A federal judge says he's found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court and could seek officials’ prosecution for violating his orders last month to turn around planes carrying deportees to an El Salvador prison.
Ah but you forget Donny’s infamous “who gonna stop me?” loophole.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Didn’t the supreme Court rule that laws don’t apply to a sitting president?
You make it sound so broad. Really, it only works if they say the magic words “this is an official act,” before, during or any time after what they are doing.
The President, yes. The rest of the administration, no.
Sure, but the president can (and will) pardon any of them.
You can’t pardon a contempt charge.
I mean, a congress member seems to be saying he can. If he “can’t” he’ll do it anyways, it’ll go to the supreme court and they’ll say it’s fine.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10186
Edit: apparently that’s actually part of what Joe Arpaio was pardoned for.
Really?
Apparently not really. It already happened with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This country is fucked lmao.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Joe_Arpaio#%3A~%3Atext=On+August+25%2C+2017%2C+President%2Cbeing+in+the+U.S.+illegally".
Federal charges, federal pardon
That’s why Donny has the golden ticket get out of jail free card
You mean to all the people eh can simply pardon?
Does that also apply to the people surrounding him? I mean, he’ll likely just pardon anyone, but still…
SCOTUS’ decision re: presidential immunity does not (so far) apply to people other than the president himself. It’s also not clear that the president can pardon criminal contempt charges brought by a judge. I expect that we’ll be hearing more from SCOTUS about this in the near future…
Ah; but they didn’t say that laws don’t apply to a sitting administration.
So don’t impeach Trump again. But jail everyone who followed his orders.
honestly, that would be funny to see.
send everyone to jail except trump, let him sit in the whitehouse all alone.
except that trump will just pardon everyone so it is irrelevant.
Ah; but that’s the beauty of it.
Trump has been doing the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” thing so that others have to scramble to keep up.
If the courts start jailing everyone who follows his orders, someone has to fill out all that paperwork to get them released again. Meanwhile, those people go to jail too.
Not exactly.
So if they rule that something isn’t an official act, or outside of the president’s constitutional powers, they can still find it illegal. It means that the courts can effectively “pardon” the president if they rule that he was acting within the scope of his official responsibility, but it doesn’t mean that they gave their ability to prosecute if they choose to.
Whether the president has the power to “self-pardon,” effectively giving him total immunity to the law, is another angle, but that has not been tested in court.
Of course, Trump could simply choose to ignore the courts the same way Andrew Jackson did and it’s not clear that anything would happen to him, at least while he’s in office and is commander in chief.