Posted on 04/26/2024 1:14:51 PM PDT by Twotone
The lawyer representing special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asserted that the reason former President Donald Trump is the first president to face criminal charges is because his predecessors did not commit any crimes.
Department of Justice counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, went before the Supreme Court to argue presidents should not have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Dreeben suggested that no president until Trump has ever committed crimes when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned him about no other president having faced prosecutions.
“Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in various activity, coups or operations like Operation Mongoose, when I was a teenager, and yet there were no prosecutions,” Thomas said. “Why? If what you’re saying is right, it would seem that would have been ripe for criminal prosecution of someone.”
“So Justice Thomas, I think this is a central question,” Dreeben responded. “The reason why there have not been prior criminal prosecutions is that there were not crimes.”
The Supreme Court consented in February to hear Trump’s argument to dismiss his federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., based on presidential immunity. Trump was not permitted to attend the oral arguments as New York Judge Juan Merchan ordered him to remain at his trial regarding an alleged $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels.
“You raise the question about potential overseas taking of life and the Office of Legal Counsel has addressed this quite specifically,” Dreeben added. “There is a background principle of criminal law, called the public authority exception to liability, and it is read into federal law unless Congress takes specific action to oust it, which it never has done as far as I’m aware.”
Smith claimed in December that Trump’s immunity argument, if successful, would protect presidents who order the murder or framing of political opponents.
Trump’s attorney Dean John Sauer argued on Thursday that a president may have criminal immunity for staging a coup after a liberal justice presented him with a hypothetical.
DOJ aka Department of Jokers
We’ve certainly established that Obama set up assassinations of US citizens using drones. I guess murder isn’t a crime anymore.
Ya RIGHT!! - Like when Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broderick???
So that whole Watergate thing that Woodward and Bernstein have been dining on for years was much ado about nothing?
what a convenient answer.
LMAO
Biden did much WORSE with documents, but was deemed to old and feeble to stand trial!!!!
Sorta like those who order drone strikes on American citizens?
The stupid coming out of this moron is just ‘Fast and furious’, isn’t it?
From what I’ve been reading recently, it looks like Watergate was a total frame-up of Nixon. Lots of CIA involvement.
Biden himself should be under indictment for criminal behavior. I guess being Democrat gives him a pass.
My vote for the single stupidest testimony yesterday in an ocean of stupidity.
That was nearly one of the questions that SCOTUS hypothesized yesterday.
-PJ
I told you, I TOLD YOU! Dick Nixon was not a crook! Finally we have confirmation from the DOJ!
Golly! A Gaslighting Singularity!
No Truth can penetrate it’s event horizon...
That’s not what they were saying about Reagan. Pretty sure they would have indicted him over any # of bogus claims after he left office, if they could have.
Perjury - which is a felony.
And it was slam-dunk.
biden is proposing changes to the US Constitution
add the following phrase to the first 10 amendments
“except Trump or any other enemy of the state”
h/t kathy hochul
Clinton. Waco. Posse Comitatus Act. Direct violation.
No mention of the current President--Joe Biden--who is about to be Impeached for criminally selling his political influence for cash and knowingly participating in an illegal money-laundering scheme to distribute the hot cash among family members.
JFK possibly authorized the coup to overthrow of Vietnamese President Diem and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was unauthorized. While Nixon resigned because of the Watergate burglary, he was not subsequently prosecuted.
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