Should Democrats be worried, Supreme Court rules Trump immune from criminal prosecution for 'official acts'?
Last Updated: 21.06.2025 06:41
Democrats? No. Everyone should be.
SCOTUS said, in no uncertain terms, president of USA is immune to any and all prosecution for all official acts. On the surface this seems reasonable, you can’t govern effectively if you’re constantly hamstrung by various accusations of crimes. If you take a peek below the surface however, SCOTUS just said, explicitly, the president could order and oversee a genocide as an official act and he would be free from any and all prosecution in the future. They couldn’t even extradite him to a foreign country to stand trial, because he’s immune in the USA and presumed innocent.
Yeah, I don’t think the MAGA injustices quite thought this one out. Blanket immunity from prosecution of official acts can only make sense in the context of an ongoing presidential term. Once the person is out of office the main if not only reason for that immunity to have existed vanishes.
What is not far-fetched at all is the country going to war somewhere. Yemen is the obvious choice, but Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea, Syria and more are all potential conflict where USA could get involved. Again using the army is going to be difficult, but POTUS could also hire security contractors (or mercenaries) to help out and those (can be made to) fall outside of army chain of command. He could then order them to committ a genocide over an undesired population of the area, in order to provide security. He would be shielded from any and all prosecution within the USA.
Thus far we only focused on internal policy matters, sending the army to take out a political opponent. The president can’t actually do that easily. He’s not within the army command structure and can’t command units around. It’s still possible for him to take out a political opponent using the resources of the army, but not as a direct order and someone else with command authority would have to be involved as well (whom he can of course pardon). This one was always a bit far-fetched, although it remains a valid criticism of the judgment.
A war crimes trial