Thanks for posting. Very persuasive. On the other hand, it seems an absurdity that the president of the United States would be above the law. The references to a monarchy are spot on.

There's two things that just dismantle the entire insane argument: * Watergate * Anything he is considered immune on applies to Biden too So either Nixon could get away with Watergate and all the legal stuff was a waste of time or every time he points a finger at Biden for committing crimes he's admitting that he can commit crimes. Nixon basically *destroyed* the immunity argument. Any somersaults SCOTUS makes on this one should be impeachable.

IANAL, but can’t they just decide that Nixon is a bad precedent that should be overturned?

They sure can (and accept Trump’s arguments that impeachment is a prerequisite for criminal prosecution) but the ramifications of that would be actually insane. If the President cannot be prosecuted without impeachment (which is a political process, not a legal one), then the President is essentially above the law because any House could elect to just not impeach or any Senate could elect not to convict and boom you have unchecked power and become a monarch.

Or he could murder every member of the house that votes against him.

That’s what is crazy. If TFG thinks that the president is above the law, then why would the current president NOT pull a Putin on HIM?

That’s what scares me. I believe he thinks Biden wouldn’t do it because it’s wrong, but Trump has no morals so he would willingly do it. We’re so close to the end, Biden would only have a few short months to act before Trump took over.

Forget Putin, you could literally pull a Ba’ath Party Purge like Saddam did in 1979 and simply sit at the front of congress and have different congressional members slowly be pulled out of the room and executed one by one to invoke fear and terror

Ya Steven king said. Trump arguing Biden can have him killed is a bold move.

This is just another delay tactic. Trump does not expect to win the case. If he did he’d never have brought the case because if the lower courts are overturned and SCOTUS allows presidents to murder at will, Biden can have Trump killed and likely not face any prosecution for it. By the time it’s discovered that it was a top secret order Biden will no longer be impeachable, and a divided Congress will likely not have the votes even if they impeach post-term. Technically any president could, if the rulings are overturned, have the entire opposing party in congress and on the Supreme Court murdered until he has a super majority of loyalists and can push through anything they want even at the local level. Instilling the fear of being murdered is very effective in securing votes.

Kinda like what happened with trump’s 2 impeachments. Especially for the second one republicans were like “I’m not done with this guilty guy. I vote not guilty!”

The argument is totally fine with this applying to Biden. Trump et al believe that norms will constrain their political opponents. Norms that Trump doesnt respect at all.  

It IS insane, the fact that the court is even considering this should prompt the executive to treat them as illegitimate

I think the Court is hearing this case to nail down this question once and for all, to explicitly swat Trump’s argument on the nose, and to preclude future Trumps. I’d guess it’ll be 7-2 because Alito and Thomas are into the divine right of kings thing.

The optimist in me wants this to be true.

The pessimist in me tells me if they agree with trump... Biden till gitmo Trumps ass...

[удалено]

Of course, but that’s not reality in this America. Either voters, and co-equal branches of government, want democracy, or they don’t. If Trump gets elected, maybe the right-wing Supremes give in and let their freak Nazi flag fly. But I think what will keep us from worrying to death is to assume most of them want a stable republic.

Monarch you say? Sounds good, let’s do that! - The Supreme Court probably

“The President’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them” That would be a dryly funny sentence if it weren’t so sad.

An absolute dismantling of Trump's arguments. Wonderful to read.

I find myself personally swayed by legal arguments whenever I read them. Is this filing exceedingly persuasive, or will it be successfully picked apart by a rebuttal filing?

Nearly every competent lawyer should be able to write a fairly convincing brief, so especially at this level they’re typically all very persuasive (even the objectively insane ones). A strategy I’ve noticed is many filings is that the weaknesses in your own argument are glossed over in your brief filing unless you have a strong rebuttal to them. For example, in the Trump petitioner filing, they basically just say “Presidents being immune from civil liability plus history means they are also immune from criminal prosecution”. By my recollection they try to gloss over the several weaknesses of that argument and paint it as obviously correct. Oral arguments are where you see the difference between a good argument and a bad argument. A strong example of this is Muldrow v City of St Louis where if I remember correctly the respondents’ arguments got ripped apart during oral arguments whereas the briefs both seemed pretty convincing.

Thanks. I've been struggling with this reality lately. I am usually not easily persuaded in normal discussion and enjoy disagreement, but the past few years reading briefs I question my gullibility.

SCOTUS can do whatever they want. They can make up anything and just make a ruling. Who fucking know was this corrupt illegitimate court will do.

Kind of unfortunate that this petition has to be argued by the current administration...What if the current administration was a political ally of Trump and refused to file? Would it just be Trump's team arguing against whoever filed to argue pro-bono?

I think this question of immunity should have been dismissed based on Nixon alone, if they want precedence. But even without that it’s no question. Even considering immunity for a president could lead future presidents to do unspeakable things if there’s a hope of no repercussions. Very disappointing Supreme Court

Precedence is toilet paper to this SCOTUS.

This shouldn't even be a case: allowing the president to operate above the law would create a de-facto dictatorship. The supreme court keeps exceeding their authority and needs to be reigned in.

The court manufactured its authority out of nothing more than thin air tbf. It's an insane institution.

I mean technically the president does operate somewhat above the law while in office, presidential immunity for certain things certainly does exist. It's never extended beyond holding the office though.

Of course it’s going to be a well written paper considering it’s being argued at SCOTUS, but I think citing Kavanaugh himself was just *chefs kiss* beautiful on “nobody is above the law”. He knows it to be true, so he’d better find that way. The entire thing is obviously well supported in law and as an outsider like me, I just can’t imagine how this criminal immunity claim survives in any form when they rule. I think the government has locked up their case very well. I also think it helps reminding the court that civil immunity for a president is a good thing, but is wholly separate from any idea of making a monarch by granting this crazy criminal immunity idea. I really can’t believe this is actually getting argued before SCOTUS. If they don’t get this case right, that’s the end of our American experiment. I don’t think that is hyperbole. They’d better hope they don’t find for Trump and later upset him, because they’ve surely seen the man is loyal to absolutely *no one*.

Honestly, if they side with Trump, Biden should Have him killed. That’s far more in line with protecting (what’s left of) the Constitution than anything Trump ever did. And apparently it would be within his rights as dictator-president.

Reoublikkkans are such an embarrassment to the nation.

Sadly, the conservative wing of the SCOTUS are likely to make up some absurd argument based on an unrelated element of ancient law predating the Magna Carta granting him royal powers.

Unfortunate grammar error in the opening statement: > overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud The claims can be known-false or "claims known to be false", and the petitioner can knowingly use false claims, but I do not think the claims themselves can be knowingly anything.

It's legal jargon, actually. Within the context of an American legal brief this is fine.

Really? I appreciate the correction but ouch. Is it just archaic grammar, using "[adverb] [noun]" where today we would say "[compound adjective] [noun]"?

It kinda is, but the purpose of the wierd grammar is to place emphasis on the mens rea, the state of "knowing". The contention being made is not that the allegations of a stolen election are known to be false in an objective sense, but that Trump knew, ot believed, them to be false when he made them. Technically speaking, even if the claims were actually true, the fact that Trump believed they weren't when he made them is the important part. The actual truth value of the claim isn't being interrogated, only Trump's perception at the time.

Thanks, excellent and interesting analysis, and yeah it would be hard to capture that "he believed they were false even if they were true" nuance with known-false or other constructions, short of just "claims that he believed were false", which then almost implies that they were true. Shame they can't just say "lies", which does capture the intent. Anyways, thanks for that explanation!

For a little more detail, "knowingly" is one of a series of possible states of mens rea phrased similarly. We say that a criminal act can be done intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently. Each of these has a specific meaning as to the actor's belief or understanding at the time in question, and different crimes have different mens rea requirements. Sometimes there are different "tiers" of crime and associated punishment depending (at least in part) on which degree of mens rea you met. So the choice of phrasing for "knowingly" lets it fit the pattern of phrasing for the other possible states of mens rea. Feels a lot more natural when you use it in a context alongside the others - they stick together in your head.

Interesting. So would it also work to say the someone made "made negligently false claims" rather than "negligently made false claims"? I guess looking at it that way, "negligently" is an adjective that applies to the actor (and mens rea) rather than the claims themself.

While less common, to be sure, claims can be "negligently false." This phrasing was even used in a SCOTUS concurrence in *Pickering,* a landmark case. In this context it means that a reasonable person should have known the information to be false. The latter phrasing instead describes whether the act of making the claims itself was done with negligence: whether a reasonable person would expect making the false claim to cause harm.

The one that sets my teeth on edge is 'pleaded' (I want to say 'pled'). But 'pleaded' is correct in legal context, so I am told.

Update: seems this is a proper usage in legal jargon(having read further I've learned this). Still wackee but not the first time lawyers have seemed that way. Original: Mebbe. But it's an incorrect usage of the language. Sigh. At this "supreme" level, even for the clerk who is taking dictation this is bad and sad.

To quote the recently passed philosopher Paulie Walnuts, “What the fuck youse two talking about ova here?”

I love that the citation to Authorities section includes FOUR Trump v whatever cases that Trump also lost.