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Donald Trump Wins The Immunity Idol · Serious Trouble

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Josh Barrow back with another episode of Serious Trouble.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: This obviously is a really big week with the Supreme Court decision conferring
0:07
SPEAKER_00: pretty extensive immunity on presidents,
0:10
SPEAKER_00: including former President Trump,
0:11
SPEAKER_00: for their actions while in office.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: And it has big implications for all of the cases against Donald Trump.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: So for free subscribers,
0:19
SPEAKER_00: we have about a 19-minute episode this week that looks at the mechanics of the
0:22
SPEAKER_00: decision and what it means for the case before Judge Chutkan.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: For paying subscribers,
0:28
SPEAKER_00: we have a much more extensive episode,
0:29
SPEAKER_00: about 45 minutes,
0:30
SPEAKER_00: that looks at the effects on all the cases.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Also looks at another Supreme Court decision that somewhat narrows the statute on
0:36
SPEAKER_00: obstructing an official proceeding and how that matters for the January 6th prosecution.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: And we also look at some other things that have come out of the Supreme Court and
0:44
SPEAKER_00: some things that are happening down in Judge Cannon's courtroom.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And so if following these cases is something that's important to you and is
0:52
SPEAKER_00: obviously important to us here at Serious Trouble,
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I'd encourage you to go upgrade and become a paying subscriber and get that full discussion.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I think this is an important episode this week.
1:01
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1:39
SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Ken White.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's Josh Barrow.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: And this is Serious Trouble.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Ken,
1:44
SPEAKER_00: the Supreme Court term has ended,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: ended a little late,
1:47
SPEAKER_00: went on to July 1st,
1:49
SPEAKER_00: normally supposed to end in June.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And on the very last day,
1:52
SPEAKER_00: we got United States versus Trump,
1:53
SPEAKER_00: which is the decision on presidential immunity.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's a fairly confusing decision, among other things.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a little bit difficult to pick up the decision and figure out what its
2:04
SPEAKER_00: actual implications are.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: But the broad thing is that the president is immune from prosecution for certain
2:10
SPEAKER_00: core acts within his powers,
2:12
SPEAKER_00: and he's not immune for unofficial acts.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: And then there's stuff in the middle that's official but not core.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's very unclear whether and how you can prosecute a president for things in that bucket.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, first of all, is that right?
2:25
SPEAKER_00: And then what the hell does it mean?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: for all of these cases related to Donald Trump.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So, Josh, it is confusing.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: I would say intentionally so.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: And it is probably as bad a ruling as we could possibly have imagined.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: Far worse than most commentators expected.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: Recall that most commentators thought that a lot of these immunity arguments were bogus.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: That the court didn't seem with,
2:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:50
SPEAKER_01: the exception of Alito and Thomas,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: of course,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: to be that enthused about them.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: And that likely what the court was going to do is just help Trump by delaying things,
2:59
SPEAKER_01: possibly announcing an impossible for Trump to reach standard that would have to be
3:03
SPEAKER_01: applied by the lower courts that delay things.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the delay from this process.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: This decision is pretty shocking.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Over the years,
3:11
SPEAKER_01: it's been my role to be sort of the,
3:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:14
SPEAKER_01: don't be so worried,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: or this really isn't as bad as the media portrays it,
3:18
SPEAKER_01: or people are overstating how bad this is.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And I really can't play that role here.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: This is a catastrophically bad decision by the United States Supreme Court, it thinks.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: And the bottom line is,
3:29
SPEAKER_01: I think it makes it functionally impossible to reliably prosecute a former president,
3:34
SPEAKER_01: particularly Trump.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: So even if it doesn't give absolute immunity on its face for crimes committed while president,
3:44
SPEAKER_01: it comes so close that it basically makes no difference that it doesn't.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: So I guess let's talk about a couple of the categories here.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, the core acts of core presidential powers.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for a power to be a core power?
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, these are things that they refer to as being part of conclusive and preclusive powers.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: The implication seems to be that these are powers that are specifically enumerated
4:09
SPEAKER_01: in the Constitution given to the president,
4:12
SPEAKER_01: to the president's sole discretion.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: So the pardon power is an example of that.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: So they say pretty clearly that the president cannot be prosecuted for exercise of the pardon power.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's something we discussed as a plausible reading of something that they might come up with.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: The problem is they do not really give you the definition you're looking for,
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Josh,
4:34
SPEAKER_01: about what a core power is.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: or conclusive and preclusive power is, because they name at least one other and they apply it.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: And that's the power to fire lower level executive officials.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: So they infer that really from the language.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And so they say that, for instance, in Trump's case, we can say right now that to the extent this D.C.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: indictment talks about Trump trying to get the Justice Department to start
5:04
SPEAKER_01: knowingly bogus fraud investigations into the election,
5:08
SPEAKER_01: that he is absolutely immune from that because he's absolutely immune from
5:13
SPEAKER_01: threatening to fire a lower level Department of Justice person.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: And also because criminal prosecutions or investigations are uniquely part of the
5:21
SPEAKER_01: executive branch,
5:23
SPEAKER_01: he's absolutely immune from directing those.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: So the thing is that we know there's this category, but we do not have a confident read
5:31
SPEAKER_01: on how broad it is and what powers they may decide fall into it.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: And so you have that aspect of the charges against Trump,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: which the Supreme Court throws out,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: saying that that's within the court powers.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: There are various other aspects that they remand to the trial court,
5:44
SPEAKER_00: to Judge Chutkan,
5:45
SPEAKER_00: basically saying to her,
5:46
SPEAKER_00: pick up this confusing decision and figure out what it means about this case and
5:50
SPEAKER_00: what Trump can and cannot actually be prosecuted about here.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: And so I guess,
5:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
5:55
SPEAKER_00: the the conceit of the justices and also of Justice Barrett,
5:58
SPEAKER_00: who concurred in part with this decision,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: she would have had a somewhat narrower construction of presidential immunity,
6:04
SPEAKER_00: although it still would have created quite a large scope of immunity.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: But their conceit is that this doesn't preclude prosecutions even have a footnote from Justice Barrett.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: saying that the president's alleged attempt to organize alternative slates of electors,
6:17
SPEAKER_00: in her view,
6:18
SPEAKER_00: is private conduct and therefore not entitled to protection.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's not something where,
6:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:23
SPEAKER_00: you say it's an official act and you have to figure out this complex standard of
6:26
SPEAKER_00: when you can be prosecuted for an official but non-core act.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: She's saying there that's the sort of thing that's a private act.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Can the trial court just pick up some aspects of this prosecution and say,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: these things are private,
6:39
SPEAKER_00: therefore they are prosecutable?
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And is that something that might survive appellate review?
6:44
SPEAKER_01: No.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: You calling it a conceit, I think, is fair and well taken.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: The suggestion that this leaves plausible grounds for prosecution open, I think, is highly questionable.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: So the next category they talk about is official acts.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: And they say that as to this category,
7:02
SPEAKER_01: things that are part of the president's job,
7:06
SPEAKER_01: there is at least a presumption of immunity.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the parts where I think it's nearly incomprehensible.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: They say we don't have to decide now whether or not that
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Immunity is absolute, but at the least it's a presumption of immunity for things that are official acts.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: If they decide it's a presumption,
7:27
SPEAKER_01: they'd say to overcome that presumption,
7:28
SPEAKER_01: the prosecutor would have to show that prosecuting this poses no danger of
7:33
SPEAKER_01: intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: which first of all means God knows what,
7:39
SPEAKER_01: and second of all seems like a very ambiguous,
7:42
SPEAKER_01: easy for the court to do whatever it wants with standard.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Moreover,
7:47
SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court does not do a good job,
7:49
SPEAKER_01: and I don't think intends to do a good job,
7:51
SPEAKER_01: of defining the boundaries of official versus non-official acts.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: And they more or less say they can't because the record isn't well-developed,
7:59
SPEAKER_01: which is not an argument that makes a lot of sense to me,
8:01
SPEAKER_01: but that's what they say.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: So they say the president has these very broad powers.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: For instance,
8:07
SPEAKER_01: absolutely the president can talk to and encourage the vice president,
8:11
SPEAKER_01: which may mean that him trying to coerce Pence is within his official powers.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: President can absolutely have broad powers to talk to
8:21
SPEAKER_01: to the American people, which may well mean that the speech on January 6th is within his broad powers.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: The president doesn't necessarily have a power related to campaigning,
8:32
SPEAKER_01: but the president does have broad powers to talk to state officials.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: So we don't really know whether,
8:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:38
SPEAKER_01: trying to coerce Georgia officials and that sort of thing,
8:41
SPEAKER_01: whether or not that's within the official act's power.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: And if it is, we don't know whether or not that is absolute yet.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: You're all gonna have to figure it out.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: So that makes it very difficult.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And they leave this residual category of unofficial acts.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: But the determination of what could be in that category is,
9:01
SPEAKER_01: at this point,
9:02
SPEAKER_01: so without guideposts,
9:04
SPEAKER_01: so vague,
9:06
SPEAKER_01: that I think it's really hard to confidently say that anything can be put into it.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: And there are two key factors beyond that that make it very difficult that we should talk about.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: So what you described there,
9:18
SPEAKER_00: that basically they say that these official acts,
9:20
SPEAKER_00: they are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity and the court doesn't
9:25
SPEAKER_00: decide because they say they don't have to decide at this time whether there's an
9:28
SPEAKER_00: absolute immunity.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make sense to me because they are remanding this to a lower court to
9:33
SPEAKER_00: apply their standards,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: but they're not telling the lower court what those standards are.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it creates this possibility where Judge Shutkin is going to go through this analysis where.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: where she finds that certain acts are official and she,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: weighs the concerns that are laid out in here about constraining the actions of
9:48
SPEAKER_00: future presidents and determines that certain things are prosecutable.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: And one possible outcome is you end up back at the Supreme Court and they say,
9:55
SPEAKER_00: well,
9:55
SPEAKER_00: now that you've required us to think about it,
9:57
SPEAKER_00: we've made this decision and there is absolute immunity.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: It seems weird to me to send a test down to the lower court and effectively not
10:04
SPEAKER_00: tell them what the test is.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: That's a key aspect of the test you're leaving out.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm wondering about why the court might do that.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Is that a sign that there weren't five votes to say something specific there,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: that there wasn't a five justice majority to say that the absolute immunity
10:18
SPEAKER_00: extended to all the official acts,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: but there also wasn't a five justice majority to say that it didn't extend and
10:24
SPEAKER_00: here's the more specific test you should actually use?
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Josh, I don't think anything in this opinion justifies giving a charitable view to it.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: So it really seems almost as if it's designed to make it functionally impossible to
10:38
SPEAKER_01: carry through a prosecution.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: It's certainly impossible to convict Trump of anything before the election.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: And frankly, it kicks the can so far down the road that I don't even know if he gets elected.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: He needs to pardon himself.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: He could just let it play out for the next two to three years.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: Because as you say, there's almost no guideposts.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: But there's two crucial things we haven't gotten to yet that play into making it
11:01
SPEAKER_01: almost impossible,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: if not impossible,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: to prosecute someone for what they did as president.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: And that is the Supreme Court's decision,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: five to four on this point,
11:11
SPEAKER_01: that no evidence of presidential acts can be used in a prosecution of unofficial acts.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: so you've got this category of official acts and this other category of core acts
11:25
SPEAKER_01: right and they're protected what the court says is oh and by the way you can't use
11:31
SPEAKER_01: those as evidence in your prosecution of in your prosecution of the president for
11:37
SPEAKER_01: unofficial acts
11:39
SPEAKER_01: So even though normally the rule is that you can use otherwise inadmissible
11:44
SPEAKER_01: evidence to show intent or knowledge,
11:48
SPEAKER_01: that type of thing,
11:49
SPEAKER_01: here the idea would be that if Trump's discussion with the Justice Department,
11:53
SPEAKER_01: telling them to start these false investigations that he knows are false,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: is an official act,
11:58
SPEAKER_01: then you can't mention that in the trial of him for trying to get state officials
12:05
SPEAKER_01: to fabricate evidence,
12:07
SPEAKER_01: if that turns out to be an unofficial act,
12:09
SPEAKER_01: which it isn't necessarily.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: So it's a little like the speech and debate rule we've talked about before, where you can't even mention
12:16
SPEAKER_01: And that makes it so much harder if you cannot put out the context and the evidence
12:22
SPEAKER_01: of the president doing things that shows what his intent and knowledge is in
12:27
SPEAKER_01: connection with prosecuting the non-official acts.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Why is that specifically an important barrier here?
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
12:32
SPEAKER_00: we've talked about similar issues in the Senator Menendez trial and having to do
12:37
SPEAKER_00: with bribery and that basically if you can't introduce evidence of the official
12:42
SPEAKER_00: acts that were undertaken in exchange for the bribe,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: it makes it very difficult to prove bribery.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: But I'm trying to think about,
12:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:48
SPEAKER_00: exactly how that would work as a practical matter in the case before Judge Chuck and,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: for example,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: that,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: if the if you're prosecuting Donald Trump for organizing slates of fake electors,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: for getting people to go and,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: make fraudulent statements and issue fraudulent documents.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: claiming to be electors from states where they were not the duly elected electors.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Why would you need evidence of his official acts in order to prove that he had done
13:13
SPEAKER_00: that and that it had been,
13:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:15
SPEAKER_00: that that was,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: a conspiracy to commit,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: those the various crimes described there?
13:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, because you need to prove what his knowledge was and what his intent was in doing this.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: So you can't introduce any evidence of what he told the Justice Department.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can't introduce any evidence of what he tried to do with Vice President Pence.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: You can't introduce any evidence of...
13:39
SPEAKER_01: public statements to the extent that you determine that those are official acts.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: And the court makes it very clear that in going through this evidence,
13:48
SPEAKER_01: you have to parse down each and every separate act,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: each communication,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: really down to each email or phone call,
13:55
SPEAKER_01: to say whether or not that in the entire context was or wasn't part of an official act.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: So to the extent it is, you can't introduce it.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And to the extent there's any ambiguity about it,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: about whether or not it's official act,
14:09
SPEAKER_01: then if you introduce it,
14:10
SPEAKER_01: you risk tanking a conviction.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: So it makes it functionally impossible.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: You know,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: the analogy I thought of yesterday is if on the first day of his new term,
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Trump goes in and tells the Justice Department,
14:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:21
SPEAKER_01: I want to deport all Muslims.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: I think they should.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: They're, you know, terrible, bad people.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: I think they should be kicked out of the country.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't like them.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: I want to kill them.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: And then the next day he calls Mar-a-Lago and tells his manager to kill Mohammed,
14:34
SPEAKER_01: the guy who works in the kitchen.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't be able to introduce the call to the DOJ denigrating Muslims into the
14:41
SPEAKER_01: prosecution of him for trying to have Mohammed killed.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And you couldn't mention it at all.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: very broad.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it gets worse.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: The other thing they say is that in making the determination of whether or not
14:55
SPEAKER_01: something is an official act,
14:57
SPEAKER_01: you cannot look at the motive for that thing.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: So in other words,
15:01
SPEAKER_01: in deciding whether or not a call to the Secretary of State of Georgia is an
15:07
SPEAKER_01: official act or not,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: when he makes this call to demand that he find more votes,
15:12
SPEAKER_01: you
15:12
SPEAKER_01: You can't ask, is it an official act to call to try to force a state official to find you more votes?
15:18
SPEAKER_01: You have to ask, is it an official act to call a state official?
15:22
SPEAKER_01: So you have to rip it from the context and not consider why he's doing it and making that determination.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: So it's a huge mess.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: Yes,
15:31
SPEAKER_01: it's possible that the court will,
15:34
SPEAKER_01: upon a fuller record,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: narrow down somewhat at seemingly extremely broad definitions of
15:41
SPEAKER_01: But I don't see any reason to believe that based on how broad this is.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's very disturbing.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: It's particularly disturbing in the context of Trump.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: When you describe those two big limitations regarding official acts,
15:56
SPEAKER_00: not being able to introduce them as evidence,
15:58
SPEAKER_00: not being able to look at the motives behind them.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: It seems like in the long run for determining how important the restriction this is
16:05
SPEAKER_00: on prosecutions,
16:06
SPEAKER_00: it's going to be really important what that standard ends up being about what's an
16:09
SPEAKER_00: official act.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine a very broad standard.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:12
SPEAKER_00: we've talked about this in contexts that have to do with whether the president can
16:15
SPEAKER_00: be held liable civilly for statements that he makes when he's president.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Are they, you know, statements that he's making in his official capacity or in his personal capacity?
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you say, I didn't rape that woman, that might be, you know, you have to
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Uphold your public image as president,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: and the courts have looked at that and said that's within the official scope.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: But then you also – and I'll go back to the footnote from Barrett suggesting this
16:37
SPEAKER_00: thing where the effort to create those fake elector slates involved a lot of
16:41
SPEAKER_00: discussion with state government officials.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Some of the fake electors were state government officials.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's,
16:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:47
SPEAKER_00: it seems like that's a suggestion that they're expecting to take a somewhat
16:50
SPEAKER_00: narrower scope on that than the very broadest version that you could conceive.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And that would create more room for the prosecutions to be workable because not
16:59
SPEAKER_00: only could you prosecute on more things,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: you could get more things in as evidence.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: And there are more things where you could look at the motive behind them.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: Well,
17:05
SPEAKER_01: but Josh,
17:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that Barrett's footnote shows anything other than Barrett thinking
17:12
SPEAKER_01: that the five justices who write the opinion are going too far.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: And let's be clear, Barrett still goes pretty far.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: She still believes in this presumption of immunity,
17:24
SPEAKER_01: which I think is nearly not capable of being overturned.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the footnote is not about a topic where she broke with the majority.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: No, and I don't see anything in the majority's opinion.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Some people have been like parsing the majority's opinion,
17:37
SPEAKER_01: seeing a part where he said,
17:38
SPEAKER_01: well,
17:39
SPEAKER_01: it could be that acts done as a candidate are private acts.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: I absolutely don't agree with the optimistic reading of that, given the rest of the opinion.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: The rest of the opinion just goes so far in terms of characterizing the president's
17:54
SPEAKER_01: powers extremely broadly and suggesting that things that seem private could
18:00
SPEAKER_01: actually be part of his public function that I see no basis to think that the
18:04
SPEAKER_01: court's going to do it narrowly when it comes back.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: Really no basis at all.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: So what really is remarkable is the dissent,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: of course,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: is appalled and says this basically overturns the concept that no one's above the law.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a king.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: We have someone bound by the law.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Roberts,
18:22
SPEAKER_01: who wrote the opinion,
18:23
SPEAKER_01: is extremely snotty and dismissive of this,
18:25
SPEAKER_01: saying that they're using a tone of chilling doom and that they're doing extreme
18:31
SPEAKER_01: hypotheticals and that sort of thing.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: which to me is just ridiculous given the context in which this comes up i mean this
18:38
SPEAKER_01: comes in the context of prosecutions for a president actually doing these these
18:43
SPEAKER_01: astounding things to try to stay in power uh obstructing justice trying to coerce
18:48
SPEAKER_01: the vice president uh trying to coerce state officials all this and also someone
18:53
SPEAKER_01: who in campaigning for president has made very explicit threats about what he would
18:58
SPEAKER_01: like to do as president as have the people supporting him
19:02
SPEAKER_01: So to me,
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Robert's tone that,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: oh,
19:04
SPEAKER_01: why are you all so worried,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:06
SPEAKER_01: all these parade of horribles you're bringing out just makes no sense at all.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: So we've talked a fair amount about problems this poses for the January 6th related prosecution,
19:14
SPEAKER_00: the one before Judge Chuckkin,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: which involves some acts that clearly were official acts and some acts that very
19:19
SPEAKER_00: likely were.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of stuff that is going to, you know, be disallowed there.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Some already has been.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: What about the other cases?
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: I guess first,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: the documents case involves the retention of these documents after Donald Trump was
19:33
SPEAKER_00: no longer president.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: So is that, you know, are there impacts on the documents case from this?
19:38
SPEAKER_01: I think that it helps Cannon, Judge Cannon, in the documents case, not that she needs it.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of this week's free episode of Serious Trouble.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear the continuation of my conversation with Ken about what this
19:51
SPEAKER_00: decision is going to mean for the variety of criminal prosecutions around Donald Trump,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: each of which touches in one way or another on things that he did in office,
20:00
SPEAKER_00: even if the meat of some of the cases is about things that happened either before
20:03
SPEAKER_00: or after his presidential term,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: break that down.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: We also have a conversation about another Supreme Court decision narrowing the obstruction of an
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Should these cases have even been brought in the first place?
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, are we are we ending up worse off for having had them?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if you want you want that big ray of sunshine, go to Serious Trouble dot show.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: And for six dollars a month or sixty dollars a year, you can hear that and every future episode.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: We would love to have you over there.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: So thank you.