The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) released a verdict in Trump v. United States on July 1, 2024. Jay and Chris both listened to a bunch of podcasts about that decision.

Chris asked Jay if he had read the opinion. Jay had not. “It’s easy!” Chris said. Jay sighed, and tried. And then we spent over an hour trying to read the darn thing and arguing about it being easy to read. Join us, won’t you?

045.mp3 (1h 11m 33MB)

If you’d like to call into the show, you can leave a voicemail at +1-402-577-0117. Consider giving us $1 a month on Patreon so we can waste your money instead of our own. :)

Thanks to Chris for doing 99% of the audio editing for this episode!!

  • 0m: Musical intro by Skytrekg! Click to follow him on Twitch! An amazing traditional (oil, guache, etc) artist, guitarist, and singer.

At ~15m Jay rants about hating this episode of this podcast: Advisory Opinions: Is ‘Text, History, and Tradition’ Alive and Well? Jay’s text rant in Discord:

My 2¢: This is a 90m podcast for legal scholars who have already deeply studied SCOTUS decisions (this year and historical), and want to hear Inside Baseball opinions about extremely subtle details, trends.

If you’re looking for lawyers to explain / summarize cases, or tell you why they matter, this isn’t the podcast for you. This podcast renders no opinions about whether any of the decisions were good or bad in any way.

If you want broad stroke ruminations on decades of variations of interpretations of originalism you’ll love this episode.

At the 30m mark I thought they were going to state an opinion:

The far left is saying Trump can shoot anybody now, and the far right is saying YAY Trump can shoot anybody now!

… but nope. Even with that teed up, they didn’t explain, comment, or express any opinion about whether any of that is good or bad or accurate. They say both are wrong. But don’t explain what is correct. They spent zero time explaining or discussing the insane societal implications. How do you not react at all when SCOTUS dissenting opinions are screaming that the sky is falling? You just go back to keeping score of which judges are on what side? Without explaining the sides? Or having any opinion on the sides? wtf? I was very frustrated listening to this.

I appreciate lawyers telling me why (in their opinion) a decision does nothing, or why the dissenting / majority opinion is wrong. I’m flabbergasted this podcast completely ignores those being diametrically opposed. Like the decisions do nothing / don’t matter. Like they’re just punching a clock at a nothing-matters factory.

Podcasts Jay did appreciate, on the same topic:

More timeline notes:

  • At ~1:03 we mention that Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (Arabic: أنور العولقي, romanized: Anwar al-‘Awlaqī) was an American-Yemeni lecturer and jihadist who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government.

  • SEC vs. Jarkesy et al. Decided June 27, 2024. Chris thinks this is the only SCOTUS opinion so far this year that matters, is surprised that the liberals aren’t supporting it.

Transcript (via OpenAI Whisper):

We can talk about anything you want, as Jane once is ignorant. If you’d like to call in to the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 1-402-577-0117. I keep my nose out of this mic. It drives me crazy when I’m editing and I hear my breath, I’m like, God, I hate me. I know, I get really annoyed by that as well. My breath? Yeah. No, I mean, well, not just my breath, though. It’s all of my little tics that I do. You know what I’m saying? Like, sometimes I get these like little mouth noises and sometimes I say words over and over. I don’t know. It just drives me nuts. We are recording right now. Oh, we are recording? Yeah. Welcome to Jay Flaunce’s Ignorance, episode 45. So Chris and I, so here’s what’s happened. Ready? Everybody brace yourselves. So I listen to podcasts all the time. As everyone knows. And I listen to a lot of political podcasts and I listen to a lot of Supreme Court of the USA podcasts and other lawyer analysis and whatever. And a lot of this stuff I post on my Discord. You can join our Discord if you want, I guess. So we talk politics and I’m listening to people’s opinions about Supreme Court decisions. And I’m like, holy shit, this is a big deal. Like this thing, this one is a big deal. And I’m thinking that because the lawyers are telling me that it’s a big deal. So on one of those podcasts, very annoying, one of the podcast hosts said, okay, well, feel free to comment and give me your feedback. But don’t do that until you’ve read the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. And I’m like, oh, god damn it. Like every time I’ve tried to read an actual decision of SCOTUS, I got so frustrated every single time. But Chris is like, oh, it’s easy. You’re going to love it. This is going to be a fun process. I think it is. You’re really going to enjoy this. I do enjoy reading yourself. No, I mean, they’re not difficult. It’s really well explained. It’s explained in a down to earth manner. They do give references, but you can still follow it without having a law degree, at least in my opinion. Yeah. Okay, so we’re going to put that to the test. This episode is about how long will Chris sit here and listen to me ask stupid questions about a SCOTUS decision by reading the SCOTUS PDF. Okay, so here we are. We’re sitting with Trump via the United States. You’re staring at it, right? You’re staring at the front page. Like you said, so are you going to read… What sheet are you reading from starting out? What sheet? Not sheet, but like, are you starting from… So I’ve got 113 page PDF. The first thing is the syllabus. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So on the cover of this thing, it says SCOTUS syllabus, Trump via United States, right? Okay. So basically page one of the PDF. Yeah. So just right off the bat, first word, certiorari. I didn’t look that up because this app that I’m using on my iPad isn’t like my Kindle where I can just highlight a word and it tells me what the hell that means. You know what certiorari to the United States of the Supreme Court of Appeals means? I think it’s certiorari. So what does that mean? And that is as soon as I can open up a window, I will search it. See how easy this is? We’re on word one of page one of 113 pages. How do you spell it? C-E-R-T-I-O-R-A-R-I. I could Google it on my phone. So I got it. It’s a writ or order by which a higher court reviews a decision of a lower court. Oh, okay. And that’s the SCOTUS’s whole job, right? SCOTUS is always reviewing the decisions of lower courts. I think that’s why they say they granted it. So like when there’s a disagreement and it needs to go to the next level, they can decide whether or not they take the case on. So then when they say they granted this, they’re saying, yes, we will review it. That oddly is kind of like a complicated way of saying we’re going to grant your request to review because they turn them down all the time. Yeah. They only actually hear 5% of whatever the case is, right? Something like that. Okay. So what this SCOTUS or whatever, however you pronounce that, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. So I broadly know that there’s circuit courts and then it’s usually the D.C. Circuit Court. So the federal court system is broken into all these layers and you have to bubble up through all those. So like if we get in trouble with the federal law somehow in the state of Nebraska, we’re in federal district, whatever the hell we are, seven or whatever. And so we get sent up through that system of federal courts, which are separate from the municipal courts or whatever they call that. You can tell I’m not a lawyer anyway. Yeah. Okay. So this Trump v. United States came up from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Yeah. All right. We’re good. Okay. So this is case number 23-939. See how easy this is? This was argued on April 25th, 2024 and decided on July 1st, 2024. Yeah. Okay. So it’s 113 page document. The syllabus of this document is the first one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine pages of the syllabus. Right. Just to outline the document. Then when we get to page 10 of the PDF, that becomes page one of the opinion of the court. Right. So the opinion of the court is the majority of the judges on the Supreme Court have decided that this is the opinion of the court. Right. And so this is what the Supreme Court says with the force of law that it doesn’t become law. It is the decision of the court. It’s not a lie. It’s the verdict of the Supreme Court. This is what these laws mean. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing. Right. Okay. You’ve now escalated. You’ve appealed as high as you can possibly go. You’re done. This is the opinion of the Supreme Court until some future court overturns their opinion. Right. Okay. Cool. All right. So that’s page 10. That’s the opinion of the court. Now, the opinion of the court is like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40. Boy, I lost track. Something like 65 pages or something. Right. And then we get to, after those 65 pages, we get to the first concurrence. Right? So- Oh, wait a minute. So you’re on… Oh, yeah. So are you on Justice Thomas’s concurrence? Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yep. Okay. So this page of this PDF becomes page one as labeled inside the PDF, right? Because this is page one of the concurrence, right? Mm-hmm. So this is Justice Thomas saying, yep, the Supreme Court as a body has decided, and I agree, but I’ve got more to say about it than the major opinion, right? So Justice Thomas. Oh, more than… Yeah. They may dissent in certain parts. Like, I think technically the one that I technically agree with is Amy Comey Barrett. I agree with her opinion probably more than anybody’s, but anyways, go ahead. So this Thomas’s concurrence is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 pages, right? Mm-hmm. And then after that, we get to another concurrence, which is the Barrett concurrence. Mm-hmm. Right? She is also concurring. She’s saying, look, overall, I agree with the quote, opinion of the court, end quote, right? Because the opinion of the court is the first thing stated in this PDF after the syllabus. So she is actually calling out an entire section that she does not agree with, which is part three dash C of the court’s opinion. Right. She’s saying, I agree with everything else except for that one. Yep. Okay. That’s fine. And that took her six and a half, five and a half pages to do. Yeah. And these pages aren’t, so, so the, the PDF I’m looking at, there’s not that much on the page. Yeah. It looks like we’re looking at the same thing. Yeah. They waste two thirds of the paper. Yeah. I don’t know why they do that. In white space. Well, I assume it’s so people can make shit loads of notes. Oh, that’s a good point. Like I’m doing on this side. Your little lines. I need tons of paper, just all my highlighting, and I just need tons of paper to bitch about Trump and stuff on here. All right. Yeah. So this is Barrett’s concurrence, which is, I mostly agree, but section three C or whatever you said. All right. Then we get to page one of the first dissent. So this is the Sotomayor dissent, right? And I think she had joined by the other two. Do you see that? Oh yeah. Okay. So justice Sotomayor with whom justice Kagan and justice Jackson join dissenting. Okay. So three of the there’s nine judges, right? Yep. Okay. So three of the nine judges are like, overall, this is a bad opinion. That’s what a dissent is, right? Because if they just had nitpick stuff to say, they’d say that in a concurrence, not in a dissent. The dissent is saying, broadly speaking, that this is a bad decision. We shouldn’t issue this decision, right? Yeah. So three of the nine judges are saying, nope, this was a bad decision. The court shouldn’t be saying this. Right. So this is the first dissent one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. Okay. So that’s about 33 pages. And then we get to justice Jackson’s dissent page one, right? So justice Jackson, did he have anyone? Okay. So no one else is also co-authoring this dissent. This is just Jackson’s dissent apparently. So he’s going to talk about Sotomayor and all the things that the three of those people authored by Sotomayor apparently, or maybe the legal interns actually write at all. I’m not sure. And the justices. That’d be interesting to get, you know, behind the scenes. Like that’s probably true. What percentage of the words are actually written by, I think the Supreme court assistants, legal aides or whatever. I think they’re actually pretty well paid unlike in a lot of places, but lawyers overall are pretty well paid. Anyway. Yeah. So justice Jackson, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 pages about dissent. Okay. So there we go. We’ve outlined this 113 page document about this one ruling of the court. Right? So we’ve got these descent sections. We’ve got a synopsis up front, which is repetitious, but maybe it’s helpful to turn the 63 pages into seven pages. Maybe that’s helpful. Maybe that’s not, I don’t know. How do we want to tackle this 113 pages? Because I spent an hour and a half yesterday just going through with my highlighter, highlighting various things, but I still haven’t read it all. So I don’t like how much time do you spend with 113 pages like this before you think you understand it? Is it eight hours? Is it 16 hours? Is it two hours? What, like what? Well, it depends. Like sometimes I’ll go back and read the descent. I know a lot of times I primarily read opinion of the court and I usually, the first thing I read is the summation of it. I’m not sure which ones come first or second. Like I think that they, because I think how the process works is that the majority write their opinion and then it goes around to everybody in the court. And that’s why I think there, you see in the dissenting opinions, them saying, well, the concurrence is messed up because of this. And then the concurrence will address those concerns in the second, I think it’s the second portion of it, which is the actual opinion, not the syllabus. Like, there’ll be like, Hey, the dissent is saying, making this point about this previous judgment, but nobody gives a crap about this judgment. And it’s never been used. It’s never been referenced by the court. Nobody cares. It’s not, you see what I’m saying? So like a lot of times I bounce around depending on what I want to hear. And that’s usually dependent upon what has happened. So for example, this one, I saw lots of stuff that said, well, the president can now go out and have the army execute some of his political rivals. So to me, that’s very opinion of the court focus. So I read through it to see, well, is this true? How does this, how does this fit into their opinion? And I think that there’s actually a dissenting statement where they actually call that out and they say, Oh, you could just go and murder someone. Well, in the actual opinion of the court, they address that. They say, well, the dissent dissenting opinion is saying that we think you can, the president can just go out and murder one of his political rivals, but that’s not what we’re saying. And then they explain why that’s not what they’re saying. So to answer your question, I usually focus on what’s surrounded my question. And sometimes I just read my favorite writers. Like, I don’t know throughout this, if you had somebody that you thought, Oh, I like how they said that, even if you didn’t agree with them, you could say, well, they were concise or they explained this in a way that I thought was very insightful. You know, like, I don’t know if you felt that way about. So my favorite writers so far are Gorsuch and Thomas and the opinions that I agreed with from to answer your question. Do you remember in discord, how it was going back and forth with all these different podcasts takes on this? Like, like I use the discord as a dumping ground for, okay, I just listened to this for an hour and a half. Here’s a bunch of lawyers saying that Trump can go out and shoot anybody. No, I’m sorry. Trump can’t. Trump can have the army to it. Yeah. Right. So, so one of the most frustrating podcasts. So I’m trying to scroll back to actually find that thing. I was super frustrated with one of the podcast links. I think that you sent out because, and I’m just going to read my discord. We talk so much shit in here that I got to scroll back and back and back. You know, and sometimes I, I worry about making comments because I’m like, am I coming across like a dickhead? You know? Cause I’m not talking to him in person. You know, I, I try not to, I try to just be like neutral. Level headed neutral. And I, I don’t know if that, if I’m successful that way, but the reason I don’t invite randos into my politics channel is that until you know someone well, like we’ve been best friends for three years now or whatever, however long you’ll, you know, admit to being that. Although we haven’t seen each other lately very much. Well, right. But that’s not, not our fault until you know someone. Well, you can’t know their intent, right? When they say something. So the only people in my politics channel, most of the time are people that I know extremely well that know where I’m coming from and know that just because I post something doesn’t mean I agree with it. I, I use it as a dropping ground for, well, this is an interesting thing I saw today and I don’t even necessarily even label it as this is the worst thing ever. This is the best thing ever. I just post it with no commentary at all to see if anyone else is interested because this thing that I just listened to is so interesting to me that I would love to talk to somebody about it if anyone wants to talk to me about it. So I drop it in the channel and just say, just there’s the link. And if anyone at all is interested in talking about that, great. Let’s talk about that. And we could totally disagree on it and that’s fine. But it’s there. There’s a lot of places on the internet where I won’t talk politics at all because it’s very gatekeepery in terms of if you don’t signal the correct opinion about how you feel about this issue in this channel, you’re going to get, you know, attacked or banned or whatever. And it’s like, okay, well I know in this channel, this is their opinion on this. And therefore I’ll only talk about stuff on that side because they get hostile when, you know, but in my channel, it’s not like that. It’s people that actually know each other that could sit down face to face like we’re doing now behind the cowards, the microphone that makes us cowards. It was a long, long anecdotal. Just forget that. But yeah. Okay. So here’s the example of that podcast. I was listening to. So here’s my review. This is what I put in discord. This is a 90 minute podcast for legal scholars who have already deeply studied SCOTUS decisions this year and historical and want to hear inside baseball opinions about extremely subtle details and trends. If you’re looking for lawyers to explain slash summarize cases or tell you why they matter, this isn’t the podcast for you. This podcast renders no opinions about whether any of the decisions were good or bad in any way. This is on July 10th. If you want to go find it, if you want broad stroke ruminations on decades of variations of interpretations of originalism, and we never did have an episode where we were fighting about originalism. You’ll love this episode at 30 minute mark. I thought they were going to state an opinion because they said in that quote, the far left is saying Trump can shoot anybody now. And the far right is saying, yay, Trump can shoot anybody now. End of quote. They literally said that on the podcast. Oh yeah. Right. And I’m like, oh, okay. They’re going to tell me why one side of that statement is wrong or it should be wrong, but it’s not or whatever. They’re going to actually explain something to me about how the court works and how law works. Continuing my review. But Nope. Even with that teed up, they didn’t explain comment or express any opinion about whether any of that is good or bad or accurate. They say both are wrong, but don’t explain what is correct. They spend zero time explaining or discussing the insane societal implications. How do you not react at all when SCOTUS dissenting opinions? This is the case we’re on right now and our cut pulled up are screaming that the sky is falling. You just go back to keeping score of which judges are on what side without even explaining the sides or having any opinion on the sides. What the fuck? I was very frustrated listening to this. This is my, my, uh, that was my review. Zero stars. I gave that podcast. I was very upset. Really? I didn’t even know you could do that. Yeah. Rate it. Oh, I didn’t actually rate it. I don’t think anyone cares about the way that I listen to podcasts anyway. So that, that podcast was advisory opinions. There was an episode called is text history and traditional alive and well. So I listened to them for an hour and a half and then I unsubscribed to the feed because I don’t like that podcast. So there, there are. And so then I linked back to like strict scrutiny that I thought had a good take on it. The, the five, four podcasts, uh, that you linked, which I like, I listened to that one quite a bit. The Tom woods show Tom’s a dude who I disagree with almost all the time, but I think he’s smart. Like he’s actually saying like, he’s, he’s actually explaining things and I think he’s wrong, but he tells me why he’s thinks those things, which I find very valuable. That’s great. Like, if you can explain to me in an intelligent way, this is my worldview and why. Great. I listen to, I try to seek out stuff that actually does that. I want to hear from people who disagree with me. The case that I was ranting about is this case. And you just explained how you generally go about trying to read these cases. And Oh, the other podcast, the podcast that told me, don’t give me an opinion until you’ve actually read the damn thing. Yeah. Which irked me. Which actually, I love that he said that. And, and partly was because the advisory opinion ones made sense to me because I had read the majority of the opinion by the time I listened to that podcast. And I don’t think that they say at the beginning that, Hey, we’re thinking that you have read this thing, but, but I think it helped me enjoy what they were saying a little bit more because it gave like some insights. I think there was this one point where somebody was even bringing up a counter argument that I had never heard before about why they disagreed with what the Supreme court said. Which the, the advisory opinion one, but if you hadn’t read, you wouldn’t know where they’re coming from. Like, it was kind of a weird deal. And I didn’t know that we’d be talking about the advisory opinion episode or else I probably would have re-listened to some of it so I could make some comments on that. But my, my, my point is my point. Well, it’d be interesting if you like went back and restarted it, having read some of it at least. But anyways, go on. Yeah. We can do a four hour episode where we listen to that podcast episode.

So for an hour and a half, and I complain about it the whole time, and you explain to me why I shouldn’t be mad about it. So, okay. So you open the New York times or the Fox news or fucking whatever. And it says the Supreme court just said that Trump can have the army shoot Biden now. And then the dissenting opinion said, that’s not at all what we said or whatever. Where you, the first thing you do is find the PDF of the SCOTUS decision and jump into 113 pages. Sometimes if I’m really interested in it, I’ll just read it and then I’ll skim over stuff that I think is dumb. But for the most part, if it’s something I’m interested in, like Chevron, I was interested in, I read all of that one. The other one that was somewhat related to Chevron, which was SEC versus Jersey. I read all of that one, the bump stock one. I read all of that one. My point is, is that if I’m interested in what they have to say or the opinion, or I think it affects me, I’ll read the entire thing. And the reason why I do that, actually, somebody in discord, and I don’t know why we’re making this discord, so you had actually posted an article. So if you follow this article about the Supreme court for facts is a betrayal of justice. So I went and read that. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that reads your posts and comments about them, honestly. So this was a very interesting one. We probably don’t want to talk too much about it because we’re talking about this other one. But I actually disagreed with the majority opinion. I actually think that Barrett got it right again. Oddly enough, I don’t know why I agree with her so much. Which case are you talking about now? I’m sorry. This is so I disagreed with the majority opinion, which is, you know, Ohio versus EPA. So I disagreed with the majority opinion, which is kind of the conservative side. I think it felt like they made the decision along party lines in that particular one. I think that in my brain, I admit that people do that in general. For example, if I’m reading this case about Trump versus the United States, I don’t look at the dissenting opinions, even though I felt like they were along party lines as well. The dissenting opinions. I don’t look at those and think to myself, although these guys are crap, you know, they’re they’re breaking these moral principles or go back into Sotomayor’s history and be like, oh, she’s doing this because she is. Related to somebody, whatever the case may be. I look at it like people are generally they make errors. And in this particular case, I felt like the majority opinion gave in to their tendency to be along a political line here and they got it wrong. I think Barrett got it right legally. And that’s just a mistake that people are going to make sometimes. But what I disliked about this article is that it was so vehement against them, the ones, the majority that I disagreed with. And they’re saying things like homophobic, all these other different things. It’s at a historic low. All these ridiculous things to basically knock them down as people instead of debating against the material that’s there. And I get sick and tired of going to Fox News and hearing all that crap about stuff that they don’t disagree with. And then you go to CNN and you hear the crap and all the hysteria, you know, like with stuff that they don’t disagree with. And they they sneak in this this hyperbole in such a way that it makes you look at the Supreme Court and the people on it as if they’re out to get you some for some reason. When really, they’re just trying to do a good job and they’re doing the best that they can. And human beings in general are going to make a mistake to where they side on the side of ideology. I can’t fault anybody for that left, right, middle. I can’t. All I can do is read it and agree or disagree with it. Why I guess I’m bringing this up and why I like to read them is because I just want to formulate my own opinions without having this cloud of disgust formulated by somebody else. Essentially, I’ve lost trust in listening to anybody else about it. And I just have to rely on myself to reach it. Yeah. OK, so if these are things are so easy to read, maybe we should start reading it. And I can tell you all the things I highlight. So I spent an hour and a half last night on this document and I only got like, I don’t know, 25 pages into it or something. Did you like reading it? No, it’s awful. You didn’t find it interesting? No, nothing at all. All right. All right. Go on. No, and you’ll see why. Like here. OK, so. All right. So in the opinion of the court, I’m on page three of the opinion of the court, which is like page 10 of the PDF or something. So I’m on OK, I’m on page 10 of the PDF. I need you to be on page three of the opinion of the court. Is that where you are? Oh, yeah. Because you now have an absolute page number. I don’t because I’m using the notes app. OK, so here’s the first thing I highlight. I don’t remember what it was because this was early in the process of here’s the first thing I highlighted. And I’ll try to remember why I highlighted it. This is an excellent podcast, by the way. If anyone’s out there listening to this, I’m sorry. And the prep work is fantastic on this. All right, here we go. So motion towards the bottom of the page, motion to dismiss indictment based on presidential immunity in case number blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Trump argued that all of the indictments allegations fell within the core of his official duties. I.D. at 27. I’m not sure what I.D. means. But anyway, page 27 of some other document. And he contended that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. And the reason I highlighted this is because as a computer programmer, it drives me bonkers when we use phrases like outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. So most of this document that I’ve read so far is trying to tie in most of the highlighting that I’ve done is yeah, Roberts. Okay. So Roberts wrote the opinion. Okay. So Roberts at all, Roberts is trying to define what the core duties are, trying to give a constitutional context, trying to get an established of a law that Congress has passed context of what the core duties are. When those are immune, he’s trying to bucket a bunch of stuff together. Anyway, the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. Does that phrase mean anything at all? Does it define a single act that is or is not in the outer perimeter of the official responsibilities? Like, this is so vague that I have no. So I was just hoping because this is page three. I was just hoping that, okay, well, later on, it’s going to define these terms, because if it doesn’t define the terms, all of this is a big waste of time, right? Like you have to define. So listening to those podcasts about the analysis of lawyers saying what this thing says, right? What I thought I came to understand was that what this case did was set up. These are this is the inner core sanctum of the president’s official responsibilities. And these things he’s absolutely immune for. Right. And then an outer shell where he has presumptive immunity. Right. And then an outer shell where. So there’s like three or four layers or whatever, according to the podcasts that I’ve listened to, that there’s a three or four layer process of what the president can and can’t be held civilly or criminally liable for during office and or after office. Right. Like, there’s a lot of things like the number of things he could do. There’s a million things he could do. And then what the Supreme Court is saying is, oh, yeah, there’s a million things you could do. We’re going to bucket those million things into like six buckets or four buckets or whatever. So when you read this document and it says actions performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities, does that mean something to you? Because that drives me crazy on page three, because I don’t know what the fuck that means. And if it’s in, if it’s defined in this document somewhere, I don’t know where it’s defined. And if it’s defined somewhere else, I don’t know where it’s defined. So I do not find this document comforting on page three. What does that mean? What does that mean, Chris? You love this document. I fucking hate it. Explain this to me. Well, I don’t necessarily say I love the document. You’ve said it so many times. What I do love is taking out the emotional bias that I get from other sources. OK, that’s fine. So here we are. So but here. So what I would say is, is that, like you said, they did have three different categories. Right. Later in the day, we haven’t gotten there yet. Right. So he hasn’t. But you do know it’s coming, because I guess you got that far. But from from the from the podcasts, yeah, from from reading things and listening to things. Yeah, I know. I think what’s coming, but I haven’t gotten that far yet because I’ve only spent two and a half hours on this so far. Yeah, I think what he’s trying to say is, is that there is official duties. I think that those official duties that he’s kind of referring to are things as defined in the Constitution of the United States. The president has these responsibilities that he has to do. So what’s in the outer perimeter? So the outer perimeter may be some things that are gray areas, but still can be construed to be a part of what he needs to do. Let’s say he’s going into his office to sign a bill. You would agree that signing a bill is part of his responsibility. Yeah. Or to veto it, whatever the case may be. Let’s say on the way to sign the bill, his driver is driving five miles per hour over the speed limit. Driving to the office isn’t like an official thing where that’s part of his official duties that say you have a responsibility to drive to the office to sign this bill. Right. But it is required for him to sign the bill. And let’s say that there’s some cop that doesn’t want him to sign that bill and he’s maybe just going five miles per hour over the speed limit. I think what they’re trying to say is that a cop can’t pull him over and prohibit him from signing the bill because driving to work is on the outside perimeter of what he needs to do to do his job. And you can’t use this semantic, not semantic, but you can’t say, well, I can charge him for anything I want, thereby preventing him from getting to the office. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. He’s not doing something that that’s directly mentioned, but he’s going to do something that is. And in that process, that may be a gray area of whether or not he can even be pulled over. And the courts are going to decide that. Yeah. Case by case basis, the court decides whether or not it’s on the outer perimeter of his official duties. Yeah. I mean, does that actually give any clarity to you? I mean, and I don’t know it’s it’s it’s it’s ambiguous. It is. That’s my frustration with it. But I think it was intentionally ambiguous. I know. And I think it’s OK, fine. Yeah. Great. Yeah. What have we accomplished? Nothing, in my opinion. But here we go. Yeah. So page four. So so thank you. No. OK, hold on. Personally, thank you for clarifying for me that I was right. It’s ambiguous. And I’m sorry I find that frustrating just in our personal relationship that I’m I’m hating on the thing you love. But as a computer programmer, when you tell me, oh, this thing is absolutely this thing. And the other things that may or may not be listed are absolutely maybe something else. I’m like, fuck you. Shut up, because you haven’t said anything. That’s that’s a me problem. I have a me problem. I’m admitting it. Well, yeah. And just to clarify, again, I don’t necessarily love the document. What I do love is that and maybe this is like where my legal knowledge is very sparse. So like the very specifics that are inside of this document are not legally binding. I think that what I like about this is that they make a decision and they say he’s immune, whatever. And what this document is, is like an insight into their brain about the process of what they’re going through. One thing that really pissed me off about what I think it was, the five, four podcast. One somebody said in there about I don’t even know if it was one that I posed. It was I honestly oh, it was about the Bumstock case ruling. She talks about how Barrett dissented. And the main point that they were trying to make was that on who’s the Supreme Court justice that’s over a mauler. And I can’t think of his name, the one that’s been there the longest. They were like, oh, he can’t get his ducks in a row. Right. The funny thing is, is that I like it when Barrett dissented because I got to hear I got to hear what was going on in her brain. And that’s what I liked. You know, like I got to hear her thought process and what was she was thinking and all these other things. That’s what I like about these is I get to kind of see their insights. And I generally like to see that in other people. Like, I like to see your insight. You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s not a sick man. And that’s why I read it directly. Yeah. Like if it’s if it’s a journal of a personal journal. OK, but I thought the point was to clarify the law. So when they say, oh, yeah. And they just like, oh, I don’t feel like anything’s being clarified. But that’s fine. All right. So we can go on to page four. So the next thing I highlighted was in Marbury versus Madison, one cranch, one thirty seven in

  1. The court distinguished between two kinds of official acts, discretionary and ministerial. A bunch of other stuff. I don’t know what’s going on. Those are years or something. It observed that, quote, although discretionary acts are, subquote, only politically examinable and the subquote, sorry, the judiciary has the power to hear cases. So I found that interesting. So so what’s the phrase to me? Only politically examinable, I would think, means the courts have to stay the fuck out of it because it’s a political decision, which is Congress’s responsibility, not the court. But in Marbury versus Madison in 1803, apparently the Supreme Court is telling me that the court distinguished between two kinds of official acts, discretionary and ministerial, and observed that although discretionary acts are only politically examinable, the judiciary has the power to hear cases. So I think what’s happening in these three sentences is the court is saying that in some other case, we said that discretionary acts are only politically examinable, but we have the power to hear the case anyway, which means that this whole thing means nothing except that there’s two kinds of official acts, discretionary and ministerial, which I don’t know what those are. Right. So theoretically, I’d have to go read all these other citations to figure out what what is a discretionary act? What is a ministerial act? I have no idea. Like, what do those things mean? And then the next sentence is, hey, we decided that the sky is blue, but the sky is black. And it’s like, OK, like, whatever. I don’t know what you’re saying and why that’s important or why any of this is relevant to anything. Right. And just to clarify, I don’t think that they’re saying that we thought the sky was blue and we’re saying that it’s black. I think that what they’re saying is, is that we’re blind because this has never happened before. And the Constitution doesn’t directly address this. But tell me what the phrase only politically examinable means. So I think I can’t really express like a definition for that. And we can look it up if you want. But I thought it I thought it meant that the courts have no jurisdiction, that Congress examines it, not the courts. Isn’t that what that means? Only politically examinable. Right. So that’s a quote within a quote. Yeah. So they’re saying they’re saying the overall thing that they observed is the whole sentence, which is you have to add on to it. The judiciary has the power to hear cases. So going back to my original point is that they don’t really have anything that directly addresses this. So what they’re saying here is, hey, look, here’s a case. This is saying that the judiciary has the power to hear cases. So what we’re saying is, is that there’s no absolute immunity. The judiciary can be involved in at least some aspects of what is being done here. I mean, if you want to fight over like what the discretionary and the other stuff in there, like the ministerial, I can’t fight over anything because I don’t understand it. Well, I think all is going on. What they’re trying to say is, is that they’re just trying to give some justification for their opinion. And they’re just I think what is confusing about this is that they’re kind of reaching really far out there for this case that basically says, here’s our grounds that we can be involved to some extent. That’s their only point. I think maybe maybe maybe some lawyer that’s listening to this out there can. Well, I’m sure they can. They can bill us three hundred dollars an hour to explain it. And then another lawyer bills three hundred dollars an hour to say he’s wrong. Cool. You guys have a really fun industry. So anyway, on the bottom of that page, Trump’s actions, quote, allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws and quote, meant that those actions were or sorry, quote, were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion. End quote. In the court’s view, the fact that Trump’s actions allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws meant that those actions were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion. Well, yeah, because properly within the scope of his lawful discretion means it’s legal. Right. And allegedly violating generally applicable criminal laws means it’s take out the word allegedly. That means it’s illegal. In the courts, in the court’s view, the fact that Trump’s actions, quote, allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws, meaning Trump did something illegal, meant that those actions, quote, were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion. So the Supreme Court is explaining to me that Trump breaking the law wasn’t breaking the law because that’s his job. He has the lawful discretion to do that. And this is such lengthy, legal, he is garbledygook that it seems to me that you read sentences and sentences and sentences. And what it says is nothing. What it says is Trump didn’t break the law because it was in his lawful discretion, which means it’s not illegal. So the first part wasn’t applicable because you can’t violate generally applicable criminal laws when you’re not doing illegal things because Trump was doing legal things. That’s fine. There are laws. They make things legal and illegal and some things are legal. Some things aren’t legal. But the way they construct these paragraphs talking about it drives me crazy. This says Trump was doing lawful things. Fine. That’s all you had to say. So in a sentence later, I don’t think they’re saying that they’re actually quoting the D.C. Circuit. Right. They’re quoting it. They’re unraveling all the other legal is that came before it. Right. Right. But the effect of the words is Trump broke the law. No, he didn’t. And we’re the Supreme Court. So no, he didn’t. No, I think it’s like, OK. So he has I’m trying to think of how I could explain this. But so Congress can’t. So the president has duties. Right. We’ll just bring up the simple case. If he has a duty to either veto or or sign laws in the law. Right. That is part of his duties. Let’s let’s say, for example, Congress wanted to be douchebag because they didn’t like the fact that the president was signing things into law. So they say we’re going to make a law that makes it illegal for the president to sign laws in the law. I know that’s silly, but let’s say he’s like, well, he’s like, hey, I got this bill on my desk and you guys just made a law that made it illegal for me to sign it. But I’m going to sign it anyway. Yeah, that would be a law that he had that he is violating that they would argue he has absolute immunity for. Right. Because Congress can’t make it illegal for him to do his duties. And him judging what those duties are that he has falls within that. Right. So what the lower court said was is that it wasn’t that case. It wasn’t the case of something that was in within his lawful discretion. It was a it was a general law. In other words, they’re saying he broke the speed limit. He didn’t break the law that said you can’t sign bills in a law. So he broke a more general law. Therefore, we can charge him with it because.

it wasn’t directly related to his responsibilities. That’s how I took that. And the lower court is saying, yes, we can charge him because it was a general law. It wasn’t specific to his duties. And now I think that they’re going to say why they disagree with that. I don’t think they’ve made a judgment about what they’ve said yet, have they? I don’t know. I never got deep enough into this document for them to tell me anything. Because I’m only three hours deep on this. So that was the one that was before them. Then the last paragraph of that section, it says, we granted certiorari to consider the following question, whether, and if so, to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged… I’m sorry, where are you? Where are you? Sheet five. Oh, okay. So you moved a page ahead. Yeah. Oh, I got it. I got it. Sorry. Go ahead. They’re saying that this is what the DC court said and why they said that they could proceed with prosecuting him. So they’re admitting what has been said so far. And then they said, well, we are here today to say whether, and if so, to what extent does former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office? Essentially, they’re saying this is what the previous court said, and this is what we’re here to decide. Great. Let’s just fucking decide it then. Yeah, I mean, that’s what… So that’s the thing I highlighted. So on the top of that page, page five, oops, uh, like the district court, the DC circuit declined to analyze the actions described in the indictment to determine whether they involved official acts. So fucking great. Again, we’re not saying anything. Yeah, so… Because if you’re saying some things are legal and some things are illegal and official acts are legal and the other ones may or may not be legal, you’ll have to ask us in the future. And then you don’t even say whether the acts were official acts or not. You’re not even going to… Then what are we even doing here? We’re on page five and I’m so frustrated that they’re wasting so much of my time because they haven’t decided shit. So that’s actually… Tell me anything. Tell me anything real that isn’t just legal garbledygook. Say something tangible, concrete about something that physically happened in this universe and what we should do about it. This is what got me about what other things that we listened to that weren’t directly related to this. It’s what was really frustrating me. And I don’t know the legal jargon for this, but there’s… So the Supreme Court can make various types of decisions. They can make a decision that’s very focused, that doesn’t universally apply, but we’re just saying, hey, this particular case, we’re going to say you can’t do this, whatever, but this doesn’t apply universally. And then there’s one, a version that they could do that says, hey, we’re making a very universal statement and you can’t generally make this. So this is on the more specific type. This is specific guidance. But they’re specifically saying that they haven’t specifically said anything. Right. Right. So we’re on page five. We haven’t said anything yet. Exactly. So like… And the lower court didn’t say anything either and we haven’t either yet. So I’m like, all right, great. So we’re on page 15 of this fucking PDF and maybe someday we’re going to say something and that’s great. Let’s get to that part. I think I even said in some of the Discord posts that this was just a big nothing burger. Yeah, you did say that. Like that’s what the majority of this document is. It’s nothing. Right. Great. Then fucking make it shorter. Right. So I guess my point is, is that why all the… Take less time. Why all the vitriol that’s out there? That’s what gets me. Well, I assume it’s going to be in the descending opinion, but I can’t even get there because I’ve spent four fucking hours getting to page five of this stupid thing. All right. So now we’re in section two on page five. We’re page five, right? Of the opinion. So this is the next thing I highlighted. This case is the first criminal prosecution in our nation’s history of a former president for actions taken during his presidency. My note over here says, yeah, because it’s fucking Trump. He’s a fucking unprecedented motherfucker. He’s constantly doing crazy shit. Yeah. So as a side note, though, I do think that section one was just a background, right? Was it? It says, yeah, because fucking Trump. Oh, yeah. So, you know, like… Section one was just a backdrop, right? The synopsis was a summary. So they really wouldn’t say anything. That’s fine. Great. Let’s just not read those in the future. Great. That’s a good point. You know, let’s do it. All right. So the next thing I highlighted, the parties before us do not dispute that a former president can be subject to criminal prosecution for unofficial acts. Well, that’s good. So the claimant and the defendant, right? Both sides of this legal spat have both apparently agreed that if a president does unofficial acts, they are not immune. That’s awesome, because on the more the sky is falling podcast. Yeah. It sounded like even they couldn’t even agree on that. They couldn’t even agree on a baseline of a limit on presidential immunity. But they did, according to the opinion. According to the opinion here on page five in section two, the parties before us do not dispute that a former president cannot be subject to criminal prosecution for unofficial acts. That I found very heartening. I’m like, oh, good. So everyone in this fucking room agrees. Apparently, I haven’t read the dissents yet. Everyone in this room agrees that if it’s unofficial act for Trump to shoot Biden in the face, then he’s not immune for prosecution for that. Yes, I would agree. Awesome. And this is the first time reading this. So this is the first piece of actual useful information I’ve gotten so far out of this process is that everyone in that room agreed this thing. That’s great. So next paragraph. They disagree, however, about what? Oh, sorry. My frustration with this is what is a, quote, unofficial act, unquote. Okay, so we spent a bunch of time later on that. But, you know, maybe we’ll get there. They disagree, however, about whether a former president can be prosecuted for his official actions. Fine. Trump contends that just as the president is absolutely immune from civil damages liability for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. Fuck me. So now I got to go read Fitzgerald 457 U.S. at 5756 because maybe over there is this outer perimeter of official responsibilities. Maybe they actually fucking define what that means. Maybe they don’t. I don’t know because I don’t have that reference, whatever. But anyway, again, we’re not we’re still not saying anything. We’re saying that apparently there’s a category of things called official acts and unofficial acts. And we do spend a bunch of time on that in a minute here. But apparently we have said one thing, which is if it’s unofficial, you’re not immune. Yeah, we haven’t named a single thing that is unofficial yet. But, you know, whatever. Okay. Immune from civil damage. Civil damage. Now, this is a different thing, right? Criminal versus civil damages. Okay, fine. Two different categories of stuff for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. Okay, fine. Oh, sorry. Trump contends that Trump contends that just as a president is absolutely immune from civil damages, civil damages liabilities for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. This is all Trump contending this. Apparently, he must be absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for such acts. Brief for petitioner 10. So there’s a bunch of petitioner briefs, right? That would go along with this document that could be thousands pages. Who knows? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So now we’re on page six. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. So the second paragraph, page six, we conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of the presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office, at least with respect to the president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. Category one, right? So this is exactly where they got that from. The podcasts that were telling me that there’s these rings of immunity. There it is. That’s category one. See, I made a big one highlighter. Okay, great. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. This is a category two. I called it two. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity will be absolute or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient. And I’m like, fuck you. God damn it. So all they’ve said is there’s two categories that are undefined. We don’t know if a single action is actually in either one of them yet. And they’ve said up front, fuck you, Jay. We’re not even going to tell you what number two is absolute or presumptive. Not that either one of those makes me happy. Like I think if the president does illegal shit, the president should go to jail for it. But, you know, who am I? Anyway, so on page six, we’re finally starting to get, the court is saying something. So that’s good, right? Like I’m feeling like, okay, we’re going to start building these layers of categories of actions that have different levels of immunity, right? Okay, fine. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then in section A here on the same page, I just highlighted commanding the armed forces of the United States because I just find that a very interesting, very tangible, very concrete power that the constitution of the United States definitely says he’s our commander-in-chief and he controls the army and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t apply in 2024. But the constitution is interesting when you actually read it. Anyway, he’s the commander of the army. He is absolutely immune from official powers. Why can’t he have his army bodyguard shoot Biden in the head? That’s where I’m at so far on page six. Because we’ve said, hey, absolute immunity, core power. He’s definitely in charge of the army. If the constitution only says he’s definitely in charge of like five things and the army is one of them. So if you’ve got a corporal in the army, I’m your commander-in-chief. What I tell you to do, but I was never in the army. So maybe you know a lot more about legal and illegal orders, but I don’t know anything about legal and illegal orders other than what I’ve seen in movies. So anyway, so as of page six of the opinion, that’s all I know so far. All I’ve gathered is we’re starting to have buckets. We’ve said in advance, we’re not even going to define the second bucket and definitely the army. So I don’t understand so far in this document why he can’t shoot Biden in the head or sorry, not him, his army guy, shoot him in the immune, absolute immunity. Okay, fine. If I’m wrong already, let me know. But maybe I’m wrong because of later in the document, it clarifies this. Well, I think it does. Oh, great. Yeah, we’re not just not there. Okay. So page seven, no matter the context, the president’s authority to act necessarily stems either from an act of Congress or from the constitution itself. Oh, okay, great. So here, SCOTUS is actually telling me something. It’s telling me, okay, this is how we know the layers of what he’s going to have immunity for based on actions. If the constitution explicitly says he can shoot Biden in the head, then he can definitely do that and he’s immune. Yeah. Or Congress made a law that basically said, hey, as part of your duties as president, you need to appoint this person, whatever. But yeah, you got, you got four sentences ahead of me because down below it says he may act even when the measurements he takes are incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress because he had constitutional authority. Okay. The exclusive constitutional authority of the president quote, disables the Congress from acting upon the subject end quote. So if the constitution says the president can do it, the president can do it. And Congress can’t say anything about it. Okay. Okay, fine. Great. I understood. So down towards the bottom of this page, but once it is determined that the president acted within the scope of his exclusive authority, his discretion in exercising such authority cannot be subject to further judicial examination. So this is saying if the constitution says the president can do it, then Congress, nor the judiciary can say anything about it. Right. Right. All right. Cool. And I mean, do you want to talk about examples of that or? Well, he does like the right there. It says he’s like the constitution, for example, thus the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States in the president, you know, and then it goes into history and president Lincoln and blah, blah, blah, and then civil war and all this stuff. So that’s, that’s an example. That’s what he does. And meaning that the president can’t, if the president pardoned somebody, which is well within his power and authority to do. Yeah. Because the constitution says so explicitly. Right. Congress can’t make a law that says, Hey, you can’t do that for this particular guy, whatever. Right. And then the judiciary can’t do anything about it either. They can’t be like, well, we’re going to, we’re going to put this special prosecutor on the case and find out something you did wrong with it and then throw you in jail for pardoning this person because that was his job. So I think we’re on the same page. Yeah. They can’t even comment about it. Yeah. I think we’re both understanding. Yeah. Yeah. Thomas. Correct. I think we’re the same, at least. Yeah. We might both be wrong, but anyway. Yeah. I mean, all right. Non-legal brains. Okay. AJ, conclusive and preclusive, disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. So this is the first time conclusive and preclusive came up and I’m like, oh shit. Yet again, I don’t know what the hell’s going on. So I got to go read this Youngstown three, three, four, three on these pages or something, the concurrence with Youngstown. Or you can, if you want, or you could just take him at his word and saying that. But I don’t know what words he’s saying is my point. Like, like this is like, everyone’s telling me this stuff’s easy and yet I read it and I don’t know what it means. And I can’t know what it means because taking him at his word doesn’t explain it to me. Well, the way that I interpret that is that being conclusive and preclusive means this is as a fictional act. And he makes a decision, right? It’s that’s the concluding statement. It’s done. It’s over. There’s nothing to follow up on. And, and it’s might have to look at preclusive in this case, but my point is, is there’s nothing else to be done. You know, he can’t, Congress can’t change it. The courts can’t change it. It’s it’s done. Yeah, fine. And this whole page is 17 references to things that I haven’t read. Well, if I’m actually going to understand what the fuck this page is saying, I need to go spend 40 hours reading these 17 other things to actually understand it. So when people tell me, Oh yeah, just read this, the SCOTUS opinion. It’s so easy. Well, it’s only easy if you don’t fucking look anything up or understand anything. Like if you’re just going to let your eyes glaze over the fact that you have no idea what they’re talking about, then yeah, it’s easy. You can read the words of the document, understand none of it and be like, yep, that was the SCOTUS opinion. It’s like, okay, great. So conclusive meaning of, or relating to, or being a conclusion. Preclusive meaning preventing something from happening or making it impossible to happen. Sweet. All right. So the bottom of that page, Congress cannot act on and courts cannot examine the president’s actions on subject within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. Cool. So this whole page is 17 references to things I haven’t read saying, Hey, look, if it says, if the constitution says the president can do it, nobody can do a fucking thing about it. Okay, fine. Great. You could have said that. Whatever. Well, I think they have. And I think that what they’re trying to do here is say, I’m not just drawing this out of the air. Here’s my evidence, blah, blah, blah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. It’s a very valuable profession. I’m really happy to spend time with you. All right. Page nine. Next thing I highlighted. Within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority. So, okay. If the constitution says the president can do it, the president can do it. Nobody can say anything about it. Within the exclusive sphere of constitutional authority. Okay, fine. Absolute immunity, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. Section B. But of course, not all of the president’s official acts fall within his conclusive and preclusive authority. Great. Thank you. Let’s explain something. Blah, blah, blah. We recognize that only a limited number of our prior decisions guide determination of the president’s immunity in this context. Yes. I’m glad you agree with me that this is fucking frustrating to read. That is because proceedings directly involving a president have been uncommon in our nation. Guess what I wrote on the side of that one? Yeah. Yeah, because fucking Trump. Right. Here we go again. Fucking Trump. All right. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, great. It’s page 10. I didn’t highlight anything on page 10. Page 10 is 15 more references to things I haven’t read. Okay, great. Page 11. A former president is, quote, entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts. Okay, fine. Blah, blah, blah. We therefore concluded that the president must be absolutely immune from damages liability and acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility, which is undefined unless it’s defined in Fitzgerald, which I didn’t go read. Who knows? Okay, fine. This is a ton of citations repeating what they’ve been saying for several pages now. Yeah. So he’s just giving support. This has already been said. And, you know, they’ve said it over and over again here. If it’s official, he’s immune. Great. By contrast, when prosecutors have sought evidence from the president, we have consistently rejected presidential claims of absolute immunity. Great. So then this is just a bunch of stuff about, hey, you have to hand over documents, blah, blah, blah. You don’t have immunity for, you know, if you fucked up your handling of documents, all that stuff. Okay, fine. Page 12. President Nixon. This court rejected his claim of absolute privilege. Great. Like I highlighted those green because I feel like that’s the court pressing back on presidential immunity. These are the things I highlight green. And then I have that red when I’m unhappy because the president’s need for complete candor and objectivity from advisors calls for great deferent, great deference from the courts. We hold that a presumptive privilege protects presidential communications. Like I’m presumptive privilege. Really? Like if I’m breaking the law, I don’t understand why I should have a presumptive privilege of immunity, but whatever. Okay. I’m not that mad. You know, whatever. Page 13. I didn’t highlight anything. Oh, I’m done. That’s it. That’s how far I got in this document in an hour and a half yesterday. So maybe that gave you a flavor of people telling me, oh, just go read the opinion. And I’m like, oh God, it’s going to be miserable and I’m going to freaking hate it. And I go do it. And that’s what I come up with is that I spent an hour and a half on 19 pages, learned far less than I thought I learned from listening to the podcast of lawyers telling me what it says. Right. And I’m just very frustrated by reading the SCOTUS opinion. So did you only read the opinion? Did you actually read the syllabus at the beginning? Yeah. Oh, okay. But it’s just repetition. And in the syllabus, when they’re like explaining things that I haven’t read yet, I’m like, okay, well, I’m not going to try to understand that yet. I’m going to try to understand it in the opinion where they’re actually going to explain it to me. But you know, they generally don’t. Right. They generally don’t explain anything. Generally they just point in 17 other directions and say, hey, go spend 80 hours reading all this other shit. And then they don’t define things. And then they brag about it. Then they then they say, oh, we’re not going to. It’s like I’m saying, hey, do your homework. And the kids like, oh, well, in this homework, I’m going to show that I didn’t do my homework, but here’s 17 other people that did homework. And I’m like, great, good job. That’s fine. They did do their homework sort of. Not yet. They didn’t on page 12. They haven’t done shit. Yeah. Well, I thought you’re I’m sorry. I thought you’re talking about the other people commenting on this. Like you’re oh, yeah, they read it and understood it because they’re lawyers. They’re used to this. Well, yeah, some of it. And don’t get me wrong. I think I read through it probably faster than I should because I’m kind of mentally going through it. I’m like, well, do I need to know the details of this case or can I just take them at their word for their opinion? Maybe there are some times where I shouldn’t and I should look more into that. But generally speaking, I don’t I don’t sit there and be like, well, this is dumb because I don’t directly understand it. I’m trying to get to their conclusions. And if I need more of a clarification at that point, I might go back and reread something or whatever the case may be. But I guess where I’m going with that is that I definitely did not spend an hour and a half reading the first twenty nine pages like you did. I didn’t go into that much detail. Right. And I never do. Right. And I don’t think you can. I think people who engage with this material are breadth learners, breadth first learners. So so what they’re doing is they’re not getting hung up on every single little reference. What they’re doing is they’re trying to get a vibe of, well, what’s actually going on? And then maybe they’ll dive into a couple little things. But generally speaking, they’re just reading the text and trying to get a feel for it. Right. The problem with my brain is every time I hit something I don’t understand, I deep dive it. I’m a I’m a depth first learner, which has advantages and disadvantages, because when you throw me in a swamp of ambiguity, I’m screwed because I’m going to be stuck on the first lily pad trying to understand the biodynamics of how that that one specific lily pad gets its oxygen out of the out of the soil, because that’s that’s just how my brain works. I want to understand that thing deeply. I don’t think you can be a lawyer with my brain. Maybe you can, or maybe I’m just bad at it. But but I don’t I don’t read a document as a vibe. I see a reference and I go read the reference. So in this document, the first seven pages of this opinion, if if I was doing what I would naturally do, I would literally have spent six months reading those other opinions, those other things. Yeah, because every single one of those things was going to send me to 50 other things because everything is citing 50 other things.

I get stuck right my brain gets stuck on every single because I want to understand it deeply because I want I’m like a Mastery guy I want to master the thing that I’m doing right and I think that there is no mastery here, right? And in here, I think that they’re being intentionally somewhat vague is because what they’re what they’re not saying Is that hey, you can’t proceed with this prosecution of Trump. They’re not saying that Oh, I see. I don’t even know what they’re saying because I’ve only gotten that far You see my problem, right? Like if other people don’t tell me what the fuck it says I can’t figure out what it says because I’m so busy. Yeah deep diving There are 50 fucking references and that’s why I thought it was a big nothing burger because all they did was say hey court You fail. Here’s the three different categories and where you failed was you didn’t distinguish between what was official acts? And what were not official acts as a part of your prosecution? You can’t just say I don’t like this thing that Trump did and therefore we’re gonna persecute him for it first you have to go through this process of understanding, you know, the separation of powers because you as as a Prosecutor we don’t we’re not gonna say that you have ultimate power to hold up every single thing in the country because you see something Political here what you have to do is follow this process and keep separation of powers active you have to determine whether or not he fell within his jurisdiction whether it fell within the directives of what a President’s responsibilities are and then you have to default To giving him immunity unless you can find a reason that he’s not immune because we can’t have a President that in the act of doing his official duties is always worried about the next court case That’s gonna come up and and this goes both ways, you know, like Biden shouldn’t be worried about. Oh my god Am I what’s gonna be the prosecution this week? Because my political opponents disagree with me and they’re gonna keep me tied up in the court system So now I can’t do my debt job, you know, like I think that that’s where they’re going with this They never said that they couldn’t proceed with the prosecution They just said you have to make sure it didn’t fall within his original duties if it falls within the perimeter Which would be something similar to what I said earlier It’s not specifically assigned by anybody, but it’s it’s part of the process IE he’s going five five miles per hour the speed limit You can’t just prosecute him to get it to where he doesn’t pass a bill, you know Like you can’t we can’t have semantics holding up the duties of what the president has to do it That that’s all that this is saying you have to go through this process proceed if you want But you have to address these issues as a part of your prosecution That’s why it was like a big nothing burger to me somebody at one point in here They even address what the dissenting opinion said about you know He could have somebody assassinated in there and they say hey the dissent says this but we’re obviously not Advocating for the president to assassinate anybody We’re just advocating for the separation of powers and the president being able to do his duties efficiently and effective without having to turn every single corner and say am I gonna be prosecuted today for this because the the political opponent Wants to hold me up. So in Thomas’s opinion if he does assassinate somebody are they gonna hold him responsible for they should be able To I mean that’s not they should be able to but does Thomas want to or does Tom? Oh, no, he I would think that he would but he doesn’t say that. No, he does say that He does say that he wants to hold So I’m trying to look through it because I’m trying to figure out if the president breaks the law Thomas doesn’t want to hold them Accountable for breaking the law. Mm-hmm question mark. Yes. I say that at question mark again Thomas the majority opinion, right? He is saying in this document somewhere that I haven’t read yet He is saying somewhere in this document that if a president breaks the law They should be held accountable for the bringing that law and and shooting a political rival would be bringing that law Yes, he does say that. Okay, great So and this is where it does become a gray area because he’s saying so that would be a motive, right? So somebody that’s a political opponent would be a motive and was it Obama that bombed that one dude that al-qaeda guy? That was an American citizen. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t remember but so either it’s also in our district Yeah, so there’s there’s motives that are involved with that right that he this guy that they killed is either a Military objective or it’s a political opponent, right? That that’s a motive question and that’s a gray area if somebody wanted to say well We’re gonna prosecute Obama because he politically assassinated one of his opponents here I think what Thomas would say is well That’s not something that’s within your purview because he is the president of the United States Who’s controlling the military and this guy was a military objective at that point in time, right? Trump makes Biden a military objective then he can kill him and Thomas is okay with it No, I think that there’s more to it that I’m oversimplifying it. But my point is is that Motives do matter and and there are various limits to to that and what he wants the president to be able to do is Be able to do his job do his job effectively no matter which president he is without having to worry about some sort of prosecution Motivated by politics every time he turns a counter at a corner and that’s both directions He’s not in fact, he’s not even talking about Trump here he’s talking about the president as a position and and saying we need to safeguard him from and make it to where he can do his Constitutional duties without being sued or or worry about prosecution every time he turns around Yeah there’s a bunch of verbiage in here that I didn’t highlight that is all about robust unfettered presidential authority to act quickly in the Best interest of the defense of the United States and all this stuff and blah blah blah blah blah, right? So that’s all fine. Like whatever. I’m not sure I’m super keen with that. But you know, whatever I understand it as a as a perspective. So that’s fine. Hold on. I think I might have found it I need a standing desk in your place I can’t find it But there’s a point in here where they kind of address that directly and I can’t seem to find it I should have been ready for that because I probably knew it was gonna come up But my point is is that if you read these other things or listen to these other podcasts, they’re like, oh my god the president can just murder somebody without being prosecuted and that’s not what they’re saying here and to kind of get people worked up about It is not the right thing to do to me And I think that that’s what I get frustrated about is the ruling was a big nothing burger They can proceed with the prosecution if they if they feel like they can stay within the confines of legal obscurity I guess you could say I don’t know if that makes any sense but what I’m trying to say is they can’t just hide from the fact that they can’t address the immunity and they can’t address the Separation of powers they have to Confront that head-on as a part of the prosecution and can’t just be hand wavy about it and say well we can prosecute him for this because we want to or because it was illegal they have to go through those extra steps and justify that as a part of the prosecution and that’s it and to me that that should be true and if he did really break Those laws and that it wasn’t within the scope of his his authority and all these other different things These conditions are met. They should prosecute him I mean, I would like nothing more than to not have President Trump run I think he’s terrible for this country and I but that doesn’t mean that we can just do what we want as a prosecutor either You know, so you read Sotomayor’s dissent, right? Mm-hmm So what did she say? Because it sounded like in some of the podcasts that Sotomayor was saying that this is the this the sky is falling This is the one of the worst decisions ever yeah, and like I said, their opinions are all passed around and they address that the Majority opinion and they say the sky is not falling. We’re not saying you can’t go go forward the prosecution But you can’t just pretend like there’s no rules about this and there’s no separation of powers I do think that Thomas and the majority opinion took it too far and that’s why I agree with Barrett a little bit more But I do think that it’s a big nothing What did the case actually what was the case trying to do so I think what and this is a Statement that I made in discord the prosecution thinks that they can just charge Trump with whatever they want no consideration for immunity Zero, it’s not even a thing that they have to question. They could just bring whatever legal challenges they want They can put time up in court with this, right? That’s what that’s how the prosecution thinks Trump thinks that he has absolute immunity For anything that and everything that he did while in office Including things that don’t fall within the purview of the office all that this if I were to sum this up It’s that it’s not absolute immunity. So Trump you’re off. You’re wrong. You can be prosecuted for things prosecution You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want There is some presumptive immunity here and you have to overcome that presumptive immunity as a part of your prosecution of Trump You can’t just stop the president on the way to voting or you can’t stop somebody that’s trying to run for president without Addressing that first. That’s it. That’s where it is. That’s to me like it’s a nothing burger I I agree with it in that sense that we do need that separation of power. We can’t just do whatever we want It’s not the end of the world. I apologize to our listeners that I am terrible at reading Legal stuff and I will try to reformat my brain in order to be able to handle it without complaining Unless me complaining is entertaining for some reason But like how many people actually read the SCOTUS opinions a few thousand out of three hundred thirty three million Americans And I could be wrong. Well, I mean from wrong Well that that’s why I listen to podcasters telling me what things mean, right? And even if I don’t agree with them, that’s fine As long as they’re smart about it the stuff I don’t listen to is just you know, piping infinite You know opinion that just blasting everyone in 700 different directions and it’s like they’re not explaining anything That’s the stuff I don’t listen to but anyway, I gotta go haul a bunch of food downtown So thanks again for yet another episode of J. Fonza’s ignorance dum-dum-dum You could have the last word Really have anything to say other than You probably don’t want to do another opinion But we can talk about that in the future do another opinion. What do you mean any of them like the bump stock? I think Yeah, I don’t know the repeating this process is a good idea Well, I think the most significant one I need to adjust my brain to try it again or something I think half of these opinions lately don’t really mean much I think the only one that really has a lot of value and impacts a lot of people is SCC versus jar Cassie I think that that’s a very significant opinion the only reason why I’d want to talk about that one with you is because I don’t understand why Liberals aren’t on board with that opinion and why I keep hearing Oh, it’s the the sky is falling with that one when really I really kind of thought that liberals would be on the side of the court and it would have been like a 9-0 opinion, but it wasn’t and I Don’t know. I haven’t even listened to anyone talk about that one. So you’ll have to drop it in the discord, right? Well, that’s the thing is that nobody taught nobody is talking about it. I think it’s the most significant one Just by reading the opinion directly Yeah, it’s just weird to me that all we’re doing is focusing on these other ones Well, we can do breaking news then we can be the world’s number one podcast talking about some SCOTUS decision that no one else ever talked about Cool well, see you later. I try not to get disbarred have fun with food. No, thank you. Bye If you’d like to call into the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 1 4 0 2 5 7 7 0 1 1 7