Donald Trump the Megathread part II - threadbans and mod warnings in OP

Buried in there is basically carte blanche for any President to weaponise the DOJ for their own political benefit.

Among many other protections and facilitations for the "Unitary Executive" - Basically , with this decision in place , Nixon could have told everyone to PFO and they couldn't have done anything about it. The tapes that did all the damage to him would be inadmissible according to this SCOTUS.

In the ruling, the court stated that “testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial,” referring to anything a president does as an “official” act.

Much of the evidence gathered against Trump in his January 6 trial, for example, relies on what he said to his advisers and to Vice President Mike Pence, as well as records that were kept on such discussions in the White House. It could also erase evidence of Trump speaking to lawmakers on the evening of January 6 to delay the certification of Biden’s victory.

According to the Supreme Court, all such evidence is now unusable, an interpretation that, fortunately for Trump, guts that case against him. 

As bad as that is however it pales in comparison to this little nugget.

The Justice Department will no longer be an independent authority on the law, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity case Monday. Instead, it will be an arm to be leveraged by the Oval Office, with open communication enabled between the federal law enforcement agency and the presidency for all future investigations.

Chief Justice John Roberts slipped the allowance into his majority opinion, as the justices ruled 6–3 in Trump’s favor along ideological lines. In a quiet sentence, Roberts argued that the fresh take on the executive branch relationship would help the president carry out his constitutional duties.

“The president may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’” Roberts wrote.

“And the Attorney General, as head of the Justice Department, acts as the President’s ‘chief law enforcement officer’ who ‘provides vital assistance to [him] in the performance of [his] constitutional duty to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,’” Roberts continued, citing a precedent from an immunity case argued for Cabinet members, Mitchell v. Forsyth.

This means that if Trump returns to office, he will have free rein to wield the Justice Department as he sees fit—and he and his allies have already given plenty of indications as to what they plan to do.

Autocracy , plain and simple.

The dissent is pretty damning saying that the decision gives the President almost unfettered immunity.

The point about the Nixon tapes is that no one would have ever heard them if this decision was in place at the time.

Nixon says " They cover official business, go pound sand" and there's virtually nothing that anyone could do. Any subpoena to compel him to give them to a House/Senate committee could be ignored and now with his ability to explicitly direct the DOJ he could simply get them squashed.

The viewpoint on their decision is pretty universally in agreement that this is terrible.

It's notable that none of the usual GOP legal mouthpieces have said a word about the decision because it's hard to spin it as anything other than making the office of President a near monarchy.

Trump has already gone back to the courts to have the hush money verdict overturned as he says that because he signed the dodgy paperwork to give Cohen the money after he was elected that means it was an "official act".

The DOJ does indeed operate under a particular political lens , but this ruling looks to give the President the ability to influence specific cases rather than policy.

So a President might have a zero tolerance policy on Drugs which is reflected in the way the DOJ approaches drugs cases, which is fine.

This ruling seems to say that a President can get involved in individual cases and be part of the decision making process to take specific action.

There's a massive difference between "I want you to be tough on Drug dealers" and " I want you to arrest John Smith and charge him with XYZ"