Chuck Schumer Working on Bill to Strip Trump of Immunity Set Forth In U.S. Supreme Court Ruling
Schumer’s proposed legislation likely would violate the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 3: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is working on legislation which would strip Donald Trump of the immunity granted to to him and other presidents in a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court. What makes the senate majority leader think he has the authority to override a co-equal branch of government and the highest court in the land?
Is it possible that Schumer is just doing this as a show of solidarity for his MSNBC-watching, Trump-hating voters?
The Hill reports:
Schumer pushing bill to strip Trump of court-granted immunity
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Monday that he and other Senate Democrats will work to advance legislation to strip former President Trump of the immunity he was granted under a recent Supreme Court ruling protecting a president’s official acts from criminal prosecution.
Schumer, invoking Congress’s powers to regulate the courts, said Democrats are working on legislation to classify Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election as “unofficial acts” so they do not merit immunity from criminal prosecution under the high court’s recent 6-3 decision.
“They incorrectly declared that former President Trump enjoys broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office. They incorrectly declared that all future presidents are entitled to a breathtaking level of immunity so long as their conduct is ostensibly carried out in their official capacity as president,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Schumer said the court’s conservative justices had “effectively placed a crown on Donald Trump’s head,” putting him above the law and making him “in many ways untouchable.”
“I will work with my colleagues on legislation classifying Trump’s election subversion acts as unofficial acts not subject to immunity,” he announced.
When I was discussing this with Professor Jacobson, he pointed to this important part of the U.S. Constitution which Schumer’s legislation would violate – Article I, Section 9, Clause 3:
Clause 3
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
From the Annenberg Guide to the United States Constitution:
In the second and third clauses, the Constitution specifically guarantees rights to those accused of crimes. It provides that the privilege of a writ of habeas corpus, which allows a prisoner to challenge his or her imprisonment in court, cannot be suspended except in extreme circumstances such as rebellion or invasion, where the public is in danger. Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus has occurred only a few times in history. For example, President Lincoln suspended the writ during the Civil War. In 1871, it was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina to combat the Ku Klux Klan.
Similarly, the Constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder — laws that are directed against a specific person or group of persons, making them automatically guilty of serious crimes, such as treason, without a normal court proceeding. The ban is intended to prevent Congress from bypassing the courts and denying criminal defendants the protections guaranteed by other parts of the Constitution.
In addition, the Constitution prohibits “ex post facto” laws — criminal laws that make an action illegal after someone has already taken it. This protection guarantees that individuals are warned ahead of time that their actions are illegal.
Bonchie comments at RedState:
I have no idea what constitutional power Schumer believes he has that would allow such a gambit to even begin to pass muster. Separation of powers exists, and the legislature has never been able to dictate what qualifies as an official act of the presidency. If it could, then there would be no actual official acts because any hostile Congress could arbitrarily decide on a whim to reverse any such qualification.
If presidential immunity exists, and the Supreme Court says it does (at least on some level), then it logically can’t be overridden by the legislature. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be “immunity.” If a president has supposedly committed a violation worthy of punishment, there is already a remedy for that. It’s called impeachment, and Schumer and company have already failed in their pursuit of that regarding January 6th.
Besides, the Republican-led House would never go along with any legislation reclassifying Trump’s actions so the gambit is dead in the water anyway.
Democrats have been waging a war on the U.S. Supreme Court for months and this is one of the reasons why. They have been laying the groundwork for just this sort of ridiculous measure.
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Chucky’s been eating too many raw cheeseburgers
While Rome burns…
More like Chucky bit a rabid animal.
Maybe those were pork burgers and he has a brain worm like RFK Jr. only it is still alive.
chuck U and the radical democrats caused the fire.
There’s a perverse part of me that wouldn’t mind seeing Chuck succeed. (What the heck, 99% of the shit Congress passes isn’t within their proper Constitutional authority.) No matter how they write it there’s no way they could keep it from boomeranging on them.
For example, what if Biden wins but gets stuck with a GOP Congress?
Democrats are addled children who can’t understand that their actions have consequences.
The only possible way this could be approached is to make it pertain to all past presidents (this assumes it could escape being condemned as an ex post facto law). Because if it is clearly directed at Trump (by name – but I’m presuming the Dems aren’t that stupid) it would fail on that count alone. They will think themselves slick, though, by doing something ridiculous like back-dating it to the beginning of Trump’s presidency, making it just as clearly aimed at Trump. (Joe might still fall under the umbrella, but considering his mental state the chance that he would be prosecuted for any acts during his presidency is literally nil.)
any wonder the radical democrats let 15 million+ illegals into the country?
Since I am not a lawyer, I am using https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S1-5-2/ALDE_00013529/- In the 1995 case Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., the Court held that legislation that directs courts to reopen a final judgment unconstitutionally intrudes on the Judiciary.10 Plaut involved an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that Congress enacted after a pair of Supreme Court opinions announced a time limit for bringing certain civil actions seeking damages under the Act.11 The amended statute, Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act, directed courts (upon a timely filed petition) to reinstate cases that had been dismissed because of the Court’s rulings but that would have been timely under the governing statute of limitations when initially filed.12 In Plaut, the Supreme Court held that Section 27A’s reopening provision violated the doctrine of separation of powers.13 The Court explained that, by applying retroactively to final decisions, Section 27A reverses a determination once made, in a particular case.
…Now me: Article III allows the legislature to set up and legislate federal courts that are NOT the Supreme Court.
Why get into such complicated arguments? Presidential immunity is constitutionally based. Schumer cannot alter the constitution with his garbage bill. At least until the democrat’s thoroughly destroy the rule of law and we end up in a new banana republic, which could happen if they win in November.
Ds don’t have to alter the Constitution. They can just freely ignore it like they’ve been doing for the past 100+ years.
Yes, and Schumer is playing make-believe that the separation of powers doesn’t exist. His bill will never be brought to the floor of the House. My hunch is that he is trying to appease the DNC donor base.
A POTUS’ authority derives from Article II. Any legislative act that would in any way affect a POTUS’ exercise of his constitutionally-derived executive authority (by causing the POTUS to consider the possibility of being prosecuted for his official acts) would be a violation of the separation of powers.
The only possible way to infringe upon the executive authority found in Art. II would be an amendment permitting the interference by Congress. Good luck with that.
Yeah, but he’s not trying to do that. What he wants to do is have Congress say fine, presidents have immunity for official acts, but this specific act wasn’t official. That’s not amending the constitution, so your objection fails. But Congress still can’t do that, because it would be usurping the judicial function.
More and louder ‘Get Trump’ is not gonna be a winning message. It reeks of desperation and publicly demonstrates just how far the d/prog are willing to go to cling to power; ex post facto. Polling already shows voters see the lawfare for what it is. IMO, this crap only heightens public awareness of the deceitful nature of the d/prog and legacy media in attempting to cover up their lies about Biden’s fitness and change the subject from his horrendous debate debacle.
“More and louder ‘Get Trump’ is not gonna be a winning message.”
Sometimes I despair that the electorate is inestimably stupider than the non-stupid automatically assume.
This election cycle has produced the most intellectually insulting donor solicitations I have seen in my life.
“Make a 5000% MAGA Impact in the next 10 minutes before we crumble!”
“Trump can’t choose his VP until he hears from you! Link expires in 15 min!”
“We’re running out of time to stop radical communist indoctrination, and you haven’t responded. This is your LAST chance to make an impact!”
“Mike Pompeo here! Have you verified your voter profile recently?”
“WOW! 9000% MATCH” I bet you see stuff like that all the time, but those matches aren’t real. Here’s the TRUTH!”
“Tim Scott: we just found an ace up our sleeve that Joe Biden will never recover from!”
“WHY DID YOU VOTE FOR JOE BIDEN?? Our data MUST be wrong… Clear our records here:”
And these are from the Republicans!
I can’t imagine what the Democrats must be getting:
“Last warning! Send us $200 before midnight, or Trump’s Neo-Nazi stormtroopers will shoot your dog and your kids, torch your Prius, and have you on a train to the Mar-a-Lago Concentration Camp before noon tomorrow!”
I don’t think American politics could get more debased if they let Pro Wrestling take it over.
Oh, lets not get it twisted, you are correct many voters are dumb as a box of rocks. Others are just ill/under informed but a few seem to be paying more attention and are beginning the process of independent/critical thinking.
I really believe we underestimate the power of the internet as a communication platform. Sure there are lots of goofy cat videos but there’s also content that’s changing the way folks receive/share info and that is causing some minds to open up and think v just regurgitate party talking points and propaganda.
An example of this is a YouTube channel called ‘Cartier Family’. Four young black men, D1 athletes at a smaller school, who went from having BLM posters on the wall watching music vids to showing/reacting to PragerU videos and offering up incredibly positive reactions to include discussions about how they have been persuaded to think independently and reject the d/prog cultural indoctrination. A few days ago these young men had Congressmen Byron Donalds and Wesley Hunt on their program. They have over a million subscribers to their channel and growing. Other dissenting voices come to mind like Joe Rogan.
If you think any of this is unique to the current era, you are not likely familiar with what campaigning for president was like in the 19th Century. Newspapers, broadsides, and public speakers, all as outrageous and predatory as anything today in their appeal to greed and covetousness, and to the most base persons of the voting public.
And violent! The political violence between factional gangs supporting different candidates for 1860 was something to behold.
And how about this from the Jefferson/Adams campaign in 1800?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI
First thing in the morning I find a couple dozen of these in my inbox, and they keep coming through the day. Most are insultingly stupid, not only in their appeals (“I will fly you to Mar-A-Lago to sit at your feet and be blessed by your opinion!”) but also in assuming I have unlimited means to spend on political donations, But what to do?
Congress can’t limit powers of the President that they haven’t themselves extended to the President, in particular if it’s a structural matter.
Like opening the President up to prosecution by the prosecutor in the nation who likes him least.
It used to be controlled by convention but convention isn’t what the left does.
Change “in the nation” with “of the Political Party” and you have where we are in history.
Well, Chuck, with that. the “let’s get Biden” legal apparatus has just bumped up a big notch in anticipation of success in your endeavor. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Sadly, I think that by the time they could do anything, Biden will be no more, or at least a total vegetable. On the other hand, I’m sure we could find some stuff on Zero…..
Constitution clearly says that in the event of the death or incapacity of the President, the Vice President is legally culpable for all his crimes. Really, it’s right there.
Should Americans really want someone in office who is so filled with such an irrational political hatred? Schumer has become the very example of the worst fabricated threat of what Trump might become in their TDS infected minds.
Basically why would anyone vote for any democrat candidate? Drugs? Alcohol? Maybe. I think though, at its core, their voter base stopped thinking years ago and forgot how.
They’ve been brainwashed by the media.
Because their highest value is the right of a woman to kill her baby. This is in service to their other value having sex with anyone that will let them without any kind of consequences.
For some of them, “anyone that will let them” isn’t even an issue considering how they’re starting to openly call for sexualizing children.
Schumer has descended beyond weasel.
He’s now firmly in scorpion and snake territory.
The Democrat Party exists to allow criminals to pursue their careers without penalties.
View everything through that window and suddenly stuff falls right into place.
It’s not up to Americans in general; it’s only up to New Yorkers. And whether they should want someone like that or not, they clearly do.
How could that bill work retroactively? Isn’t that like trying to pass a bill to make something a crime retroactively?
Yes. That would be the ex-post facto mentioned.
Well, that’s what I thought so basically, Chucky is just posturning?
Maybe.
Or maybe Chuckie is just depending on his own immunity — Democrat immunity.
It allows Democrats to pass totally unconstitutional laws and regulations, and then enforce them against their political enemies for as long as it takes to bankrupt and imprison them, until the Supreme Court tells them to stop (if it ever does).
Tuition forgiveness. Gun prohibitions, Stack-scrubber regulations. “Health” lockdowns of schools and churches. Changes to candidacies and voting procedures that violate state constitutions. “Reverse” discrimination policies. Funding their political street armies with tax money. Nothing is forbidden to a Democrat.
Especially because their know their whores in the MSM will back them up to the hilt by excoriating us deplorables as “heartless and selfish” for demanding that Democrats respect our basic “guaranteed” constitutional rights not to be plundered and oppressed..
Congress critters are, in fact, immune from prosecution for any of their public acts or speeches. The Constitution says so, for the same reason SCOTUS says POTUS has immunity. Judges are similarly immune. Yet the Dems are apoplectic over SCOTUS’ determination that the POTUS has immunity similar to their own. Go figure, right?
I assume you meant to write “posturing”, although “posturning” evokes a striking image of what ought to be done to Chucky with his never-used glasses.
It is unconstitutional to legislate away the constitution so why would the part in the constitution about ex post facto be any more of a constraint on these evil idiots.
It’s not purporting to change the law retroactively. Rather, it’s purporting to make a legal determination that a certain past act fits a certain category in already-existing law.
Which Congress can’t do, because that is the judicial function, that the constitution gives to the courts.
chucky once again reveals himself as the selfish, entitled turd he has always been
light years past his ” sell by ” date
How about going after Biden for fraud for pretending to be President and refusing to present an MRI showing that he did not have a long wooden nose.
Okaaaaay… and I suppose, to protect America from the coming Republican majorities in both Houses, we should address Legislative Immunity as well, right Chuck?
Yes. Let’s go there.
What is interesting about Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 is that is says they “No .. shall be passed”.
This would lend credence to the idea that merely passing them would make those members of Congress in breach of their Oath of Office.
Some months ago, I proposed an amendment that would remove Congress critters from office and/or prevent them from running for re-election when legislation they supported was declared unconstitutional. The exact penalty and how it would be applied would depend on their role in the legislation, with those who proposed it and those who voted it out of committee the hardest hit, sponsors are hit at the next lower level, and those who merely voted for it are on the low end of the scale of punishment.
Except that would give the judiciary power over the legislature. Legislators are entitled to their own opinion on whether a measure is constitutional. The courts decide whether it is constitutional, but they can’t ding the legislators for disagreeing.
“Except that would give the judiciary power over the legislature.”
So? An amendment is an amendment. If that’s what you want to do, that’s how you do it. It’s fine to argue against it by citing some undesirable consequence, but using the very one the proposer believes is desirable isn’t very convincing.
He should just offer the legislation he really wants. Outlaw the Republican party as a whole from holding office in the US.
That would have the unusual aspect of being pretty honest.
We in the “assault weapons” community already know the easy workaround to that.
Schumer pushing bill to strip Trump of court-granted immunity
There’s part of the problem. The media (and the Dems, BIRM) are pretending this is something SCOTUS made up. This immunity is not court-granted, it’s CONSTITUTION-granted. It was bizarre (yeah, I know) that SCOTUS even had to point this out.
Is there a Senate rule that declares where and what activities are covered by the Speech and Debate Clause ?
Generally, the House and the Senate have been careful to maintain that the Speech and Debate Clause covers a broad swath of activities, but now they want to curtail those of the Executive ?
It’s not up to the senate, it’s up to the courts. Just as it is in this case.
Chuckles is such a pathetic little bit*h.
He desperately needs the Hairy Reed Exercise Band Treatment.
I would prefer to go with the Vlad Tespesch wait loss program myself.
I had to google it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
I’m looking for a startup that makes exercise bands for necks.
Does he have an alcoholic bully for a brother?
No, just an unfunny comedienne for a cousin.
Is this even a surprise? I don’t think so. It’s not like they really care whether the laws that they write are within the bounds of the constitution draws or not. They put out the law, then it gets to terrorize us until someone finds a way to legally challenge it so it can go away like it should.
Succinctly put.
If you need good examples of this process, check out all the new gun licensing laws erupting in our commie states post Bruen. It’s a constant game of Whack-A-Mole, by design.
Of course at some point normies get wise to the con. Once that happens a few begin to ignore those questionable statutory impediments, then a few more and then all of a sudden things get spicy. That’s the risk all authoritarians run, that their constant one way ratchet and selective adherence of the Constitutional framework con hits a point of widespread non compliance. As an example I would suggest that any attempted rerun of Covid mania will be less likely to be tolerated than the 1.0 version. Far more people are likely to choose Not to play nicely much earlier than in 1.0 which will in turn embolden others to refuse. Then the authoritarians have a choice; draconian enforcement which may provoke widespread active v passive refusal or to back the heck off, STFU and go away.
What has been done in some States in response to recent SCOTUS decisions about firearms would be considered contempt of court if a private citizen bucked a court decision that way. But State legislatures are – get this – immune from any punishment for their official acts. So they can legally demonstrate contempt of court.
This does not, however, prevent me from labeling these legislators as rat bastards.
Democrats are desperate aren’t they!
It seems liket the point of this is to put senators and representatives on the record on an issue that Dems want to campaign on…
The bill isn’t even supposed to pass, just generate some deceptive ads against Republicans in purple districts.
Congress should spend more time in curtailing insider trading from their members (Looking at you, Nancy) than proposing blatantly unconstitutional laws because they hate Trump.
Wonder if he (Chuck) has mad cow disease from his burger consumption? I think we should start caning these congress people who use their position for some kind of b.s. campaign stunt, instead of doing their jobs. Spinning your wheels is not an official act; I know they think it is, but it is not.
violating laws doesnt bother the leftists
“Schmuck” Schumer is the apt moniker this imbecile and dolt has fairly earned.
What would Schumer do or say if a president issued an Executive Order curtailing the number of staffers a Senator may employ to no more than three?
Hey, Chuck. If you want to strip President Trump of his immunity for Presidential Acts you don’t like, all you really need to do is get him impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate…. Oh, you tried that already. Twice. How did that work out for you?
Nope. That wouldn’t do it. Impeachment and removal doesn’t prevent prosecution, but it doesn’t enable it either. The two processes are completely separate and unrelated. A prosecution that can be brought doesn’t need an impeachment; a prosecution that can’t be brought won’t be helped by an impeachment.
I just wish the Rs had half the tenacity the Ds have in constantly pushing their agenda. It angers me that the Rs always let the Ds steamroll them.
This is not intended to succeed. Schumy knows perfectly well that what they’re calling Trump’s attempts to subvert the election were pure free speech.
This is intended as a show piece to get donors to pony up. That is it’s only purpose. And it will work.
Schumer is count on the “….except for Trump” clause he believes is in the Constitution.
Just another example of Democrats’ complete inability to be honest about either Trump or SCOTUS rulings they dislike. the opinion did not allow presidents to assassinate political opponents or accept bribes or commit treason. It certainly did not allow the president to one who gets to decide that those acts are “official” to get immunity.
Out of curiosity, is there anything stopping a president from just giving himself a blanket pardon before he leaves office?
I’m guessing Joe has them signed for him, Jill, Hunter and others, just waiting in a safe for when they’re needed.
That question has been asked for decades, and the general consensus is that it can be done.
I suspect it isn’t done because it would only have an impact on Federal prosecutions. As illustrated by Trump’s legal troubles it’s probably more likely that state prosecutions would happen and those are not affected by a Presidential pardon.
For the last 200+ years, that has been the assumed situation of every President leaving office, i.e. everything they did in office was immune from prosecution at the time, and afterward. Don’t like what they did? Impeach them in the House, convict them in the Senate, and prosecute. State and local cases against Presidents and ex-Presidents were routinely batted into Federal court and squashed flat. Now, it would seem to be good practical sense to issue a “Last Pardon” before leaving office, just in case there are more corrupt greedy (censored) Presidents following. This administration has opened far too many ‘unprecedented’ doors that need slammed back shut and nailed closed.
Nope. Any prosecution that is viable can be brought without impeachment; any prosecution that is not viable before impeachment is still not viable after it.
Impeachment does nothing to enable prosecution; all the constitution says is that it doesn’t prevent it, i.e. that the former president can’t claim that having been convicted by the senate he can’t now be tried in court for the same offense. That’s why the constitution makes clear that impeachment and prosecution are two completely separate processes, and each follows its own rules.
First this is New York state in Trump’s case who is putting him in jail
I pray this won’t work for Chucky who has to be a Deep State politburo member
Chucky sure is having a waste of time. This is not going to get passed and even if it did the Constitution already is set so the SCOTUS would throw it out. Not a lot of what is being done in Congress by anyone is helping any citizen.
The democraps are afraid.
With Chevron gone and the sue and settle bullschiff hopefully over, PDJT can cause havoc among the agencies with the right folks backing him.
And it will be glorious.
Dems have obviously experienced a psychotic break. A few days ago the origins of the break came to me. It was during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, when Obama and Hillary were vying against each other for the nomination. This caused a mental crisis in every Lefty – “Should I support Obama, and be a misogynist, or support Hillary and be a racist?” They’ve never recovered from the mental distress and their mental state has been going downhill ever since then.
And yet none of them thought to ask, “Should I support either of them, and be a tool?”
Yeah, Congress can’t do this. He’s not proposing to change the court’s decision on immunity, he’s saying fine, presidents have immunity for official acts, but what Trump did on Jan-6-2021 was not an official act.
Determining facts and how they count legally is a judicial function, not a legislative one. And the constitution gives that function exclusively to the courts, not to Congress. Congress makes the laws, the courts determine whether the facts of a specific case fit those laws. Congress says “Do not drive a car at a speed that is too fast for the road conditions”; the courts decide whether John Smith’s speed on May-26-2024 at 3:07 PM was too fast. Congress can’t make a law deeming Smith’s speed to have been excessive.
Of all the analogies you could have chosen, this might have been the most disadvantageous. When congress DID pass such a law, it contained a specific speed limit.
Actually, the specificity of a speeding law just makes it easier for the court to agree with the law….the court can still take into account other circumstances including mitigating situations and actual road conditions, etc.
It was also outside any enumerated power granted to the federal government, and was rightly ignored by states like Montana.
If you’re referring to the national 55 MPH speed limit in the ’70s and ’80s, Montana didn’t ignore it. In that case Congress did not set a limit; instead it conditioned a limited amount of state funding on the states doing so. States were free to refuse, but none chose to.
South Dakota challenged this in court, and the supreme court agreed that if the threatened cut was unaffordable then this would be coercion, which would violate the tenth amendment. But since the cut was small enough that states could afford to refuse, it was valid. SD, like all the other states, chose to comply.
I specifically remember what happened when the federal law was repealed in the ’90s, and Montana then repealed its limit and went back to its historical limit of “too fast for the conditions”. It quickly turned out that in the two decades of the 55 MPH limit MT drivers had lost the ability to judge that properly, so MT then enacted a fixed limit (I think it was 85 or 90).
Nope. Congress never passed such a law, whether specifying a limit or not. My analogy is to a hypothetical law that Congress (or a state legislature) could pass, and how the courts would handle it.
I specifically chose a vague limit rather than a fixed one, because if the limit is fixed then there’s no question about whether a specific driver exceeded it on a specific occasion. But where the limit is vague then such a question can arise, and my point is that only the courts can decide it; Congress has no power to decide it.
And that is what Schumer is trying to do here.
Presidents don’t have immunity because Congress has yet to legislate on the issue. They have immunity built into the Constitution due to separation of powers—an invention of our Founders and Framers aimed at preventing the political witch hunts Democrats love so much. Beyond that, Schumer’s proposed legislation is nothing more than a Bill of Attainder, crafted in a way to constitute yet another “Get Trump” despotism. Of course, the Constitution also bars Bills of Attainder, but the Constitution no longer gets in the way of how the tyrants of the Democrat Party do business.
Seems like NY just did this when they made a temporary change to the statute of limitations so a person could file a 30 yo case against trump file a criminal complaint. Sure sounds like a bill of attainder to me.
“Democrats have been waging a war on the U.S. Supreme Court for months….”
Really?? Months??? They’ve been at it since FDR threatened to “pack the Supreme Court” nearly 100 years ago.
Bill of Attainder
“Without a trial”
or with a trial so rigged its not a trial
any abuse that an evil person can do they will do and think up more along the way
its up to the good people to stop them
we havent yet
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