing 2022's Trump v. the United States, Graves told Levy that "the immunity decision signaled that Roberts has moved more into MAGA Land."

Graves continued, "He has really taken the driver's wheel in terms of embracing a MAGA agenda, and that's reflected in the January 6 trio of cases last year — and in particular, the unprecedented immunity decision, and is reflected in the rulings this year, these emergency rulings. He is embracing the White House’s position on immigration in a way that is not consistent with most of the business community that does not support these sort of aggressive attacks on immigration and our employment systems."

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In Trump v. the United States, the High Court's GOP supermajority ruled that U.S. presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts but not for "unofficial" acts. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her scathing dissent, warned that the decision gives a dangerous amount of power to the federal government's executive branch.

"At his confirmation hearings," Graves recalled, "(Roberts) affirmed that no president is above the law, no one is above the law. And then, when it mattered most for him to stand for that principle, he not only abandoned it — he aggressively wrote this very expansive opinion, ignoring the language of the Constitution that says in two places, the job of the president is to faithfully execute the law. And nothing could be less faithful than breaking the law."

*Read the full Mother Jones interview at this link.

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an 1 25

The U.S. Supreme Court swiftly responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s formal request early Wednesday morning to delay sentencing in his 34-count felony conviction for business fraud in New York, widely known as the “hush money” case.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York Supreme Court on Friday, for what District Attorney Alvin Bragg described as “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.” Trump originally was slated to be sentenced on July 11, but he twice succeeded in having those dates postponed. His attorneys in recent days filed unsuccessful motions in two New York courts to have the sentencing delayed again, before submitting their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Describing his latest attempt as “a highly unusual request that relies in part on the court’s decision last year to grant him broad immunity from criminal prosecution,” CNN reports Trump’s attorneys told the nation’s highest court the delay, or pause, is necessary “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”

Trump’s argument, in part, is based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling granting him and all subsequent presidents vast immunity from prosecution for what it deemed are “official acts” of the presidency. Many legal experts doubt Trump’s conviction on falsifying business records when paying “hush money” to an adult film star is an official act of the presidency.

The Supreme Court Wednesday morning responded to Trump’s request by directing New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg to reply to Trump’s motion by 10 AM ET Thursday, Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff reported. Law360’s Katie Buehler also reported SCOTUS’s response.

“If Trump’s lawyers are successful in halting the proceedings before he is sworn-in in fewer than two weeks, the hush money case could linger for months while his attorneys pursue an appeal to toss out the conviction,” CNN adds.

ABC News’ Peter Charalambous notes, “Trump’s lawyers have asked the country’s highest court for an unprecedented intervention in the ongoing criminal case of a former president — whose appointment of three justices cemented the court’s conservative majority – that would effectively toss his criminal conviction less than two weeks ahead of his inauguration.

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an 12 24

Trump made history earlier this year as the first former U.S. president to be convicted of felony crimes. But now as president-elect, he's arguing that his 34 felony convictions should be dismissed ahead of his impending return to the White House. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg came out hard against Trump's argument in a recent filing.

Lawfare correspondent Anna Bower recently posted Bragg's filing to Bluesky, noting the Manhattan DA's office argued Judge Juan Merchan "should deny Trump’s request to immediately vacate and dismiss the jury’s guilty verdicts against him in New York." In the 82-page filing, Bragg called it "particularly brazen" for Trump's lawyers to suggest that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause means that state court convictions should be thrown out to accommodate an incoming administration.

Trump's attorneys cited the Supreme Court's July 2024 Trump v. United States ruling that grants presidents absolute broad immunity from criminal prosecution for all "official acts" to argue that their client's felony convictions should be thrown out. But Bragg countered that the jury already agreed that Trump's actions were all carried out in his capacity as a private citizen, and not part of any official presidential act.

"The importance of preserving a President’s ability to be held criminally accountable after the expiration of his term has led the Supreme Court to reject applications of presidential immunity that would 'forever thwart' the public’s interest in enforcing its criminal laws," Bragg wrote.

Bragg further reminded Merchan that in the 1974 United States v. Nixon case, the Supreme Court "rejected a sweepingclaim of absolute immunity that would have allowed a sitting President to disregard a criminal subpoena probing into his official acts." He used the Court's conclusion that quashing that subpoena "would mean that a pending 'criminal prosecution may be totally frustrated'" to pivot to a larger point that "such permanent interference with the criminal process was an intolerable result given that presidential immunity is supposed to protect a President’s official decision-making only while in office, not to forever insulate the President from criminal liability — especially for his unofficial conduct."

The Manhattan DA acknowledged that as president, Trump has the right to not allow the business of governing to be disrupted by a criminal sentence. However, he posited that there were fixes to this unprecedented scenario that didn't involve striking his 34 felony convictions.

"The extreme remedy of dismissing the indictment and vacating the jury verdict is not warranted in light of multiple alternative accommodations that would fully address the concerns raised by presidential immunity," Bragg wrote in the filing. "For example, if judgment has not been entered before presidential immunity attaches, the Court could at that point stay further proceedings for the duration of defendant’s presidency... Given the availability of these alternatives to dismissal, this Court should deny defendant’s request to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury verdict."

Click here to read the full filing.

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ymail 10 24 public citizen

On July 1, the Supreme Court issued a profoundly misguided ruling that gives U.S. presidents sweeping power to break the law — even knowingly and intentionally — with no criminal repercussions.

Because the court’s decision in Donald Trump’s immunity case is based on the U.S. Constitution, a constitutional amendment is the only surefire way to overturn it.

And overturn it we must.

No president should have anything close to the kind of immunity the Supreme Court has conferred on the office. Not Donald Trump. Not Joe Biden. Not Kamala Harris. Not anyone who holds the office. Not ever.

Winning a constitutional amendment will not be easy. It is not supposed to be easy. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

It will take time. There will be moments where it seems like nothing is happening. We may very well find ourselves in “one step forward, two steps back” territory along the way.

Big progress is always incremental. Painstaking. Maybe downright tedious. That’s the work we have to do if we want important things.

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an 10 24 badash

last year, when Donald Trump’s attorneys declared he had “total immunity” from prosecution, many in the legal community scoffed. No president in all of American history had ever proclaimed they could not be convicted for serious violations of law—most infamously, President Richard Nixon had to have been keenly aware he might be criminally prosecuted.

Just eleven days after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, TIME reported, “Nixon’s new status as a private citizen puts him in grave peril.”

In fact, TIME continued, “the Watergate grand jury had vigorously wanted to indict Nixon while he was President.”

The American public is aware presidents can be prosecuted for certain crimes, and there is a foundational expectation of that possibility. In February of 2021, after the Democratic House impeached Donald Trump, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the ex-president should face criminal prosecution rather than impeachment.

“Donald Trump’s legal troubles are far from over, despite his acquittal in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial that ended on Saturday,” Reuters reported on February 16, 2021. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted this just moments after voting to acquit Trump, saying the courts are the proper forum for holding the former president accountable for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.”

We now know that after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the claim of “presidential immunity” by Trump’s attorneys, it refused, waiting for a lower court to weigh in. Chief Justice John Roberts sent a “scathing critique of [that] lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule,” The New York Times reported last month.

“Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate,” according to The Times’ reporting.

“’I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently’ from the appeals court, he wrote,” The Times reported, offering this interpretation for the Chief Justice’s message: “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, had literally argued a president could order a coup and be protected by immunity because it was an “official act” of the presidency.

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Sauer also argued a president could order the assassination of a political rival and still have immunity from prosecution.

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Chief Justice Roberts responded to the “momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases…by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.”

In short, the Chief Justice used his powers to intervene and craft an opinion that some experts have said creates new law—certainly nothing that is found in the U.S. Constitution.

“There’s no legal authority for it,” remarked CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen back in December.

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Nor, as the “originalist” far-right justices on the bench have adopted, does Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling lie in the “history and tradition” of the United States.

And yet, despite decades of history starting with Richard Nixon, and despite the scathing dissenting opinion from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, CNN reports on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.”

“The Roberts Court has been in sync with the GOP political agenda largely because of decisions the chief justice has authored: For Trump and other Republicans. Against voting rights and racial affirmative action. Against federal regulations over environmental, public health and consumer affairs,” CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported. “Roberts, joined by his five fellow conservatives, found that the former president was entitled to presumptive, if not absolute, immunity for actions related to his official acts. Roberts’ view of official acts, as opposed to private ones, was vast.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion on Trump’s immunity blasted Roberts and the far-right justices, famously declaring:

“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

She also wrote:

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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mma

Project 2025 partners celebrate Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity

Written by Jack Wheatley, Jacina Hollins-Borges & Sophie Lawton

Published 07/02/24

Project 2025 partners are taking a victory lap after the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision in Trump v. United States, which ruled that “former President Donald Trump is entitled to immunity from federal prosecution for official actions he took while in office, a landmark decision at the height of an election season that further delays the start of his criminal trial in Washington, D.C.”

Project 2025 is a comprehensive transition plan to guide a potential second Trump administration with policy proposals and staffing recommendations led by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, which joined other members of the project’s advisory board in celebrating the ruling on presidential immunity as a win for Trump and a defeat for Democrats.

Last week, Project 2025 partners also praised the Supreme Court decision overturning Chevron deference in a ruling that will restrict federal agencies' regulatory abilities and make it easier for corporations to challenge environmental protections, climate action, and rules that protect workers or regulate drugs and financial practices, among other issues..

On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts marked the decision as “vital,” and claimed, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [7/2/24]|}:

- Heritage senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry posted that the Trump ruling is “the one the nation waited for. Never in American history has the high court weighed in on the scope of criminal immunity for presidents over their conduct in office. Today's decision was historic.” She added that “the presumption of immunity for certain official acts applies to all occupants of the Oval Office. Politicizing the Justice system against a president sets a dangerous precedent, and SCOTUS put some much-needed guardrails in place today.” Twitter/X, [4/1/24]

The American Center for Law and Justice posted, “BREAKING: In a major ruling, the Supreme Court has agreed with our amicus brief that Presidents are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.” Twitter/X, [7/1/24]|}:

- Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, president of America First Legal, wrote that the decision is “another setback for the Democrat Party’s illegal and unconstitutional crusade to outlaw dissent, jail the opposition leader, impose authoritarian rule, replace democracy with the deep state and liberty with leftwing oligarchy.” Twitter/X, [7/1/24]

- The Center for Renewing America posted a video of senior fellow Mark Paoletta reacting to the decision on Newsmax, saying, “It’s a great day for President Trump… it’s an even better day for the U.S. Constitution." Twitter/X, [7/2/24]

- The Center for Renewing America’s official statement said the ruling also “confirms that immunity” for senior fellow Jeff Clark, who was indicted alongside Trump for efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.CRA wrote: “We have vigorously insisted from the very beginning that Mr. Clark is entitled to immunity from prosecution and from bar discipline. The Supreme Court’s decision today confirms that immunity in resounding and unmistakable terms. Now the Fulton County District Attorney and the D.C. Bar Disciplinary Process must immediately dismiss all charges against Clark and bring their wrongful prosecutions of him to an end.” PBS NewsHour, [8/8/23; Twitter/X, 7/1/24]

- Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots wrote, “Today’s SCOTUS ruling is another win for former President Trump, and a big defeat for the Democrats who have been weaponizing the government against Trump to interfere in this year’s election.” She thanked the Supreme Court “for recognizing the importance of presidential immunity” and added, “This is why your vote is so important.” Twitter/X, [7/1/24]

- Family Research Council’s Washington Watch podcast hosted Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) and Liberty University’s Phill Kline to celebrate the immunity decision. Burlison said, “The court, I felt like, made a very common-sense ruling that the president has immunity when performing the duties of his office. It just so happens that some of those duties include making sure that there’s no voter fraud that occurred in the previous election.” Kline said the Supreme Court concluded “that the president, in the exercise of his constitutional and statutory responsibilities, needs to be immune from zealous or overreaching oversight by the other branches of government, including that of Congress and even the courts, as well as a prosecutor who might take a law and try to weaponize it against the president to try to deter certain behavior.” Family Research Council, *Washington Watch*, [7/1/24, 7/1/24]

### Project 2025 partners join right-wing media and climate deniers to celebrate SCOTUS decision overturning Chevron deference

06/28/24

### Fox's chief political anchor interviewed the architect of Project 2025. Here are some of the details he failed to mention.

09/19/24

### Fox praises “pro-worker” Trump despite his anti-overtime record

09/13/24

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an 9 24

Progressive legal expert Elie Mystal, in his blistering condemnation of the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial 6-3 immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States, has made a major distinction between "qualified immunity" and "absolute immunity."

The High Court's decision, Mystal has argued, is dangerous to the rule of law in the U.S. because it grants Trump and future presidents "absolutely immunity" — not merely "qualified immunity" — from criminal prosecution for "official" acts committed as part of their "core" duties.

Even some frequent critics of the Roberts Court were shocked by how far the six GOP-appointed justices went in that ruling. But a memo leaked to the New York Times shows that Chief Justice John Roberts encouraged this outcome.

Salon's Nicholas Liu explains, "John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, on February 22, issued a memo to his colleagues urging them not only to take up an appeal from former President Donald Trump over his immunity claim, but also, to rule in favor of granting him that immunity…. The document, along with other justices' memos, accounts of the proceedings and testimony from sources the Times interviewed, offers a window into Roberts' high level of involvement in several cases that benefited Trump and ultimately helped him climb out of a mire of legal troubles that threatened to upend his 2024 presidential campaign."

According to Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, the February 22 memo that Roberts sent to the eight other justices "radiated frustration and certainty."

Liu notes that the memo is relevant not only to Trump v. the United States, but also, to the High Court's 14th Amendment-related case decision involving the former president.

"Roberts exerted his influence in March this year, when he persuaded the other judges to rule that states could not unilaterally kick federal candidates from a ballot," Liu observes. "While the judges agreed unanimously on the matter, the Court's liberals dissented to an additional proposition that anyone seeking to enforce the Constitution's 14th Amendment against insurrectionist candidates running for office would need to first obtain congressional approval."

READ MORE:[Pro-Trump natural gas CEO warns ex-president’s 'drill, baby, drill' slogan is 'not the answer'

Roberts' memo, according to Kantor and Liptak, vehemently disagreed with a lower federal court ruling that tore apart Trump's presidential immunity claims.

The Times journalists report, "The chief justice’s February 22 memo, jump-starting the justices’ formal discussion on whether to hear the case, offered a scathing critique of a lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule, according to several people from the court who saw the document. The chief justice tore into the appellate court opinion greenlighting Mr. Trump’s trial, calling it inadequate and poorly reasoned."

READ MORE:['He was ill-prepared': Karl Rove rips debate prep team after Harris successfully 'baits' Trump

*Read the New York Times' full report at this link (subscription required) and Salon's analysis here.

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an 9 24

Whether former President Donald Trump is ever truly held accountable for his crimes depends entirely upon the outcome of the November election. And as The Atlantic's Quinta Jurecic writes, he largely has the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to thank for that.

In her Wednesday essay, Jurecic — a senior editor at Lawfare — laid out how SCOTUS' 6-3 conservative supermajority has consistently been the former president's strongest ally in his efforts to stay out of prison. She posited that Trump may already be behind bars after being found guilty of 34 felonies in New York earlier this year were it not for SCOTUS' assistance in his stalling tactics.

According to Jurecic, the Court signaled that it would be playing a significant role in the former president's efforts to delay criminal accountability when it granted a*writ of certiorari* to hear Trump's argument for absolute broad criminal immunity. The Court's decision to hear the case despite both U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreeing that the president was not above the law meant that the final decision in Trump v. United States wouldn't be announced until just a few months before the election.

After the 6-3 decision was handed down in July, Trump was then able to leverage that in two or his four criminal cases in New York and Washington, D.C. Jurecic explained that thanks to the decision's vague wording — in which presidents are granted immunity for "official acts" but lower courts have to decide what constitutes an "official act" — Trump's delay campaign is aided by legal murkiness.

Judge Chutkan noted in a recent hearing that her decisions could still be subject to reversal by SCOTUS "no matter what I do." This means that despite given latitude by SCOTUS to decide how the immunity ruling is to be applied in her courtroom, conservatives on the SCOTUS bench could still end up throwing out her decisions if they don't approve of them.

"[H]ow is she to identify the fuzzy line between unofficial and official conduct? The Supreme Court has provided precisely no guidance. According to a scheduling order that Chutkan released following last week’s hearing, the briefing alone on the immunity question will take until October 29, six days before the election," Jurecic wrote. "And, importantly, because the Court also indicates that Trump can immediately appeal any decision from lower courts on these questions—what’s known as an 'interlocutory appeal'—whatever Chutkan does could well be subject to months and months of additional litigation."

Jurecic noted that the original July sentencing date for Trump's felony convictions that was pushed back to September was once again delayed until late November — weeks after the presidential election. She argued this abundance of caution from Judge Juan Merchan is not his own doing, but rather the situation he was forced into thanks to the massive legal grey area created by the Trump v. United States decision.

"For those who hoped that Trump might finally face criminal accountability before the election, this is a frustrating dodge—another example of the legal system’s apparent inability to hold Trump responsible for his actions," she wrote. "But the real villain here isn’t Bragg or Merchan, who are doing their best to carry out justice under difficult circumstances. It’s the Supreme Court, which created an unmanageable situation that played directly into Trump’s goal of delaying a legal reckoning."

"None of this was preordained. The Supreme Court didn’t need to take up the immunity case to begin with. Once it did, the overwhelming majority of experts and commentators—myself included—expected that, at most, the Court would fashion a rule carving out some limited category of immunized conduct, perhaps creating difficulties in the January 6 case but certainly not creating problems in New York," she continued. "Instead, the conservative justices issued a ruling that not only established a sweeping and poorly defined immunity but also created so many avenues for challenge and confusion that the Court functionally collaborated in Trump’s strategy of delay."

Click here to read Jurecic's full essay in the Atlantic.

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“Disdains democracy': Chief justice’s role in Trump immunity sparks outrage from legal experts

https://www.alternet.org/scotus-trump/) an 7 24

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an 8 24

SCOTUS immunity ruling 'littered with ambiguities' as federal judge grapples with Trump election case

jack asks delay?

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an raw 7 24

former President Donald Trump's allies are working to reshape American law into a weapon to be used against their political enemies, wrote Jesse Wegman in a scathing editorial for The New York Times.

Trump's pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) underscores this, he wrote, because Vance embodies the far-right's commitment to a key goal of the controversial Project 2025 plan to transform the government into an authoritarian loyalty cult to the GOP.

Vance, wrote Wegman, "predicted ... that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: 'Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.' And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: Just blow them off."

This is already happening, wrote Wegman — and another of Trump's appointees, District Judge Aileen Cannon, is showing how it will work in her move to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which special counsel Jack Smith is already moving to appeal.

In her decision, Cannon concluded Smith, "Was not validly appointed to his post because no federal law authorizes the appointment of someone from outside the Justice Department to perform that task," wrote Wegman, noting she based this entirely on a non-majority concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas in the case granting Trump a presumption of immunity in a separate case.

ALSO READ:'Keep lying': Late night Trump rant about Harris quickly turns against him

"As a matter of law and fact, this is not merely wrong, it is flagrantly, embarrassingly wrong ... It is not a close or complicated legal question" — indeed, the Supreme Court ruled the law allows this in 1974, and Cannon pretends they didn't.

These sorts of machinations by Vance and Cannon are exactly what to expect the whole government to become should Trump get his way, Wegman concluded ominously.

"This is what a second Trump term would look like," he wrote. "Ambitious judges who may not have been Trump loyalists at first will watch what’s been happening in recent days and get the message about what it takes to advance their careers. In this way, Judge Cannon embodies the future that Mr. Vance described in 2021. She is part of a legal elite raised on Trumpism that will use their perches in the judiciary and legal world to enforce a one-sided version of law that is about power and outcomes over any liberal principle."

In other words, he said, this is a reality where "the rule of law is for suckers or, worse, only for specific people. Our people."

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ref an 7 24

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a 93-page opinion has dismissed the Espionage Act/classified documents case against ex-president Donald Trump, claiming Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland “violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” Legal experts, calling her ruling “wrong,” say U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is to blame.

Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury on 37 felony charges, 31 of them under the Espionage Act, in the case related to his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return hundreds of documents, many classified, some top secret, and some so secret they include the nation’s nuclear secrets.

“There’s no case any more, it’s been dismissed,” observed former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, a former Counselor to the U.S. Attorney General, on MSNBC. He said he is “confident” Judge Cannon’s ruling would be appealed.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported the bombshell news:

IFrame Content

Other legal experts agree.

“This ruling (which is wrong six ways from Sunday) can (and will) be immediately appealed to the Eleventh Circuit,” wrote professor of law Steve Vladeck. “To me, the only question is whether the Special Counsel also asks for the case to be reassigned on remand…”

Former federal civil rights prosecutor Dr. Kristy Parker, Counsel at Protect Democracy, said: “Hard to characterize how wrong this is — at least in a world where law matters. We may not be in that world any longer.”

Last month in oral arguments the argument Smith’s appointment was unlawful was made to Cannon, MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin noted Monday morning, saying that the judge appeared at the time to dismiss that claim.

“People tried this against Special Counsel Robert Muller,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian stressed, “and were unsuccessful and it’s really important to point out and so viewers understand there’s nothing in this opinion that speaks to the merits of this case, to the classified documents to the allegations of obstruction of justice. This is an entirely procedural issue. It’s a constitutional question. It’s whether whether the law establishing the Special Counsel violates the appointments clause, and she also actually made a ruling on a separate argument about the appropriations clause. And and she, and she’s decided that the way Congress is funding the way the Special Counsel is funded, is not appropriate either.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis described the dismissal as “Insanity.”

Noting today is also the start of the 2024 Republican National Convention, founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy, Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel, blasted the Trump-appointed judge:

“Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is.”

Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is. pic.twitter.com/9aUEg3yGLh

— Ian Bassin 🇺🇸 (@ianbassin) July 15, 2024

MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney called Cannon’s decision, “Absolutely incredible,” while concurring the ruling will be appealed.

“That’s it,” she added. “Unless the 11th Circuit & ultimately SCOTUS disagree, Trump goes free for walking out of the White House with top secret documents. At best, this is seriously delayed. Disgusted.”

Some legal experts, including Vance, point to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ separate concurrence in the Trump immunity case as giving Judge Cannon the roadmap to come to this decision.

“This was the argument advanced by Justice Thomas in his concurrence in Trump v. US, which no other Justice signed into at the time,” Vance noted.

Professor of law Leah Litman observed, “Justice Thomas’s ‘Cannon-currence’ worked.”

Parenthetically, she explained, “In the Trump immunity case, Justice Thomas wrote separately to suggest the special counsel was unlawfully appointed; the reasoning laid out the roadmap for this (wrong) result/decision.”

“Justice Thomas strikes again,” wrote professor of law Melisa Murray. “Not only did a majority of the Court give presidents almost unfettered license in the immunity case, Justice Thomas concurred separately to question the constitutionality of the special counsel. He laid the table and Judge Cannon took a seat.”

“Surprising absolutely no one,” observed legal journalist Cristian Farias. “This is a Federalist Society pipe dream, one they could never achieve during the Mueller years. And precisely what Clarence Thomas, all alone, suggested should happen in the Trump immunity case.”

But, he added, “This is not the end.”

Read the social media posts above or at this link.

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July 01, 2024

US Supreme Court lawyer and legal analyst Neal Katyal, speaking with MSNBC's Katie Phang on Monday,expressed fear that he suspects "there's something really dangerous" happening to the rule of law in the United States.

Phang noted how "stunned" legal experts were when Trump lawyer John Saul, during oral arguments in April, suggested that a president should be able to assassinate political opponents.

"Now the majority's saying that if the president says it falls within the purview of his official acts, does he now legally and officially say, 'I can commit murder?'" Phang asked Katyal.

"It's unfathomable that the Supreme Court which has been such an august body, Chief justice John Marshall, Justice Thurgood Marshall — people like that — are issuing a decision like this," the Supreme Court lawyer replied, "that allows for such things — as calling them official acts. And that's why I think you saw Justice Sotomayor [write], 'With fear for our democracy, I dissent.'"

Katyal continued, "And I can tell you, I've never seen language like this in a Supreme Court opinion or dissent. There is something really dangerous going on here, and something that is really threatening the entire basis of our constitution and separation of powers."

"My parents came to this country from another because of the principle that no one was above the law," the MSNBC legal analyst emphasized. "That's what we hold out as most dear. And now to have a Supreme Court opinion that blesses, to be sure, 100%, it blesses the president pressuring his justice department to falsely say that there were election irregularities. They say that's an official act."

"Once you go down that road, the pressure on presidents to do all sorts of untoward things is immense," the legal expert emphasized. Fortunately, for 200 years, we've elected people — Republicans and Democrats alike — who've colored within those lines. But I fear that the next one may not be so solicitous of our constitutional values and norms."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump Immunity Pres

Project 2025 partners celebrate Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity

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