The answer for the court is, as mentioned, decide this case on this set of facts for this defendant. If, in another two hundred years, we get someone as existentially frightening as Trump, deal with it then. American voters deserve to know if Trump is found innocent or guilty before they cast their vote.
Does Trump understand what he is putting the country through? Does he understand the damage he has done, and is still doing, to the country?
He doesn't because he is a SOCIOPATHIC narcissist - i.e. an abnormal individual who - by nature rather than choice - does not care about any other person except himself, and then, when physically forced to confront the damage he has caused (as is now happening in his trials) does not care or feel guilt about any of it. General John Kelly, his former Chief of Staff, got it right when he told us that Donald Trump is the most "damaged" person he has ever known.
Kristol and Egger:
"We’ll just say this: These are the sort of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situations a powerful and utterly self-centered demagogue puts a nation into. It’s bad for the country for its highest court to have to hold two noble goals—establishing a careful new legal standard for presidential prosecution going forward, holding Trump accountable now—in tension with one another. That Trump orchestrated this situation deliberately is just the latest reminder that, in his mind, American institutions exist only for him to exploit to his own selfish ends, no matter how much chaos he creates in doing so."
My feeling about "what about future presidents?" Well, let's worry about them when it happens. No president except Trump has been charged with crimes of insurrection. If a future president does something that someone thinks is criminal - they can go through the court system and, if the president feels it was within their official duties, they can argue that and juries can decide. Juries do that for police officers now without the Supreme Court needing to rule on police officer's immunity.
Apropos of nothing at all, I am disturbed that Biden said he would debate Trump. An insurrectionist is not fit to share the stage with the POTUS. He’s beneath the dignity and should not be given the platform. This is not a normal campaign. Debating Trump will be normalizing a decidedly abnormal candidate. Trump should be ostracized and shamed. In a sane world, he would be. But I suppose this week has proven that we aren’t in a sane world. So why not roll out the red carpet and play Haïl to the Chief when Trump walks on the stage? JFC.
So, George Conway posited: "... there could be abusive prosecutions if you had the wrong kind of president in the future."
The sky could fall, too; it's been predicted in song: "You will weep for the rocks and mountains -
When the stars begin to fall."
What defines "the wrong kind of president"? Justice Potter Stewart, asked to define obscenity, famously replied: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description .... But I know it when I see it."
We see "the wrong kind of president" among us now.
I'm unlettered - possess a degree in law do I not. I suspect that no law prevents, by itself, anyone from doing anything. The consequences likely to result by breaking a law are solely determinate in deterring anyone from doing something.
The Supreme Court have indicated their own perfidy by appearing to grant The False Prophet absolution from personal accountability for his crime - the crime of insurrection, which is identified in our Constitution by the 14th Amendment.
Of course, the same U.S. Supreme Court has written at least part of the 14th Amendment out of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has apparently constituted itself as the new Constitutional Convention to rewrite our Constitution without enabling legislation.
I have voted in every local, state, and federal election for which I was authorized since my 21st birthday. I served in the U.S. Navy for over 20 years, affirming my commitment to our nation and Constitution every four years. I taught and enforced civics and civility to each young man who joined a Boy Scout troop that I served as Scoutmaster for a period of 13 years.
Now, I not only regret my service, I'm ashamed to have served. Not that that means anything any longer.
Some awful both-sidesism from Mr. Kristol today.... there is no leveling the field between the authoritarian movement of the orange one which is "conservatism" today and the mostly mainstream democratic party... I'd argue the tiny minority of the anti-Israel factions fit more in with the dotard and his rascist/fascist idiots....
That's been my question. Or just imprison him in some overseas secret location for telling Johnson to NOT let the Congress vote on the Border bill. That surely is his right since his ability to control the border is being being prevented by Trump.
There is no both sides here, I'm sorry. Trying to get fake electors to steal an election, pressuring secretary of states to find votes, large crowds storming the Capitol in order to kill Democratic senators is not the same thing as people who support Palestine who are protesting on several campuses. Are there protesters trying to attack the Senate and the Congress? Is Biden urging people to march with guns to scare people? These are things that right wing mobs are doing. And their god and savior is a spoiled baby who imagines he's a mob boss and wants to be dictator. I'm sorry. No both sides here.
I agree that liberalism has stagnated intellectually to a sorry extent. I have also argued many times on my site that authentic conservatism is not, after all, dead, for the Democratic Party has become the conservative party. Consider its principal works of the last few decades, as the GOP has gone nuts. Democrats have labored to conserve; partial list: to conserve what President Eisenhower preemptively defined as untouchable tradition — Social Security; to conserve Medicare as it's structured; to conserve the rule of law; to conserve all the American institutions under assault by pseudoconservatives, as Richard Hofstadter was already labeling them in the 1960s. Grieve not for the death of conservatism. It's alive and well — in the "liberal" Democratic Party. (I've had few takers regarding this thesis, chiefly because mostly Democrats read my site and Democrats care not to be called "conservatives." But I deal in reality, not wishes.)
The thing I can't get over is why one of the justices did not ask Trump's attorney - with all the assassination-of-political-rivals talk (gyah - really!?) - "So, if I hear you correctly, your position is that Joe Biden could have your client assassinated and that would be an official, presidential act for which he would enjoy absolute immunity - do I understand your position correctly?"
I never took George Conway to be naive, but I can't blame him: working your entire life in the American legal system it is surely disturbing to unconsciously realize that there is no rule of law in the United States anymore.
I'm a litigator myself (thankfully in Canada), and Conway's general statement that questions from jurists don't necessarily telegraph the ultimate conclusion they will reach, is absolutely correct. That being said, in my experience (18.5 years of practice) there's a pretty damn strong correlation between questions asked and conclusions reached.
But that's not really my point. With this SCOTUS that is stacked 6-3 by brazenly Republican partisan Justices, any lawyer who has been paying attention should know damn well that the questions asked by the Republican Justices in particular will tell you with 100% accuracy, the ultimate result they'll reach in contentious cases. Hell, this SCOTUS rewrites the factual findings of the trial judges (not something appellate jurists are supposed to do) to support their twisted legal reasoning.
Dobbs really should have taught Conway that lesson as a starting point of the abuses to basic jurisprudence that the current SCOTUS Republican super-majority will sow.
I mean, come on. The Republican SCOTUS majority isn't even trying to hide the fact that they are in the tank for Trump in the next election cycle. Trump's SCOTUS, which has bent over backwards to fast-track decisions beneficial to Trump, coincidentally just happened to deny cert. on this same issue for months, until it became helpful to Trump to hear the appeal as a delay tactic.
Furthermore, up until the oral arguments this week, 99.9999% of legal scholars thought that the immunity argument was a joke--a completely ludicrous argument.
I'm shocked that Conway wasn't himself SHOCKED by the clear malfeasance revealed in the Republican SCOTUS' majority tactics in this case.
As the piece recognized, Trump is clearly going to win this case, no matter what. As noted, SCOTUS isn't going to hold that Trump has absolute immunity. But the majority is going to issue a ruling intended to delay the proceedings as long as possible so that Trump doesn't face a verdict prior to the election.
I mean for fuck's sakes, Kavanaugh who worked with Starr to prosecute Bill Clinton, is now claiming that the (now defunct) special prosecutor statute that he himself exploited, was a step too far.
Also, are you kidding me? Trump's lawyer literally submitted to the highest court in the land, without hesitation, that Trump ordering the assassination of a political rival could be an "official act" entitling him to legal immunity in unspecified circumstances. That's absolutely insane. In any other common law country in the world, all 9 Justices would have eviscerated counsel for that answer. Not in 'Merica though.
Trump isn't even trying to hide what's going to happen if he wins the election. He's going to fire everyone in the Justice Department who isn't loyal to Trump personally, so he will never face a jury for literally attempting a coup.
George Conway needs to come to terms with the fact that SCOTUS is now a wing of the Republican party. And he should probably travel more and shit. This stuff isn't remotely normal in countries that aren't authoritarian states.
Also, he should probably start looking into emigrating elsewhere prior to the next Presidential inauguration. If Trump wins, all bets are off on what he will do to his vocal critics. Conway needs to have an exit strategy.
Sadly, he won't plan ahead. It's simply inconceivable to his types (American, privileged) to ever envision a world where the U.S. goes full fascist.
“In the political arena, with a few exceptions, one doesn’t feel that today’s liberalism features a whole lot in the way of a spirit of experimentation and fresh thinking. Instead it seems all too often an exhausted and exhausting attempt to drag every liberal agenda item of the last several decades across some imaginary finish line.”
This is what happens when one does not have a functioning opposition. See my earlier comment about conservatism having “become” what it is now. Good faith debate and compromise — small r republicanism - is how it’s supposed to work. If you have to spend all your time clearing hurdles just to get any piece of legislation and governance done, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy or space for new ideas for experimentation and fresh thinking. The radical knee-jerk behavior of one party affects everything.
All this specious "official versus private" acts hair-splitting begins with the assumption that a President, once in office, can perform illegal acts, something which would be punished if done by a "normal" person, and no one can ever legally, criminally punish him for it. If you hold to the principle that no one is above the law, then that position is poppy-cock (to be polite about it).
Seems like a pretty bright line: What would be a crime for John Q. Public, is also a crime for a person who for a limited period of time occupies a mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Somehow, I bet George, Tom, Abe and most of the other occupants of the position would have said, right on.
“Accordingly, originalism in the courts has become sophism. A real case for democratic capitalism has become the mere defense of oligarchic power and economic privilege. A necessary critique of mindless progressivism has become hostility to anything emerging from any liberal precinct, reasonable or not. A mostly healthy fighting spirit has become a partisanship that knows no bounds and that acknowledges no enemies to the right.”
Become? This has been true for much of my adult life. Just noticing it now? Sorry, I’m in my early 60s - maybe the only thing to thank Trumpism for is that it forces conservatives to pay attention to what liberals have been saying for years.
“What is the line between a president acting in his capacity as president and acting in his capacity as a candidate or private citizen? And could it be true—as Trump’s lawyers have argued—that opening up too broad a swath of presidential actions to post-presidency prosecution could hamper a president’s ability to run the country effectively?”
Of course it’s true but we’ve managed without it SC interference thus far, and will manage without SC interference in the future if we treat a case that is a historical aberration as the individual instance that it is and rule on it alone. We can deal with any future cases, if any, as they arise.
The Court’s granting of immunity in the past where none was given has already proven to be an unmitigated disaster and curtailing of Constitutional rights to redress. The majority is supposed to be conservative - they should remind themselves to leave well enough alone.
I probably agree with George Conway but my concerns boil down to a SC judicial ruling that time has already shown to be a disaster: Qualified Immunity for police. We should - as the originalists and textualists always remind us - stop making up things that no one at the dawn of this democratic republic contemplated. Where no immunity exists, none should be made up. Cases can proceed or be dismissed on a case by case basis as every other case does, where criminal and civil law is concerned. There is nothing worse than a law that effectively gives a free pass to state actors or state violence.
The answer for the court is, as mentioned, decide this case on this set of facts for this defendant. If, in another two hundred years, we get someone as existentially frightening as Trump, deal with it then. American voters deserve to know if Trump is found innocent or guilty before they cast their vote.
Does Trump understand what he is putting the country through? Does he understand the damage he has done, and is still doing, to the country?
He doesn't because he is a SOCIOPATHIC narcissist - i.e. an abnormal individual who - by nature rather than choice - does not care about any other person except himself, and then, when physically forced to confront the damage he has caused (as is now happening in his trials) does not care or feel guilt about any of it. General John Kelly, his former Chief of Staff, got it right when he told us that Donald Trump is the most "damaged" person he has ever known.
Kristol and Egger:
"We’ll just say this: These are the sort of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situations a powerful and utterly self-centered demagogue puts a nation into. It’s bad for the country for its highest court to have to hold two noble goals—establishing a careful new legal standard for presidential prosecution going forward, holding Trump accountable now—in tension with one another. That Trump orchestrated this situation deliberately is just the latest reminder that, in his mind, American institutions exist only for him to exploit to his own selfish ends, no matter how much chaos he creates in doing so."
Indeed.
My feeling about "what about future presidents?" Well, let's worry about them when it happens. No president except Trump has been charged with crimes of insurrection. If a future president does something that someone thinks is criminal - they can go through the court system and, if the president feels it was within their official duties, they can argue that and juries can decide. Juries do that for police officers now without the Supreme Court needing to rule on police officer's immunity.
Apropos of nothing at all, I am disturbed that Biden said he would debate Trump. An insurrectionist is not fit to share the stage with the POTUS. He’s beneath the dignity and should not be given the platform. This is not a normal campaign. Debating Trump will be normalizing a decidedly abnormal candidate. Trump should be ostracized and shamed. In a sane world, he would be. But I suppose this week has proven that we aren’t in a sane world. So why not roll out the red carpet and play Haïl to the Chief when Trump walks on the stage? JFC.
So, George Conway posited: "... there could be abusive prosecutions if you had the wrong kind of president in the future."
The sky could fall, too; it's been predicted in song: "You will weep for the rocks and mountains -
When the stars begin to fall."
What defines "the wrong kind of president"? Justice Potter Stewart, asked to define obscenity, famously replied: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description .... But I know it when I see it."
We see "the wrong kind of president" among us now.
I'm unlettered - possess a degree in law do I not. I suspect that no law prevents, by itself, anyone from doing anything. The consequences likely to result by breaking a law are solely determinate in deterring anyone from doing something.
The Supreme Court have indicated their own perfidy by appearing to grant The False Prophet absolution from personal accountability for his crime - the crime of insurrection, which is identified in our Constitution by the 14th Amendment.
Of course, the same U.S. Supreme Court has written at least part of the 14th Amendment out of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has apparently constituted itself as the new Constitutional Convention to rewrite our Constitution without enabling legislation.
I have voted in every local, state, and federal election for which I was authorized since my 21st birthday. I served in the U.S. Navy for over 20 years, affirming my commitment to our nation and Constitution every four years. I taught and enforced civics and civility to each young man who joined a Boy Scout troop that I served as Scoutmaster for a period of 13 years.
Now, I not only regret my service, I'm ashamed to have served. Not that that means anything any longer.
Some awful both-sidesism from Mr. Kristol today.... there is no leveling the field between the authoritarian movement of the orange one which is "conservatism" today and the mostly mainstream democratic party... I'd argue the tiny minority of the anti-Israel factions fit more in with the dotard and his rascist/fascist idiots....
That's been my question. Or just imprison him in some overseas secret location for telling Johnson to NOT let the Congress vote on the Border bill. That surely is his right since his ability to control the border is being being prevented by Trump.
There is no both sides here, I'm sorry. Trying to get fake electors to steal an election, pressuring secretary of states to find votes, large crowds storming the Capitol in order to kill Democratic senators is not the same thing as people who support Palestine who are protesting on several campuses. Are there protesters trying to attack the Senate and the Congress? Is Biden urging people to march with guns to scare people? These are things that right wing mobs are doing. And their god and savior is a spoiled baby who imagines he's a mob boss and wants to be dictator. I'm sorry. No both sides here.
I agree that liberalism has stagnated intellectually to a sorry extent. I have also argued many times on my site that authentic conservatism is not, after all, dead, for the Democratic Party has become the conservative party. Consider its principal works of the last few decades, as the GOP has gone nuts. Democrats have labored to conserve; partial list: to conserve what President Eisenhower preemptively defined as untouchable tradition — Social Security; to conserve Medicare as it's structured; to conserve the rule of law; to conserve all the American institutions under assault by pseudoconservatives, as Richard Hofstadter was already labeling them in the 1960s. Grieve not for the death of conservatism. It's alive and well — in the "liberal" Democratic Party. (I've had few takers regarding this thesis, chiefly because mostly Democrats read my site and Democrats care not to be called "conservatives." But I deal in reality, not wishes.)
The thing I can't get over is why one of the justices did not ask Trump's attorney - with all the assassination-of-political-rivals talk (gyah - really!?) - "So, if I hear you correctly, your position is that Joe Biden could have your client assassinated and that would be an official, presidential act for which he would enjoy absolute immunity - do I understand your position correctly?"
I never took George Conway to be naive, but I can't blame him: working your entire life in the American legal system it is surely disturbing to unconsciously realize that there is no rule of law in the United States anymore.
I'm a litigator myself (thankfully in Canada), and Conway's general statement that questions from jurists don't necessarily telegraph the ultimate conclusion they will reach, is absolutely correct. That being said, in my experience (18.5 years of practice) there's a pretty damn strong correlation between questions asked and conclusions reached.
But that's not really my point. With this SCOTUS that is stacked 6-3 by brazenly Republican partisan Justices, any lawyer who has been paying attention should know damn well that the questions asked by the Republican Justices in particular will tell you with 100% accuracy, the ultimate result they'll reach in contentious cases. Hell, this SCOTUS rewrites the factual findings of the trial judges (not something appellate jurists are supposed to do) to support their twisted legal reasoning.
Dobbs really should have taught Conway that lesson as a starting point of the abuses to basic jurisprudence that the current SCOTUS Republican super-majority will sow.
I mean, come on. The Republican SCOTUS majority isn't even trying to hide the fact that they are in the tank for Trump in the next election cycle. Trump's SCOTUS, which has bent over backwards to fast-track decisions beneficial to Trump, coincidentally just happened to deny cert. on this same issue for months, until it became helpful to Trump to hear the appeal as a delay tactic.
Furthermore, up until the oral arguments this week, 99.9999% of legal scholars thought that the immunity argument was a joke--a completely ludicrous argument.
I'm shocked that Conway wasn't himself SHOCKED by the clear malfeasance revealed in the Republican SCOTUS' majority tactics in this case.
As the piece recognized, Trump is clearly going to win this case, no matter what. As noted, SCOTUS isn't going to hold that Trump has absolute immunity. But the majority is going to issue a ruling intended to delay the proceedings as long as possible so that Trump doesn't face a verdict prior to the election.
I mean for fuck's sakes, Kavanaugh who worked with Starr to prosecute Bill Clinton, is now claiming that the (now defunct) special prosecutor statute that he himself exploited, was a step too far.
Also, are you kidding me? Trump's lawyer literally submitted to the highest court in the land, without hesitation, that Trump ordering the assassination of a political rival could be an "official act" entitling him to legal immunity in unspecified circumstances. That's absolutely insane. In any other common law country in the world, all 9 Justices would have eviscerated counsel for that answer. Not in 'Merica though.
Trump isn't even trying to hide what's going to happen if he wins the election. He's going to fire everyone in the Justice Department who isn't loyal to Trump personally, so he will never face a jury for literally attempting a coup.
George Conway needs to come to terms with the fact that SCOTUS is now a wing of the Republican party. And he should probably travel more and shit. This stuff isn't remotely normal in countries that aren't authoritarian states.
Also, he should probably start looking into emigrating elsewhere prior to the next Presidential inauguration. If Trump wins, all bets are off on what he will do to his vocal critics. Conway needs to have an exit strategy.
Sadly, he won't plan ahead. It's simply inconceivable to his types (American, privileged) to ever envision a world where the U.S. goes full fascist.
“In the political arena, with a few exceptions, one doesn’t feel that today’s liberalism features a whole lot in the way of a spirit of experimentation and fresh thinking. Instead it seems all too often an exhausted and exhausting attempt to drag every liberal agenda item of the last several decades across some imaginary finish line.”
This is what happens when one does not have a functioning opposition. See my earlier comment about conservatism having “become” what it is now. Good faith debate and compromise — small r republicanism - is how it’s supposed to work. If you have to spend all your time clearing hurdles just to get any piece of legislation and governance done, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy or space for new ideas for experimentation and fresh thinking. The radical knee-jerk behavior of one party affects everything.
All this specious "official versus private" acts hair-splitting begins with the assumption that a President, once in office, can perform illegal acts, something which would be punished if done by a "normal" person, and no one can ever legally, criminally punish him for it. If you hold to the principle that no one is above the law, then that position is poppy-cock (to be polite about it).
Seems like a pretty bright line: What would be a crime for John Q. Public, is also a crime for a person who for a limited period of time occupies a mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Somehow, I bet George, Tom, Abe and most of the other occupants of the position would have said, right on.
“Accordingly, originalism in the courts has become sophism. A real case for democratic capitalism has become the mere defense of oligarchic power and economic privilege. A necessary critique of mindless progressivism has become hostility to anything emerging from any liberal precinct, reasonable or not. A mostly healthy fighting spirit has become a partisanship that knows no bounds and that acknowledges no enemies to the right.”
Become? This has been true for much of my adult life. Just noticing it now? Sorry, I’m in my early 60s - maybe the only thing to thank Trumpism for is that it forces conservatives to pay attention to what liberals have been saying for years.
“What is the line between a president acting in his capacity as president and acting in his capacity as a candidate or private citizen? And could it be true—as Trump’s lawyers have argued—that opening up too broad a swath of presidential actions to post-presidency prosecution could hamper a president’s ability to run the country effectively?”
Of course it’s true but we’ve managed without it SC interference thus far, and will manage without SC interference in the future if we treat a case that is a historical aberration as the individual instance that it is and rule on it alone. We can deal with any future cases, if any, as they arise.
The Court’s granting of immunity in the past where none was given has already proven to be an unmitigated disaster and curtailing of Constitutional rights to redress. The majority is supposed to be conservative - they should remind themselves to leave well enough alone.
I probably agree with George Conway but my concerns boil down to a SC judicial ruling that time has already shown to be a disaster: Qualified Immunity for police. We should - as the originalists and textualists always remind us - stop making up things that no one at the dawn of this democratic republic contemplated. Where no immunity exists, none should be made up. Cases can proceed or be dismissed on a case by case basis as every other case does, where criminal and civil law is concerned. There is nothing worse than a law that effectively gives a free pass to state actors or state violence.