The government’s Department of Justice ( DOJ) argued before the Supreme Court on Thursday that questioning election results is not acceptable because the government also says so, while drone droning American citizens is permissible.
After specific lawyers Jack Smith alleged that previous president Donald Trump should be imprisoned for questioning the management of the 2020 election, the Supreme Court heard claims on the range of national resistance.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned DOJ attorney Michael Dreeben about the range of political power by posing a number of hypothetical questions to Judge lawyer Michael Dreeben about whether Gerald Ford’s 1976 pardon of Richard Nixon could have been used to investigate for obstruction of justice “on the idea that Ford was ] interfering with the analysis of Richard Nixon.”
Dreeben argued that a particular instance would fall under “presidential responsibilities that Congress cannot regulate.”
” How about President Obama’s drone strikes”? Kavanaugh asked.
According to Dreeben, the Office of Legal Counsel examined this very carefully and determined that, number one, the federal murder statute does apply to the executive branch. The president, who was not directly responsible for the strike, determined that a statute that is embedded in statutes and that applies particularly to the murder statute because it discusses unlawful killing, did not apply to the drone strike.
” So this is actually the way the system should operate. The Department of Justice takes criminal law very seriously”, Dreeben continued. It “runs it through the analysis very carefully with established principles.” It documents them. It explains them. The president can then proceed in accordance with it. And for that course of action, there is no risk of prosecution.
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In other words, Obama was not required to file a lawsuit for using more than 560 drone strikes, which killed somewhere between 384 and 807 civilians after his own DOJ granted him that right.
Eric Holder, the attorney general of Obama, acknowledged to Congress that at least four Americans had been killed by drone strikes. Three of the four were” not specifically targeted”.
Throughout oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito said a president would be in a “peculiarly precarious position” if he had to worry about being charged with crimes committed while in office, despite the other conservative justices ‘ oral arguments.
Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, argued that “without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it”.
” For 234 years of American history, no president was ever prosecuted for his official acts”, Sauer argued. When bold and fearless action is most required, the president’s decision-making will be distorted by the looming threat, which is “if a president can be charged, tried, and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office.”
The Federalist’s election correspondent, Brianna Lyman.
