Donald Trump does not have presidential immunity and can be prosecuted on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, a US court has ruled.
Mr Trump had claimed in the landmark legal case that he was immune from criminal charges for acts he said fell within his duties as president.
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“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralise the most fundamental check on executive power - the recognition and implementation of election results,” the three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit wrote in its opinion.
It added: “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defences of any other criminal defendant.”
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“If immunity is not granted to a president, every future president who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party,” Mr Cheung said. “Without complete immunity, a president of the United States would not be able to properly function.”
The kangaroo courts never stop because liberal judges have no concept of rule by law.
It’s honestly shocking.
We really needed some of these conservative minds to have gone into law instead of business.
The funniest part is that it this holds, a lot of presidents could be going to jail lol
Right - which is why it basically cannot hold.
But they might allow it to happen temporarily and just try to clean up the mess decades down the line.
It might be the case that the country really is going down the tubes, and the future is just low quality, corrupt governments. At which point, you could even say that this decision is a feature, not a flaw.
I think it’d be hilarious if immediately after using this against Trump they send the first black president in US history to jail for murder.
“presidential immunity” has had me thinking of religion and the pope having this principle “the First See is judged by no one”… it sounded similar. The idea was the pope is the superior and has no legal equal, therefore can’t be judged. This has made “sedevacantist” arguments seem difficult, as they seem to “judge the pope”, which violates this principle: like any time “pope” Francis says something that sounds blatantly anti-Christian. So instead people have argued against the validity of the election of the pope, rather than “judge the pope”. It’s a parallel conflict going on, Trump was contesting the validity of elections just like (a minority of) those identifying as Catholic have questioned the validity of modern papal elections.
edit: this also reminds me that Aquinas I think and a few other theologians (?) controversially argued for “tyrannicide” in certain instances where a king might turn tyrannical, as a kind of check on otherwise less limited monarchical power: https://infogalactic.com/info/Tyrannicide