[dylan604]

1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requires. Any of the lower courts trying to hold on to any semblance of checks and balance will eventually be reversed once it reaches SCOTUS.

[rayiner]

The system has specific, well-defined checks and balances. For example, Congress can limit the executive’s control over spending by enacting specific appropriations bills with concrete line items. But it hasn’t done so for decades. It has done things like appropriate single $1.7 billion line items for USAID, leaving it to the executive’s discretion how to spend it with only the vaguest guidelines. Congress having done that, it’s not for say the courts to “check” that by insisting that the executive can’t exercise all the discretion Congress provided it.

And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts. This is a no-brainer. You can’t sue Congressmen for their official acts either, or judges.

If the President didn’t have immunity, Georgia prosecutors would be able to indict and convict Joe Biden in some red county in connection with the murder of Laken Riley, on the theory that Biden recklessly or negligently opened the border leading to her death.

[dylan604]

> And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts.

We'll have to agree to disagree here. You'll never convince me that a phone call from a candidate trying to convince someone to "find" extra votes is an official act of office. Nor is assembling a league of fake electors because the official ones will not bend the knee

[freejazz]

No, but thanks to the Supreme Court, it will have to be litigated through to them for anyone to know for sure.

[rayiner]

Please read the Supreme Court’s decision. It didn’t say either of those actions was protected official acts. The Supreme Court remanded to the district out to figure out which were official acts and which were not: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

This was entirely Jack Smith’s bad lawyering. He chose to write an indictment that mixed together the acts you mention along with things like Trump’s instructions to DOJ officials.