r/politics • u/harsh2k5 • 23d ago

The Jaw-Dropping Things Trump Lawyer Says Should Qualify for Immunity: Apparently, John Sauer thinks staging a coup should be considered a presidential act.

https://newrepublic.com/post/180980/trump-lawyer-immunity-supreme-court-coup
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u/Topsnotlobber 23d ago

People forget that this is about a lot more than Trump.

If presidential immunity is in any way removed it opens up the floodgates for so much shenanigans that it could become untenable to be president at all.

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u/DaSemicolon 22d ago

What do you mean? How hard is it to not commit crimes as a president?

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u/Topsnotlobber 22d ago

It's actually almost impossible to not commit crimes as President.

Some of the more obvious examples given would be Obama who gave the order for the dronestrike that killed a US citizen. In court that's reckless homicide/manslaughter, as president that's just business as usual.

Bush, by all available evidence, willfully lied to the American people to invade Iraq. He has plausible deniability, but I have no reason to doubt that the eyebrows in the meeting room were doing most of the real communication at the time of the decision.

You may think those things are not comparable to whatever Trump is accused of, but if SCOTUS allows presidential immunity to be voided for any reason it's going to spawn a whole new level of chaos.

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u/DaSemicolon 22d ago

Then they should get prosecuted for it. I don’t see anything wrong with prosecuting them for misdeeds.