David Brin is now arguing that the movement to impeach Trump is a Republican plot to install Pence (who he regards as far worse), with re-energized support from outraged Trump supporters who will blame Democrats, and that Democrats should refuse to go along with it because a full Trump term is actually in their best interest.
While I have many issues with that, I see his point in a 'why we never assassinated Hitler' way. Donald's highly visible and spectacularly incompetent; there's no obvious upper limit on how many others he could drag down with him. Pence is capable of keeping an idea in his head long enough to think ahead and couldn't be less effective.
The Constitution doesn't say anything about the President being immune from normal prosecution. It says that Congress has the power to impeach and try federal officers, including the President--but nobody thinks that means Cabinet members, judges and such are immune from regular prosecution, so it's not clear that that's the case for the President either.
My impression is that there is little or no judicial precedent here. Though it was established during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that the President could be compelled to testify in a civil case.
...With judges, when it comes to civil liability, there seems to be a distinction between acts committed in the course of their duties as a judge (for which they are immune from lawsuit), and other acts. But this doesn't apply to criminal prosecution.
Some judges have argued that the President is indeed specially immune, but it's still a matter of some controversy.
Of course, anything clearly awful enough to make talk of immunity seem absurd would also have to require Impeachment. If it turns out the president has been strangling prostitutes and burying them in the foundations of his buildings to appease the Gods, even the majority of Republicans would have to vote to Impeach.
Charging him with treason is extremely unlikely, simply because it's nearly impossible to get anyone for treason in the US--you basically have to be colluding with the enemy in a shooting war, and best if it's a declared war (we haven't had one of those since World War II, and the last convictions for treason were for things done in that war).
Pence is worse in some ways, but he's already there anyway. A post-impeachment Pence would be presiding over a fractured GOP—I seriously doubt the Trumpists would come back to the politicians, the way the Freedom Caucus refused to play ball. Bringing the GOP back together would would be difficult in those circumstances even if Pence weren't actually an ineffectual idiot.
The only not-horrible (I really couldn't write "good") side to a Pence presidency is that he doesn't have the broad support base. While he really wants to implement the Republic of Gilead, and much of congress would be happy to go along with that, he doesn't have the ability to steamroll over the arguments about minutia, AND he wants a religious foundation to political activities that is going to be rejected by every court that even remotely looks at it.
(Among other reasons, the Satanic Temple has been increasing their activism. Any attempts to implement "all religious-inspired prejudices are okay" are going to be met with "yay, we can finally proselytize directly to other people's children.") (They've already done this, and the result was grade schools rethinking their rules about allowing religious materials to be distributed on-campus.)
Pence has even less ability than the current president to get people to set aside their differences and work together, and he doesn't have a team ready to step in and take over all the positions that will suddenly become open. So no matter how bad he is, there's likely to be an extra few months of utter chaos before anything substantial happens.
It's also likely he's also implicated in the current Russian fiascos, at least in the sense of "knew something really shady was going on, and didn't want to lose his cushy job so he didn't tell anyone." Aid-and-abet is pretty far down on the list of crimes they're currently looking at, but it's still there.
However, at this point Pence would be more able than Trump to acquire Dubya Bush-like levels of political capital if he got another 9/11 to work with. I think he could probably play not-insane to the center if they were traumatized into wanting a Daddy figure again.
Based on the timeline of Flynn's vetting, and what Pence should have known and when, there is really no way he would not have known that Flynn was a Soviet agent. If Trump is indicted or forced to resign, there's really no way that Pence can avoid the same.
Which means we would have a first- the first president without a backbone.
Which is really fucking wonderful if one has the wealth and resources to not actually be affected by Trump's policies for the next four years. Even outside of healthcare, I know friends who are going to screwed over by the changes in student loan policy. They can't just say, take off to Europe for four years.
Brin's idea is another variation of Accelerationism, which is conceding the fight to the Alt-right, and letting them do as much damage as they want.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2017-05-18 10:13 am
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My impression is that there is little or no judicial precedent here. Though it was established during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that the President could be compelled to testify in a civil case.
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Some judges have argued that the President is indeed specially immune, but it's still a matter of some controversy.
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(Among other reasons, the Satanic Temple has been increasing their activism. Any attempts to implement "all religious-inspired prejudices are okay" are going to be met with "yay, we can finally proselytize directly to other people's children.") (They've already done this, and the result was grade schools rethinking their rules about allowing religious materials to be distributed on-campus.)
Pence has even less ability than the current president to get people to set aside their differences and work together, and he doesn't have a team ready to step in and take over all the positions that will suddenly become open. So no matter how bad he is, there's likely to be an extra few months of utter chaos before anything substantial happens.
It's also likely he's also implicated in the current Russian fiascos, at least in the sense of "knew something really shady was going on, and didn't want to lose his cushy job so he didn't tell anyone." Aid-and-abet is pretty far down on the list of crimes they're currently looking at, but it's still there.
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My bets are either Orin Hatch, Steven Mnuchin or the incoming Democratic House Leader. Depending on timing and indictments.
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Which means we would have a first- the first president without a backbone.
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Brin's idea is another variation of Accelerationism, which is conceding the fight to the Alt-right, and letting them do as much damage as they want.