Verdict with Ted Cruz - July 03, 2024


Can Biden Drone Strike Trump？ SCOTUS Immunity Decision Fully Explained


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Misogynist Sentences

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00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.520 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.320 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.460 Senator, it was a massive ruling from the Supreme Court on Trump immunity.
00:00:15.180 And there are a lot of questions now that people have about this ruling.
00:00:20.540 Well, this was a major victory for President Trump in the Supreme Court.
00:00:23.620 It was a vote of six to three.
00:00:24.980 Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion and concluded that Trump has very broad immunity for official acts.
00:00:32.400 We'll break down exactly what that means.
00:00:34.480 But one of the things it means is that Jack Smith's prosecution is in serious, serious trouble and likely won't be able to proceed at all.
00:00:42.780 We'll explain it all.
00:00:44.380 Yeah, and there's a lot of people that have so many questions about presidential power now and what that means.
00:00:49.300 The extreme left going crazy on that.
00:00:51.520 We'll break it down.
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00:02:16.100 Senator, I rarely say this.
00:02:18.000 I don't even know where to start with this ruling.
00:02:20.020 So there's two aspects.
00:02:21.600 There's one, the ruling itself.
00:02:23.240 And I guess we should probably start there.
00:02:25.200 What does this mean?
00:02:26.920 And then we'll get into the politics of it afterwards.
00:02:29.600 But the Supreme Court overwhelmingly said that ex-presidents have substantial protection
00:02:35.340 from prosecution.
00:02:37.600 Well, that's right.
00:02:38.300 And let me just explain a little bit of the ruling.
00:02:40.380 So the Supreme Court laid out three categories of presidential action.
00:02:46.100 It said, number one, presidential action that is within the president's exclusive constitutional
00:02:53.620 authority, there is absolute immunity.
00:02:56.860 So what does that mean?
00:02:57.820 That means powers that the Constitution gives directly to the president.
00:03:02.580 Things like being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
00:03:05.440 Things like granting a pardon.
00:03:08.420 Things like nominating a judge.
00:03:10.580 Things like firing a cabinet member.
00:03:12.860 All of those are matters that are given to the exclusive authority of the president of
00:03:17.060 the United States.
00:03:17.880 And the second category the court laid out are presidential powers that are shared with
00:03:23.980 Congress.
00:03:24.480 And in that instance, the court says the president has immunity there also, but it did not decide
00:03:33.140 whether the immunity is absolute or presumptive.
00:03:37.100 And presumptive means you presume that there's immunity, but the prosecution could lay out a
00:03:42.900 strong enough case to overcome that immunity.
00:03:44.800 And it leaves that question open.
00:03:46.000 So that's not decided.
00:03:46.980 The third category are unofficial actions.
00:03:52.340 And unofficial actions, not exercising the power of the presidency, those have no immunity
00:03:57.240 whatsoever.
00:03:58.920 And what the court then did is remanded the case all the way back to the trial court for
00:04:06.160 the trial court to figure out which of the actions that are alleged in the indictment fall
00:04:12.680 into which category.
00:04:13.740 So remanded, to break this down in layman's terms, means they basically said, you guys
00:04:19.080 didn't do it right.
00:04:20.000 You didn't even categorize it correctly.
00:04:21.660 We're sending it back to you.
00:04:23.420 Do your paperwork the right way, in essence, and then start all over.
00:04:27.820 Yes, but it's not quite as harsh as that.
00:04:30.580 This is something courts do all the time.
00:04:32.280 In particular, look, the court is laying out a new test here.
00:04:35.440 So anytime the court is laying out new rules, it is commonplace to send the case back to the
00:04:43.020 lower court to apply those rules, to figure out what those rules mean with respect to the
00:04:48.760 specific case.
00:04:49.720 And part of the reason is the way our appellate system works is courts of appeals review decisions
00:04:56.280 and judgments made by the lower courts.
00:04:59.020 And so it is an exercise of judicial restraint to say, let's let the lower court figure this
00:05:03.800 out first.
00:05:04.360 And then we'll review any arguments of error on appeal.
00:05:09.420 So this is why the timeline is significant, right, with the election coming up?
00:05:14.760 Yes.
00:05:15.100 And so one almost certain outcome is there will be no trial on Jack Smith's case on January
00:05:21.880 6th before Election Day.
00:05:23.440 There simply isn't time.
00:05:25.520 It's before the district judge.
00:05:27.100 She's going to have to go through.
00:05:28.380 This is going to be very complicated legal analysis.
00:05:30.880 Both sides are going to present arguments as to what is, what is an exclusive official
00:05:35.920 act, which is absolutely immune.
00:05:37.900 What is an official act, whether that is entitled to presumptive immunity or absolute immunity,
00:05:42.400 and what is not an official act that is entitled to no immunity.
00:05:46.220 And that is going to be action by action.
00:05:49.940 And it will be, I think Jack Smith is going to have a very difficult time having any of his
00:05:55.380 case survive.
00:05:56.040 When you look at Jack Smith, and you mentioned any of his case surviving, this case was clearly
00:06:02.120 brought to either put Trump in jail, tie him up in court, interfere with the election.
00:06:08.000 Could they even go forward with this case if, hypothetically, Donald Trump does win the
00:06:12.580 presidency all over again?
00:06:14.420 Would that affect the case or basically kill the case?
00:06:17.460 And if he loses, what's the point of moving forward because he's no longer in theory a threat
00:06:21.740 to the Democratic Party being the president?
00:06:23.340 Is that another reason just to say, all right, well, we did what we need to do.
00:06:26.660 We want to accuse him of a bunch of things and throw Jell-O at a wall.
00:06:29.980 So theoretically, the case could proceed in either instance.
00:06:35.180 However, if Trump loses, you're right, the urgency of the case from the perspective of
00:06:42.000 the Democrat partisans is reduced.
00:06:45.180 If Trump wins, this case is over.
00:06:47.260 And it doesn't have to be over, by the way.
00:06:49.080 But when Trump is sworn in on January 20th, 2025, the instant he's sworn in, he has the
00:06:56.320 authority to direct the Department of Justice, dismiss the case.
00:06:59.960 The attorney general works for him.
00:07:02.360 And I fully expect at 1201 on January 20th, new President Trump will instruct the Department
00:07:11.680 of Justice, dismiss both of these prosecutions.
00:07:14.540 They were political prosecutions.
00:07:16.700 They should not have been brought.
00:07:18.260 And you are to go to court as the prosecutor and say, we're dismissing our claims.
00:07:23.220 Bill Barr, who has been very critical of the president, he even came out and said this,
00:07:29.120 former U.S.
00:07:29.680 Attorney General, obviously, about the immunity decision.
00:07:32.440 I want to get your reaction to that.
00:07:33.780 Let me ask you first off about what this case comes down to, that Donald Trump has absolute
00:07:40.740 immunity from criminal prosecution, but only for official acts.
00:07:45.840 Is it going to be up to a lower court than to determine the difference?
00:07:50.080 That's right.
00:07:50.720 I think this was a very sensible decision that I think most lawyers familiar with this area
00:07:56.120 expected, which is this went up to the court in a very abstract posture, which was the government's
00:08:02.040 very broad assertion there was no immunity whatsoever.
00:08:05.340 What the court's saying here is, no, there's absolute immunity when he's acting directly
00:08:10.020 under the Constitution, carrying out a function under the Constitution.
00:08:14.100 There is presumptive immunity when he performs an official act, and the government has the burden
00:08:19.240 of showing that it can prosecute him for that without impairing the executive function.
00:08:23.380 And finally, there's no immunity for unofficial or private acts.
00:08:28.660 And I think the practical effect of this is that the district court is going to do what
00:08:34.340 it really should have done at the beginning, which the government really should have had
00:08:37.060 it do, which is do the analysis so the facts are going up to the Supreme Court.
00:08:42.280 So as a practical matter, there's not going to be a trial of this case before the election.
00:08:46.760 That's the ballgame, right?
00:08:48.160 I mean, this is another massive victory for Trump.
00:08:50.680 It is a massive victory for Trump, and now the district court is going to have to sort
00:08:55.800 it out.
00:08:56.420 But let's talk a little bit about what those categories mean and why the court drew that
00:09:01.060 distinction.
00:09:01.700 And let's start with Category 3, private acts.
00:09:04.520 There are all sorts of things that are private acts and for which there is no immunity.
00:09:10.780 If Joe Biden wandered outside the White House and saw a man walking on the street and pulled
00:09:18.220 out a gun and shot him, that would have no immunity because that's a private act.
00:09:22.180 That's not exercising an authority, a power of the president.
00:09:25.540 That's just committing murder.
00:09:27.380 If a president sexually assaulted an intern, say, that would have no immunity because that's
00:09:36.760 also not a presidential power.
00:09:38.420 That's not exercising presidential authority.
00:09:40.700 That's committing a private wrong.
00:09:42.740 If a president committed, say, perjury or obstruction of justice, let's say, hypothetically, a president
00:09:49.540 named William Jefferson Clinton, who was facing a civil lawsuit, went to the civil lawsuit and
00:09:54.320 lied, that lie under oath about his sexual activities, that is in no way, shape, or form
00:10:03.740 an official act.
00:10:04.520 That is a private act.
00:10:05.460 Under this decision, that president could be prosecuted for perjury or obstruction of
00:10:12.360 justice.
00:10:12.720 If he goes and hides the dress with evidence of his sexual activity and obstructs an investigation
00:10:21.080 into it, that could likewise be prosecuted.
00:10:24.260 All of those are private acts.
00:10:25.640 There's no presidential power being carried out there.
00:10:30.920 The court's reasoning, so that's category three, but there's very little, if anything, in Jack
00:10:38.620 Smith's indictment that arguably falls into that category.
00:10:42.580 This is not private misconduct.
00:10:45.340 Category one, the category that the court says is absolutely immune.
00:10:49.720 The court focuses on the text of the Constitution, and actually it draws this model from a landmark
00:10:56.940 decision of the court called Youngstown Steel, and Youngstown Steel dealt with when Harry
00:11:04.640 Truman seized steel mills, and Justice Robert Jackson, one of the greatest Supreme Court
00:11:13.920 justices ever to serve on the court, described different levels of presidential power.
00:11:21.080 And he described presidential power when the president was acting in concert with Congress
00:11:29.620 and Congressional authorities.
00:11:31.860 He said their presidential power is at its highest.
00:11:36.540 And then he said a second category is when the president is acting in an area where Congress
00:11:40.480 has been silent.
00:11:41.980 Their presidential power is at a middle level.
00:11:44.540 And a third category is when a president is acting directly contrary to what Congress has
00:11:49.400 said, and there he says presidential power is at its lowest because you've got two branches
00:11:54.160 in conflict.
00:11:55.420 That was a model the court drew upon here.
00:11:59.560 And what the court concluded, it drew its reasoning from Article II of the Constitution, which vests,
00:12:08.240 quote, executive power in a president of the United States of America, which grants the president
00:12:15.820 duties of, quote, unrivaled gravity and breadth.
00:12:20.580 And it reasoned that the president's authority to act, if it stems from either an act of Congress
00:12:25.760 or from the Constitution itself.
00:12:28.500 And when acting within the constitutional authority, the president's actions are beyond the scope of
00:12:36.000 congressional or judicial review.
00:12:37.680 And the court further held that an act of Congress cannot criminalize the president's actions within
00:12:45.880 his exclusive constitutional power and that courts cannot adjudicate a criminal prosecution
00:12:52.580 examining such actions.
00:12:54.060 And so the reasoning there is, listen, if the president is exercising a power that the source
00:13:03.020 of the power is the Constitution, Congress doesn't have the power to step in and say, we're going
00:13:09.740 to take away the power that the Constitution gave you because the Constitution is the supreme
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00:13:46.280 So I've got like 15 different questions, and I want to go through these because it's the
00:13:52.660 question I think everybody's asking.
00:13:54.620 Democrats, when this came out, the first thing they started fantasizing over was, fine, well,
00:14:00.840 we've just gotten a dictator and a tyrant in the White House, if Trump gets back in, he
00:14:06.080 can do whatever he wants to.
00:14:07.680 And they said, well, then, you know what?
00:14:09.300 If he's going to do it, then maybe we should do it.
00:14:11.540 Let's just send SEAL 6 as an official act to go after and just take out Donald Trump.
00:14:17.880 That was what they were talking about online.
00:14:20.740 That would not be covered under an official act, correct?
00:14:25.100 Well, it's actually more complicated than that.
00:14:27.320 And this is a hypothetical that's been asked at several stages in the litigation.
00:14:31.540 In the Federal Court of Appeals, they asked that hypothetical to Trump's lawyers.
00:14:35.960 At the Supreme Court, that example is used by one of the dissents in the Supreme Court.
00:14:43.760 And look, the reason it's complicated is because the presidency has vast authorities,
00:14:51.760 and one of those authorities is being commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
00:14:56.160 The president does have the power to kill people and has always had the power to kill people.
00:15:01.440 And to be clear, every president who's ever served has killed people.
00:15:05.340 That is part of the power of commander-in-chief.
00:15:07.500 Now, you have responsibilities in terms of how to do it, but I'll give an example.
00:15:11.840 Barack Obama ordered the drone killings of U.S. citizens abroad who were believed to be terrorists.
00:15:21.140 He ordered the military, sent a drone over there, and blow that guy up.
00:15:25.360 Now, to be clear, Ben, if you or I did that, we'd be prosecuted for murder.
00:15:28.740 We don't have the ability to order the drone killings of an American citizen.
00:15:34.320 Barack Obama was never charged with murder.
00:15:37.400 And so part of the reason why that hypothetical, look, it sounds absurd,
00:15:42.280 but remember, presidents are given massive authority, including literally the authority to push a button
00:15:49.520 and launch nuclear weapons that could annihilate humanity.
00:15:56.000 It is terrifying.
00:15:57.120 It's one of the reasons why Joe Biden, being non-compass-mentist, but not being utterly unaware of what's around him,
00:16:03.680 is so damn dangerous, because he's the one person in America that has the power to exterminate our species.
00:16:11.940 In the three that dissented in this ruling, one of the examples, I want to go back to it,
00:16:17.040 because the justice claim immunity ruling allowed presidents to poison staff.
00:16:21.200 And again, their example, I have Navy SEAL team members kill political rivals.
00:16:26.960 The Chief Justice Roberts really pushed back hard, saying that was nothing but fear-mongering.
00:16:33.020 So, to be clear, this does not give the president power to poison their staff, right?
00:16:37.960 It does not.
00:16:41.340 But, all right, what are the checks that would stop a president from ordering SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival?
00:16:49.400 One of the most important checks is SEAL Team 6 could and should refuse that order.
00:16:55.360 That the military has an obligation, if there is an order that is plainly unlawful,
00:17:01.940 the military should refuse to carry it out.
00:17:04.920 And so, if Joe Biden told SEAL Team 6, go kill Donald Trump,
00:17:08.940 which, by the way, lefties on Twitter are calling for every two minutes,
00:17:13.300 which shows you, listen, when you're a totalitarian that wants to hold power at any time,
00:17:18.540 it is interesting how revealing it is that they're immediately calling for murder.
00:17:24.780 That says a lot.
00:17:26.700 But the first check would be that a blatantly unlawful order would be refused to be carried out by the military.
00:17:35.580 Secondly, if, God forbid, we had truly an abusive tyrant as president,
00:17:41.240 and if the military refused to carry it out, the next immediate step would be impeachment.
00:17:49.680 And you would have to assume, if a president murdered his rival,
00:17:57.580 that you would see Congress impeach him immediately.
00:17:59.880 Well, even on MSNBC, they were having this conversation on the SCOTUS immunity ruling,
00:18:05.300 and they said, in their words, Trump could target, like, journalists could target, quote, me,
00:18:11.020 that's what Wallace said, and then he said, people, if he wins, will be forced to flee the country, listen.
00:18:17.220 The Supreme Court in Russia exists, but none of us think that there's a rule of law there.
00:18:23.540 When you look at this opinion, it is real.
00:18:25.320 Instead, it just doesn't know it, yeah.
00:18:26.460 Yeah, exactly.
00:18:27.680 Mark Elias, we should pull the curtain back on what's actually happening, shouldn't we?
00:18:32.540 Obviously, people are exploring options to live in other countries if they think they could be targeted for prosecution by Donald Trump,
00:18:40.320 because targeting you or targeting me or targeting Andrew would be an official act based on today's decision.
00:18:46.740 Yeah, I mean, they could target for criminal prosecution.
00:18:51.060 They could target for administrative investigation, the IRS, the SEC, the EPA.
00:18:57.840 I mean, they're not just talking about death.
00:18:59.600 They're talking about using the president saying, I'm going to target everybody I want to and use all of the things, by the way, which Democrats have done.
00:19:05.460 They've used the justice system.
00:19:06.480 They use the IRS, the Tea Party, for example.
00:19:08.740 They've gone after people and raid their homes.
00:19:11.160 Steve Bannon's in jail right now.
00:19:12.500 The list goes on and on and on.
00:19:14.820 Of all the things that they're doing actually right now, before this ruling that had nothing to do with this ruling,
00:19:20.380 now they're like, well, we're going to have to leave the country because he's just going to target all of us.
00:19:24.360 So I got to say, what utter garbage, the two of them.
00:19:30.340 Oh, they're going to target us.
00:19:31.440 They're going to target us.
00:19:32.540 That's what Joe Biden is doing right now.
00:19:34.700 Joe Biden, this Justice Department, is the most lawless, partisan, weaponized, abuse system of justice ever seen.
00:19:42.500 The absolute irony of those people saying, oh, Trump's going to do that.
00:19:47.260 You know what?
00:19:47.580 When he was president before, he didn't do that.
00:19:49.640 It is you, you dishonest, partisan hacks that are going after, that have the four indicemen against Trump.
00:19:56.660 As you noted, Steve Bannon is in jail right now.
00:20:01.780 Peter Navarro is in jail right now.
00:20:04.120 You're going after pro-life protesters.
00:20:06.540 You're attacking.
00:20:07.140 You're refusing to go after people who are firebombing pregnancy resource centers.
00:20:12.480 The absolute hypocrisy.
00:20:16.020 The people who invented weaponization are now saying, well, we're scared.
00:20:20.420 We'll be targeted.
00:20:22.380 It's utter garbage.
00:20:23.740 You know, I got to say, you're in my friend, Jesse Kelly.
00:20:26.860 He tweeted it in response to this.
00:20:28.440 I think his tweet was very insightful.
00:20:30.940 He said, you know what you call it when SCOTUS reveals the president has immunity and the first thought the communists have is about using the military to execute political opponents?
00:20:42.180 In poker, that's known as a tell.
00:20:46.320 For instance, if you told me that the president could do whatever he wanted without restriction, my very first thought would be about firing government employees and eliminating entire federal agencies.
00:20:56.920 For communists, their thoughts go directly to murder.
00:21:02.100 Again, a tell.
00:21:04.180 It's a great point.
00:21:05.700 And it goes back to the insanity of all of them.
00:21:09.680 They do this.
00:21:10.860 And then, you know, you look at the Supreme Court.
00:21:13.120 And again, I go back to listen to Norm Eason on CNN immediately after this happens.
00:21:18.560 Listen to what he says.
00:21:20.460 When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
00:21:23.620 So in this context, with what the court has decided, Norm, does this mean that Nixon basically would have been able to do what he did completely legally without any recourse?
00:21:35.040 You could have had substantial portions of Richard Nixon's wrongdoing that drove him from office because it was conducted from the Oval Office using his official advisers to engage in break-ins, a wide variety of other illegal activity would have been impossible to prosecute.
00:22:01.660 Essentially, what the Supreme Court majority, again, including terribly conflicted justices who have no business sitting on this case under any standard of judicial ethics, what they've done, Sarah, is rewrite American history.
00:22:18.040 It goes all the way back to the founding American idea.
00:22:21.320 We overthrew King George III because we did not want a ruler to have this kind of absolute immunity.
00:22:28.120 And the Supreme Court has now altered that.
00:22:33.880 And we have to be honest that we're facing a major party political candidate who has said he wants to be a dictator on day one.
00:22:43.320 He wants to assert autocratic powers.
00:22:46.040 They've just given him a license for dictatorship within the purview of official acts.
00:22:53.240 That should be extremely alarming, and it makes this momentous election really a referendum on the future of American democracy.
00:23:03.720 A license for dictatorship.
00:23:06.340 Like, come on, CNN.
00:23:08.180 What utter garbage.
00:23:10.700 And again, the Freudian projection is so utterly rich.
00:23:15.280 It is Joe Biden whose Department of Justice is targeting its political enemies.
00:23:21.120 It is Joe Biden who is engaged in rampant censorship of the free speech of American citizens.
00:23:28.460 It is Joe Biden who issued a blatantly illegal vaccine mandate that was thrown out by the courts, but fired thousands and thousands of active duty servicemen, men and women, fired FBI agents, fired Border Patrol agents because they refused to comply with his illegal vaccine mandate.
00:23:46.940 And to be clear, the court struck down his vaccine mandate.
00:23:49.080 But he had already gotten rid of the people he wanted to get rid of.
00:23:54.260 It is Joe Biden who repeatedly issues lawless orders trying to give away a trillion dollars in student loans that he has no legal authority to do.
00:24:04.080 He knows they'll get struck down in court, but he's trying to buy votes.
00:24:07.100 That is utterly lawless.
00:24:08.360 It is Joe Biden who on the border is ignoring the entirety of federal immigration law and has released, has allowed 11 million people to come into this country illegally, who is ignoring the Americans who are being murdered, who are being raped by the criminals he's releasing.
00:24:25.540 And yet you have these numbskulls go on CNN and say, oh, well, this means Trump can be a dictator.
00:24:31.540 Trump didn't do any of that.
00:24:32.660 Everything I just listed, Trump actually followed the law.
00:24:35.640 He exercised his power.
00:24:37.280 He implemented policies that proved very beneficial for the American people.
00:24:41.880 It is the Democrats.
00:24:43.140 And look, look, when Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached for utterly defying the law, for refusing to follow immigration law, every single Democrat in the Senate, all of them, voted to throw out the case and to hear no evidence.
00:24:57.600 So they don't care about the rule of law.
00:25:00.420 They care about power.
00:25:01.580 The reason they're angry and hyperventilating is because this case is an effort to weaponize the justice system, to stop the voters from voting to elect Donald Trump.
00:25:13.300 And this ruling they view as getting in the way of what they want to do, which is weaponize the justice system to subvert democracy.
00:25:21.120 The irony is, he says, this is a blow to democracy.
00:25:23.980 What they're doing is an attack on democracy.
00:25:27.440 And they're frustrated that their attack on democracy is not working.
00:25:31.480 This June marked two years since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
00:25:36.120 And you may not realize that the number of abortions actually increased the following year.
00:25:43.380 In 2023, the amount of abortions reached its highest level since 2012, with the abortion pill accounting for up to 63 percent of all abortions.
00:25:51.700 It's tragically, no surprise.
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00:27:09.960 Senator, my final question for you now is the politics of this.
00:27:13.520 You've got Twitter going crazy and the left saying, all right, we'll just take out Donald Trump, which is, I thought, against the law, but apparently not.
00:27:20.280 You've got the media saying, well, this means that Donald Trump, if he gets elected, is going to be a dictator and a tyrant, and he can just lock everybody up so people are going to have to flee the country.
00:27:28.700 And now, in a weird way, this kind of gets the Democrats out of jail-free card with the court cases, which I believe have been backfiring on them.
00:27:40.140 They've only been helping.
00:27:41.340 Every time they go after Trump legally, it seems to help Donald Trump.
00:27:45.240 Is this, in a weird way, a blessing in disguise politically for the Democrats?
00:27:48.960 They can kind of just put pause, and Jack Smith can go away, and Alvin Bragg can kind of go away for a little bit, and we just kind of have a normal election now.
00:27:56.460 You know, I think you may be overthinking it.
00:27:59.760 I don't think they're capable of thinking strategically or rationally on this.
00:28:03.900 They just hate him.
00:28:04.860 They want to attack him on every front.
00:28:06.620 It is always about orange man bad.
00:28:09.620 It is always about Trump is the devil.
00:28:11.300 And so, they're just going to have, you're going to see cries of frustration.
00:28:17.420 You're going to see tears on MSNBC.
00:28:19.740 Trump winning terrifies them.
00:28:23.000 Look, these cases, the Jack Smith case, is not going to proceed before the election.
00:28:29.400 It's going to take significant time to brief out and decide the immunity questions that now have been sent to the lower court.
00:28:36.460 And it's not clear that any of the Jack Smith case survives once you go through the analysis of what constituted an official action, either an exclusively official action or an official action with shared authority with Congress.
00:28:49.540 Very little, if any, of the Jack Smith indictment will survive that analysis.
00:28:56.860 But, and actually, Alvin Bragg, it's interesting.
00:29:00.100 You know, we were supposed to have the judicial sentencing of Trump two days before the Republican convention.
00:29:05.840 That now is going to be delayed, and the reason it's going to be delayed is as soon as this decision came down, Trump's legal team asked to brief the judge there as to why those convictions should be thrown out under the reasoning in this Supreme Court decision.
00:29:23.620 And the court said yes, that the court will consider legal arguments on that question, and that meant that the sentencing had to be delayed.
00:29:32.420 And Alvin Bragg agreed to delay the sentencing.
00:29:34.720 Now, I've got to say, he pretty much had to.
00:29:38.040 With this decision coming down, it is obvious that the court at least needs to consider what is the relevance of this decision to the convictions against Donald Trump.
00:29:50.360 Now, the court said when it was scheduling arguments that it thought that the arguments were baseless.
00:29:56.540 So I'm going to predict right now, the New York judge is going to say, no, that decision doesn't change anything.
00:30:02.260 And it is true that the conduct at question occurred before Trump was president.
00:30:10.100 And so it is in no way, shape, or form an exercise of presidential authority.
00:30:14.760 And so there are lots of reasons why the decision from the New York trial court is an absolute abomination and an abuse of power and why it will be reversed on appeal.
00:30:28.260 But it may well be that that it's not going to be because of this decision, because this decision concerns the exercise of presidential powers.
00:30:36.840 And Trump was not president when the conduct at question occurred.
00:30:40.740 It's going to be interesting.
00:30:41.800 We're going to be following it here.
00:30:43.040 Don't forget, we do the show Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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