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As someone who thinks Trump shouldn't be barred from running, I think that's a terrible ruling because it basically says "Yes, he did all the things that would disqualify him but I'm not willing to actually stick my neck out and do it."
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Nov 18, 2023 15:12
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Morrow posted:As someone who thinks Trump shouldn't be barred from running, I think that's a terrible ruling because it basically says "Yes, he did all the things that would disqualify him but I'm not willing to actually stick my neck out and do it." Seems more of a "Guilty as all gently caress, but unfortunately some dipshit in 1866 didn't contemplate the President being a traitor so he's off on a technicality."
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Nov 18, 2023 16:10
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Morrow posted:As someone who thinks Trump shouldn't be barred from running, I think that's a terrible ruling because it basically says "Yes, he did all the things that would disqualify him but I'm not willing to actually stick my neck out and do it." IANAL but this sounds like the trial judge making a factual finding but leaving the interpretation of the law to higher courts
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Nov 18, 2023 16:32
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Gyges posted:Seems more of a "Guilty as all gently caress, but unfortunately some dipshit in 1866 didn't contemplate the President being a traitor so he's off on a technicality." They DID, they just gave that power to congress believing that anyone in that position would be honorable and moral about it so they left it to the impeachment process. Joke's on us.
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Nov 18, 2023 16:52
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Rust Martialis posted:If that's a correct interpretation of the Amendment I don't think it applies to the office of President at *all*? It's kind of weird that it doesn't bar someone from office for engaging in insurrection AT ALL, but, that is what it says.
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Nov 18, 2023 16:54
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OneEightHundred posted:It's kind of weird that it doesn't bar someone from office for engaging in insurrection AT ALL, but, that is what it says. Sure, treason and sedition are one thing. But doing that after you put your hand on a bible? Unacceptable.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:06
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Gyges posted:Seems more of a "Guilty as all gently caress, but unfortunately some dipshit in 1866 didn't contemplate the President being a traitor so he's off on a technicality." Is there even any other president since the amendment passed that had never been in any elected office or been a military officer?
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Nov 18, 2023 17:16
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Inferior Third Season posted:It's more that they probably didn't contemplate somebody becoming president who had never been a county dogcatcher or state comptroller or something first. Even if they thought of it, they maybe found it to be so improbable that they didn't think it worth muddying the text further. There has never been any other president in history, period, who was not previously an executive, legislative, or military officeholder.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:18
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Fuschia tude posted:There has never been any other president in history, period, who was not previously an executive, legislative, or military officeholder.  , Washington had sworn an oath to the Continental Army, which predates the ratification of the Constitution, and would not count. Similarly, Jefferson's oath to the Virginia House of Burgesses during the time of the Articles of Confederation...."
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Nov 18, 2023 17:27
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Fuschia tude posted:There has never been any other president in history, period, who was not previously an executive, legislative, or military officeholder. Herbert Hoover. He'd been Secretary of Commerce, but hadn't held any electoral position prior to becoming President.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:38
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Deteriorata posted:Herbert Hoover. He'd been Secretary of Commerce, but hadn't held any electoral position prior to becoming President. "This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, federal judges and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President." Hoover had to swear as an officer of the United States.
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Nov 18, 2023 17:52
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Deteriorata posted:Herbert Hoover. He'd been Secretary of Commerce, but hadn't held any electoral position prior to becoming President. Rust Martialis posted:"This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, federal judges and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President." Yes, I think cabinet secretary counts as an executive office by any reasonable definition of the term, even if it's not elected; military posts aren't either.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:18
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Is “the president is not an officer” one of those legal shortcuts like “corporations are people” where allowing it is easier than updating all the laws to say “person or corporation” or “all officers except the president”?
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Nov 18, 2023 19:39
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Tayter Swift posted:Trump can run in Colorado. The judge’s legal interpretation is particularly bizarre to me because in its efforts to avoid any interpretation of the 14th amendment it seems to assume the intent of its writers was to explicitly carve out an exception for insurrectionism for the office of the Presidency (which is not an executive office, obviously) and that, er, position alone? That feels like it’s on even shakier ground, actually? EDIT: Ah, I’ve since come to understand the “oath” subsection better upon re-reading that this ruling is based on. It still feels like absolute bullshit that the president isn’t considered to be an officer of the United States when the executive authority they delegate to officers is vested in them in the first place and constitutes a delegated sovereign power of the United States. But I am not a constitutional lawyer. Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 21:12
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Its a question that would have to be raised before the joint session of congress in a formal protest by both a house and senate member, as it concerns the (semi)privileged matter of certifying the election results and selecting the president. That is the only venue where the issue is germane. A simple majority vote requiring both bodies to vote that yes, the 14th amendment does apply in this case. Obviously unlikely to occur and succeed if trump is in position to win outside some very weird maps, though if you had a house R super-majority they could both have the cake and eat it by immediately overriding the disqualification. Its very much a "you and what army?" question to put to the courts one way or the other. You can kick it for lack of standing rather than reading the out of jurisdiction tea leaves. Basically, no one cares what a lower level state judge spits out.
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Nov 19, 2023 02:44
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haveblue posted:Is “the president is not an officer” one of those legal shortcuts like “corporations are people” where allowing it is easier than updating all the laws to say “person or corporation” or “all officers except the president”? The officers have to all report to someone. That guy’s the President. It isn’t a loophole or a bug, it’s the exact point of the system. The officers are who act on the Executive’s behalf.
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Nov 19, 2023 04:01
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Vahakyla posted:The officers have to all report to someone. That guy’s the President.
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Nov 19, 2023 06:33
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The President is basically the elected King. Everyone else works for him.
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Nov 19, 2023 07:03
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People were still getting used to the idea that treason *by* a King was conceptually possible.
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Nov 19, 2023 10:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:People were still getting used to the idea that treason *by* a King was conceptually possible. In 1866? Remember this one was post civil war
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Nov 19, 2023 12:47
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Generally speaking, officials are elected, officers are appointed. That's the distinction that's helped me in the past.
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Nov 19, 2023 12:50
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There's like this huge thing about the president appointing officers. And since the president cannot appoint themselves, it makes sense that they are not an officer.
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Nov 19, 2023 12:51
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Do I even need to ask about the many legal hurdles and competent lawyers needed (which trump lacks) for project 2025 to be implemented? The last time Trump tried to drain the swamp in 2017 most of his bullshit got clogged.
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Nov 19, 2023 20:54
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Grouchio posted:Do I even need to ask about the many legal hurdles and competent lawyers needed (which trump lacks) for project 2025 to be implemented? Yeah, but that's in part because Trump was overwhelmed and listened to insiders and appointed a bunch of established bureaucrats and statists who thought Trump's impulses were a bridge too far. If he's elected in 2024, he's likely to push harder for loyalists and fascists and outright seditionists like Chesebro and Clark. His team was already developing a questionaire to determine how loyal government employees were to his ideas. skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Nov 19, 2023 |
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Nov 19, 2023 22:30
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skeleton warrior posted:Yeah, but that's in part because Trump was overwhelmed and listened to insiders and appointed a bunch of established bureaucrats and statists who thought Trump's impulses were a bridge too far. Lol, ‘likely’. He’s not appointing anyone not fully committed to his, increasingly openly stated, agenda. It’s been reported that he previously required an oath of loyalty to serve, now it’s going to be straight up, “Do you accept the lord Trump as your god and savior?” And I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic.
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Nov 19, 2023 22:39
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It's not that it would be an administration filled with steel-trap legal minds who know tricks to get around the Constitution, it's that the whole of the Executive branch would be dedicated to imposing Trump's goals and vision, and he is now animated by a blazing hot need for vengeance against his enemies. It's not like Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr are stalwart defenders of American democracy, but they and others either had lines even they refused to cross or (more likely imo) they were simply willing to tell Trump "There is no legal way to implement this idea". If Trump's WH is instead united, it turns it into a battle between them and their allies in other branches/levels against everyone opposed to them. Personally I suspect there would still be far too much dysfunction, and far too much of it public, for Trump to really get things off the rails himself but the overall damage done to the structure of government, the number of civil servants supposedly to be fired (50k last I heard), and the ever greater frenzy of recrimination and infighting and general sclerosis would leave years of damage to try and fix even if the best administration in history succeeded Trump.
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Nov 20, 2023 09:25
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Trump would also be absolutely lionized by the knowledge, correct or not, that he will suffer no consequences for anything he does this time around. He will act as if he is invulnerable to the law in all circumstances. He didn't exactly step carefully the first time around, yes, but a second run will just be naked, outright fascism if he gets the chance.
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Nov 20, 2023 09:32
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The Bible posted:He didn't exactly step carefully the first time around, yes, but a second run will just be naked, outright fascism if he gets the chance. It's kind of impressive, I didn't think it was possible for the big wet one to go even more mask off but here we are.
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Nov 20, 2023 11:35
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Chutkan's gag order in front of the District Court today. Sauer (Trump's attorney) stumbles in to what I think is his most persuasive argument but abandons it almost immediately to return to the defense's theory that the constitution renders any restriction invalid. https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726611925872906401 to: https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726622424501039579 To give an IANAL paraphrase to the IANAL reporting: The judges are seeking Trump's perspective on how to handle the conflict between Trump's first amendment rights and his rights (and the public's rights) to a fair trial. They've come off their more ludicrous stance (that trial rights are exclusively for the defendant) but continue to argue there is no balancing to be done because the first amendment rights win out in any hypothetical conflict. As Justice noted repeatedly in their briefings,nthat would require a significant departure from controlling precedent. This does appear to be Trump's goal, which is one of the many frustrating aspects of his terrible counsel - and one where he may find himself unexpectedly surprised that SCOTUS can't find a majority to protect him while continuing to gently caress over defendants in general. If he wasn't so dead set on rejecting the validity of any balancing, the public record and arguments in those first tweets go a long way to getting him what he wants: Balancing means the speech restrictions are at some level permissible to secure a fair trial (the courts are pretty explicit on this point), so "does this effectively help secure a fair trial?" becomes a crucial question. Reasonably foreseeable witnesses are reasonably foreseeable to media figures and the general population, and it is well within the scope of normal punditry to discuss on the news, on social media, and in released statements all of the things Trump himself would be barred from saying: That the witness is a lying coward who'll say anything to protect himself from the deepstate, that she'll have no position in the Republican party ever again if she cooperates even a little with the Deranged Jack Smith, and that legions of Trump supporters will see his testimony against the president as a treasonous attack on Donald and their country and will respond by whatever means necessary to defend this nation. The Trump argument here could be (if they weren't so insistent on the inapplicablity of balancing) that nothing Trump says or does within the confines of his release conditions is going to be meaningfully more disruptive than the unquestionably permissible statements above being broadcast across Twitter, Fox, Newsmax, and other sources. Even Justice's most recent compelling argument (Shry threatening Chutkan) actually argues against Justice's interests here: she has repeatedly threatened public figures in the past, specifically based on cable news broadcasts. Instead of that - a ruling that would benefit future defendants by defanging burdensome but ultimately ineffective orders - Trump's lawyers seem set to earn a ruling that either says Trump specifically cannot be restricted or that even something as ineffective and burdensome as these restrictions are just fine. Neither outcome is good, and it's (again) why it was so exasperating to see Justice push such a recklessly broad order in their initial efforts.
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Nov 20, 2023 17:13
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That said, Trump's lawyers apparently have to be arguing for a trip to SCOTUS because this is untenable as a serious argument: https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726627985678287256 "A defendant cannot personally release the home addresses of jurors but if someone else has, there are no permissible limits on what he can say or do with that information beyond existing laws" is, like gratuitously attacking a law clerk, something no judge is going to tolerate. Justice continues to suggest that Chutkan's order was unnecessarily narrow and, I get that I'm on an island here, but it's challenging for me when Justice argues for diminishing defendants rights in all but the most constitutionally unambiguous scenarios. https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726631183830937889 If it can be handled in voir dire, etc, then the balancing test should be heavily weighted towards the speech rights. Almost overwhelmingly so. As with Trump's team though, Justice is arguing from a pretty fringe perspective on balancing and the judges are rightly skeptical. https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726632876798808108 Watch as Justice reverts back to the proposed order and not the one Chutkan actually filed. https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726633685712359662 https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726634050822291721 https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726634541132157013 https://twitter.com/Brandi_Buchman/status/1726634926119006380 It's disgraceful, I shudder to imagine how a standard of "you can't disparage or otherwise impugn the motives of trial participants by name" is going to play out under the Trump Justice department in front of Trump-appointed judges and using Justice's own logic in this case that the entire administration is considered a participant. E: Hearing is complete. Sauer was offered a rebuttal after Justice finished but seems to have correctly assessed they'd dug their own hole deeply enough Paracaidas fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 17:34
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The real issue is that Trump is committing active witness tampering and intimidation but charging him with it would cause even more difficulties than the gag order.
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Nov 20, 2023 18:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The real issue is that Trump is committing active witness tampering and intimidation but charging him with it would cause even more difficulties than the gag order. The remedy exists. Revoke his bail. It won’t cause any more problems than already exists. All it will do is bring it to the surface faster so it can be dealt with. Deplatforming Trump works and is effective.
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Nov 20, 2023 20:07
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I would really appreciate it if just one of these useless fucks would start treating this as the existential crisis that it is rather than a theoretical essay question on the bar exam. The only one who seems to have a sense of the stakes is Cannon and she’s on the wrong side (for which she will experience no repercussions no matter the outcome). The lives of everyone involved in prosecuting and judging these cases are in serious danger.
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Nov 20, 2023 20:52
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You tell ‘em!
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Nov 20, 2023 21:01
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pumpinglemma posted:I would really appreciate it if just one of these useless fucks would start treating this as the existential crisis that it is rather than a theoretical essay question on the bar exam. The only one who seems to have a sense of the stakes is Cannon and she’s on the wrong side (for which she will experience no repercussions no matter the outcome). The lives of everyone involved in prosecuting and judging these cases are in serious danger. The problem is that lawyers are awful and would rather get high on their own farts pontificating about bullshit than getting to the point or speaking in normal language.
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Nov 20, 2023 23:20
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If you don't say and do law stuff in magic law ways, the result isn't that you make a better and clearer case, the result is that you lose the case and also risk disbarment.
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Nov 20, 2023 23:58
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Do you think Jack Smith will try to get Judge Cannon removed from the case? It looks like she's postponing the documents trial which in effect is causing the other trials to be in limbo. I really hope they find a way to get rid of her.
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Nov 21, 2023 00:01
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Ms Adequate posted:If you don't say and do law stuff in magic law ways, the result isn't that you make a better and clearer case, the result is that you lose the case and also risk disbarment. That's a problem with lawyers as a class rather than just a specific lawyer.
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Nov 21, 2023 00:04
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Is there something I’m missing with the hearings about the DC case gag order? It seems like the actual objection is to the effect of the order on Trump’s political campaign. I feel like this idea that politicians (and possible other public figures?) benefit from a high standard of first amendment protection is a pretty dangerous one, given how many outright con men run for office to protect themselves already.
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Nov 21, 2023 00:12
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John Yossarian posted:Do you think Jack Smith will try to get Judge Cannon removed from the case? It looks like she's postponing the documents trial which in effect is causing the other trials to be in limbo. I really hope they find a way to get rid of her. No. He nearly certainly won't. Cannon likely has wide discretion to do all the things she's been doing. Cannon's fuckery is what you need to expect when you elect a person like Trump. The other trials are not going to be in limbo because of this, but there is a nonzero chance they're delayed past the election for independent reasons.
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Nov 21, 2023 01:00
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