Posted on 12/12/2023 6:48:14 AM PST by bitt
I was writing about the case before the SCOTUS.
Trump is saying he is immune because he was President. That is not how it works.
All this other stuff is propaganda from both sides.
As had been discussed a lot...impeachment is a political act, not a legal one.
The President, if convicted in an impeachment, is removed from office. It has no bearing on his culpability in a criminal case.
Let’s say a sitting President murders someone. They are impeached to get them out of office. Is it your argument that they would not stand trial for the murder? Of course they would.
Simply because the two processes use similar language doesn’t make them the same thing.
But impeachment and criminal trials are two different things. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Impeachment is like getting tossed out of your job. Criminal cases are brought by the people and tried in courts.
Just because they use similar language does not make them the same.
I am discussing the law and how it works. You are discussing the politics.
You are going to be very frustrated over the next few months.
And remember....just before Clinton left office, they ??? made a deal that he would never be prosecuted civilly for anything that happened while he was in office.
I smell a swamp rat.
Leslie Wolf is right in there too.
What have you seen them do lately that would make you even consider that they will do the right thing here and do anything to protect Trump?
You apparently haven't read the two main points of Trump's legal argument for presidential immunity:
1. The President is immune from prosecution for acts taken during the official conduct of his office.
2. The plain language of the U.S. Constitution may grant him immunity under the "double jeopardy" clause written into the provisions on impeachment:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
President Trump was ACQUITTED in his impeachment trial over the 1/6 fiasco.
Impeachment does not constitute prosecution. Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7 of the Constitution states:
Clause 7 Impeachment Judgments
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
With Laz one is never certain.
The Supreme Court is being asked to weigh in on this because there is a clear legal quandary in this type of scenario where the President murders someone and is NOT convicted in his impeachment trial (see my previous post on this topic).
The other problem here is that the whole discussion on the subject of "acquittal immunity" is that it's taking place in the context of a modern political and legal landscape that didn't exist when the Constitution was written. Specifically, it should be pointed out that any question about the legal exposure to criminal prosecution for an acquitted President in the 1790s would mainly focus on prosecution in a state court, not Federal court. That’s because there were hardly any Federal crimes listed in the U.S. criminal code at the time. The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t even exist until 1870, and the U.S. Attorney General and the various District Attorneys worked mainly in civil matters under the Treasury Department before that.
There's your legal quandary right there.
Trump was NOT convicted in his impeachment trial.
I feel bad for her makeup.
It didn’t deserve this.
No quandary at all. If someone who was impeached and convicted isn't protected by double jeopardy, then someone who is impeached and not convicted isn't protected by double jeopardy, either.
This dooms DJTrump. Roberts showed his colors when he rejected the court cases of Tx, etc. They asked SCOTUS to hear them out and roberts rejected it ‘cause he did not want rioting in the streets.
I guess in his mind the BLM riots didn’t exist.
What all the SCOTUS members ought to consider is that if immunity bends on one office it can be corrupted for all — like them.
But, rule of law in the US is dead anyhoo. So, it really won’t matter when Newsome is installed.
Whether a Former President May Be Indicted and Tried for the Same Offenses for Which He was Impeached by the House and Acquitted by the Senate
The Constitution permits a former President to be indicted and tried for the same offenses for which he was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate.
August 18, 2000
Memorandum Opinion for the Attorney General
We have been asked to consider whether a former President may be indicted and tried for the same offenses for which he was impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate.1 In 1973, in a district court filing addressing a related question in the criminal tax evasion investigation of Vice President Agnew, the Department took the position that acquittal by the Senate creates no bar to criminal prosecution. A 1973 Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) memorandum discussing the same question adopted the same position. As far as we are aware, no court has ever ruled on this precise issue. During the impeachment of Judge Alcee Hastings in the late 1980s, though, a district court and both the House and Senate passed on the related question whether an acquittal in a criminal prosecution should bar an impeachment trial for the same offenses. Each of those bodies concluded that the Constitution permits an official to be tried by the Senate for offenses of which he has been acquitted in the courts. Although we recognize that there are reasonable arguments for the opposing view, on balance, and largely for some of the same structural reasons identified in the United States’s filing in the Agnew case and the 1973 OLC memorandum, we think the better view is that a former President may be prosecuted for crimes of which he was acquitted by the Senate. Our conclusion concerning the constitutional permissibility of indictment and trial following a Senate acquittal is of course distinct from the question whether an indictment should be brought in any particular case.
Snip - more at link above
It's the clear language of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 3) related to impeachment that has nothing to do with the Fifth Amendment prohibition against multiple prosecutions for the same crime.
1. It was written by a guy who is now a sitting judge on the D.C. Circuit, having been appointed by Barack Obama in 2014. Read through some of his written decisions over the last 9+ years. The guy has no credibility as a Federal judge to decide cases on the merits of the law instead of for political considerations.
2. The substance of his memorandum is flawed because he cites the U.S. Constitution extensively but acts as if history in the matter at hand began in 1973. I'm not interested in how it pertains to Richard Nixon (since he was never impeached in the first place, let alone acquitted). I'm interested in how the founders of this country would have viewed the question in the context of a legal system where the Federal courts had almost no role in criminal cases at all.
The irony of all this is that if you dig deep enough into this legal question, you may very well end up concluding that most of the U.S. Criminal Code is completely unconstitutional.
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