Trump’s Immune, Biden Too & The Significance of July 11th – Top 3 Takeaways – July 2nd, 2024
- BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN! Today’s top takeaway is the response of the former and perhaps future President of the United States to the presidential immunity ruling from the United States Supreme Court. If you knew nothing else about the way the ruling went, you’d know it was a ruling that broke Trump’s way. Right along the former president argued he should have had absolute immunity for his acts while President of the United States. The Supreme Court mostly agreed stating that a president does have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all official acts, cited in the ruling as “core constitutional powers”. Not only does this throw into question the validity of the outstanding charges against Donald Trump in the three outstanding criminal cases, but it also specifically kneecapped the most pressing and potentially problematic of the remaining three – Jack Smith’s January 6th related case. The Supreme Court didn’t just rule that a president has immunity for official acts, they specifically spoke to official acts called into question by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. Quoting the Court’s opinion: Whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct. Presiding over the January 6 certification proceeding at which Members of Congress count the electoral votes is a constitutional and statutory duty of the Vice President. The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct. The question then becomes whether that presumption of immunity is rebutted under the circumstances. It is the Government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity. The Court therefore remands to the District Court to assess in the first instance whether a prosecution involving Trump’s alleged attempts to influence the Vice President’s oversight of the certification proceeding would pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch. The indictment’s remaining allegations involve Trump’s interactions with persons outside the Executive Branch: state officials, private parties, and the general public. In particular, the indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to convince certain state officials that election fraud had tainted the popular vote count in their States, and thus electoral votes for Trump’s opponent needed to be changed to electoral votes for Trump. After Trump failed to convince those officials to alter their state processes, he and his coconspirators allegedly developed and effectuated a plan to submit fraudulent slates of Presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. As the Government sees it, however, Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to take such actions. Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations. The Court accordingly remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial. Regarding unofficial acts... as Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion: As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. In other words...
- Trump’s immune from his remaining prosecutions until proven otherwise. You’re familiar with the legal premise of presumed innocence. In the United States, unless you’re Donald Trump or an associate of his, you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. In the Supreme Court’s ruling a president is to be presumed to be immune from criminal prosecution due to the need to carry out officials acts without fear from political prosecution by political opponents. The ruling establishes a burden of proof by prosecutors to evidence that alleged criminal actions weren’t official acts but rather personal acts outside the scope of the presidency. Only then may a prosecution proceed on charges that clear that high legal hurdle. That’s now what Jack Smith must do in the January 6th related case, what Fanni Willis and the Atlanta prosecutorial team must do in the Georgia state case, and potentially also what Jack Smith might have to do to continue with his classified documents case as well – given that the classified documents confiscated from Mar-a-Lago made their way to Mar-a-Lago while Donald Trump was still president. In fact, there’s now even a question about whether Trump’s criminal conviction in his New York State case may have been improper. All of the payments made by Donald Trump for the Stormy Daniels NDA took place while he was already President of the United States. It might be a stretch to attempt to call those payments to his personal attorney Michael Cohen “official acts”, however you could certainly see where the Trump team might seek an appeal given that there’s a legal burden on the prosecution to evidence that presidential immunity doesn’t apply prior to bringing forward criminal charges in the case. What’s now essentially assured is that Jack Smith won’t be able to proceed with all of the charges brought against Trump as currently constructed and that the time to sort all of the legal challenges out will take much longer than the four months we have before Election Day. In fact, under official rules, the January 6th case won’t even “unfreeze” from the Supreme Court’s ruling for another 32 days unless the court waives that standard provision (which hasn’t happened yet). This all but ensures that there’s now only one date standing in the way of Election Day on November 5th for Donald Trump and that day comes in ten days...
- July 11th. That’s the date that Trump is set to be sentenced by New York Judge Juan Merchan. With all of the other lawfare efforts failing to take Trump down before the election what will Merchan do? Will the Biden donor judge who presided over a clearly partisan prosecution attempt to jail the former and increasingly likely next President of the United States in a final desperate act to stop him? One might imagine that team Trump is reviewing all legal options under yesterday’s immunity ruling to challenge the validity of the New York criminal case – and in fact we found out Monday night that they had been. The Trump legal team filed a letter with the judge (non-public) asserting the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity in an effort to attempt to overturn the guilty verdict in the case. The Trump team had tried to argue presidential immunity should have been considered with evidence that was used in the case. Judge Merchan rejected that argument – as he did just about all other considerations for the Trump legal team. It’s been a huge week of wins for Donald Trump from the debate stage to the campaign trail to the court room. Whatever does or doesn’t happen on July 11th is now the only remaining obstacle between him and the potential for the ultimate redemptive win on November 5th.