He pretty much has to, or else Trump will imprison him an execute him in the next 12 months.

I mean shit, if I knew there was a fifty percent chance my neighbor would kidnap and murder me in the next year..... I'd be making contingency plans.

1. Conservative justices rule that the president is immune from prosecution

2. President has conservative justices assassinated

3. President appoints more progressive justices

4. Progressive justices reverse ruling

Would the president be liable for the prior assassinations at that point?

While funny to imagine...please let's not. I got a kid to raise, I don't want to raise one in a civil war. I know for sure some of the "SEAL team 6" members wouldn't very much like being turned on government officials, especially if their politics align.

Bonus points if their orders include the phrase "stand back and stand by".

The argument has been that the president can be charged, but only after they're impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. And in the meantime, they're still president. So theoretically they could continue to have House members assassinated until there isn't enough votes to impeach. And theoretically they could also assassinate Senators until there aren't enough votes to convict. And I really don't understand why no one's making that argument to the Court, because that's exactly where the "they can kill anyone who disagrees with me because they're obviously a political rival" argument leads.

America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that "Bastion of Democracy and Free World" veneer gets.

We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have "sheriff's gangs" in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they're supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we're functionally at war with, who we can't put on trial because we broke their brains but we can't let go because we're still scared of them.

Dig into the history and you find out about Nixon's CIA sending arms to the Khmer Rouge. You learn about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's sex trafficking island. You learn about our century of atrocities in Haiti and Guatemala and Panama. You learn about the Tuskegee Experiments. You learn about that time George Bush Sr set up an teenager to sell a DEA agent crack directly outside the White House for the purpose of inflating fears of a drug epidemic.

Just really ugly despicable stuff. And its been happening for a long while.

The US has always been a hive of scum and villainy.

It's almost as if hostile nation states are manipulating public opinion to destabilize western democracies and alliances.

Well before this hearing I had the impression this SC is looking for ways to stack delay on delay without taking too much flak themselves. It showed in the weird narrow beam wording of their restrictions when they took on this case. It showed in the extra weeks they took to plan this hearing. And it is now showing in the questions they ask ...

I will not be surprised if they proclaim "a president has no total immunity, and only immunity in presidential matters, but the lower courts need to figure out if Trump's actions were (for) personal (gain) or presidential."

And with that the ball is dropped and it rolled in a sewage drain where it's hard to reach before the elections are in the rear view mirror.

It even includes another time loop for when it eventually does resurface back on the SC's lap for them to decide if his actions were presidential.

But by that time there will be a "Year one Dictator", proclaiming himself to be America's first great dictator, while ordering his rivals to be imprisoned, indicted and or shot.

And the people will loudly wonder, "Who is there to stop him? Where are the checks and balances?" But loudly will turn into a whimper then a whisper until it is a small voice in an empty room.

No, rules only apply to the out-group.

If Trump wins the election, the SCOTUS will agree and let Trump do whatever the fuck he wants. If he loses, then SCOTUS will not let the ruling go through. The SCOTUS will conveniently wait until after the election to make a ruling on this.

Why just Trump? add the supreme Court, the senate and the house as an opening act.

They don't think very far ahead do they?

The pardon power should be eliminated, and that's been clear since Nixon was pardoned. Sure, just about every president has a feel-good set of pardons, people who were railroaded by bad laws and bad court practices, but those corrections are only a tiny fraction of the outrageous injustices committed by our system, and their existence is used to justify the injustice in the first place - "oh but surely there will be a pardon for people who really need it" - as if depending on a single King-figure at the top to make good decisions, instead of improving systems, was ever a good idea. But in the meantime, just about every president also has a list of political pardons they trade for favors, or use for people who committed crimes on behalf of the president, or the party. Why the fuck does it make any sense at all to say "hey, this person was elected head of the executive branch, they should be able to just shield people from the rule of law", if the rule of law is an important basis of a free democracy? It's weird, when you think about it. End the pardon.

Thats what is most concerning here: not so much the crazy reality that trump’s team is proposing, but the 5 conservative justices that are hand waving it off and are set to send it all back to the lower courts, giving trump the delay he needs.

They're being treated seriously because they're made by Republicans, who are part of the same patronage machine as the judges.

It's the only argument he can make. If he makes any other argument, his position on complete and total immunity is dead on the spot, as he would be conceding that the President isn't completely and totally immune after all.

Any concession, no matter how ridiculous the example, would invalidate his entire case immediately and he knows it. And if you ever hear him say "He would have to be impeached and convicted first", you'll know that he damn well knows how ridiculous his own arguments sound.

Judge: If President Trump were to run around the White House naked with a rubber glove on his head yelling 'Hi, I'm a squid! Nuke Montana so I can take out my rival octopus and his herd of glitter cows!', would that be an official act he would have immunity under?

Sauer: If it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.

Doesn't matter what scenario you put there. Sauer's options are to repeat that line or essentially lose the case.

Sauer: If it's structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.

Alright you goddamn fascist enabler, explain how the fuck breaking the law either by stealing nuclear secrets or assassinating political opponents could be "structured as an official act." Explain the exact case law and legal mechanisms that explicitly give the office of the President this authority. And then, while you're exhaling the CO2 that some poor plant is gonna have to clean up, explain how private citizen Donald Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for committing these acts while he wasn't in office.

You fucking jackass.

The very next question should have been "And if he has 1/2 of the House of Representatives killed at the same time?"

Lol, that's exactly what the article says. Literally the last three lines summing it all up:

Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land. Rolling Stone reported on Wednesday that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers are bearish on their odds of success — but it’s not all doom and gloom.

“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.