Comment on Trump Is Immune - Legal Eagle
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 months agoYeah sorry I don’t have a citation handy but I remember hearing interviews with constitutional law experts and scholars in the early days of the Trump presidency that are basically verbatim what I said in my first comment here: “It’s never been tested, but everyone assumes that if a case comes before Scotus, they will rule that the president is immune while carrying out the duties of the office”. All that’s happened recently is Scotus confirmed this assumption. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. Just that it is what most constitutional scholars thought would be the ruling.
It’s why most of the court cases he was battling during his presidency were for things unrelated to his presidency, like his Trump university scam or the Mar A Lago stuff.
voracitude@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Maybe you’re partially remembering the opinion (and it was just an opinion, not legal precedent) that a sitting President cannot be prosecuted for crimes? But the whole basis for that idea was that the proper remedy is impeachment to remove them from office, and upon being removed from office they can be tried for crimes by the DOJ (which they would no longer be the head of). This is what shielded Trump while he was in office, as his DOJ declined to prosecute him citing this logic as the reason.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Yeah that’s probably what I was thinking of. I didn’t realize it was specific to sitting presidents. But then again any criminal trial would be heavily dependant on who the next president is. Like this very well could have played out in the 80s except that Ford pardoned Nixon. I appreciate you helping to refresh my memory.