Autocracy: a government in which one person has uncontrolled or unlimited authority over others; the government or power of an absolute monarch. a nation, state, or community ruled by an autocrat. unlimited authority, power, or influence of one person in any group.
An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d’état or mass insurrection).
Giuliani: “Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn’t Be Indicted For It”
This is the level of stupidity that the President has for his legal team. Apparently, Rudy and his crew think that our framers designed the Article 2 Powers of the President to allow him to become the very thing that we fought a revolution against. A law unto himself. Hard to believe that they could be that stupid. To actually create an office with the unchecked powers of a King. Sort of torpedo’s the very thing we fought for, doesn’t it? Actually, they weren’t, but this bunch is and they are desperately looking for some way out of their predicament.
The President’s powers are not unlimited. Rudy actually said this: “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.” Except that wouldn’t be the case with a Republican Congress that would never impeach him, let alone convict him. Which means that Trump could get away with murder and the Republican Party paved the way. There was no political parties at the creation of the Constitution. So there was no party ideology to adhere to. The founders were opposed to them. So no tribalism to follow blindly. It was the Age of Reason. Not Tribalism.
He couldn’t pardon himself because murder would violate a states criminal code. Not a federal code. And he can’t pardon a state crime. So who would have jurisdiction? State or Federal? Comey was a Federal officer. This will no doubt be taken to the SCOTUS presenting a constitutional question that must be resolved. There is no precedent here because this conflict has never presented itself before in our history. On July 9th 2018,Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Justice on the SCOTUS. Kavanaugh has written an opinion regarding Presidential powers recommending that Congress create a statute that would immunize the President from indictment or subpoena. With a Federal investigation; headed by Special Council Robert Mueller, into the involvement of Russia in the 2016 General election in which the Russian government sought to sway the election in favor of Trump; an investigation in which Trump and the Trump campaign is the subject of the investigation, the nomination of Kavanaugh appears to be self-serving and a way of inoculating him from testifying before a Grand Jury. It also opens the question of self-pardon which Trump believes is available to him. By stacking the court with hard right Justices that generally vote as a bloc, the question shouldn’t be dismissed as unthinkable. A 5-4 ruling in Trumps favor could change the entire character of the United States and turn it from democracy to autocracy.
The case Rudy is making is that Trump is above the law. That would mean that the Supreme Court, an equal branch of government, would have to hand over their authority on all matters constitutional to Trump. In effect, the courts in this country would simply have to follow Trump’s demands. He could use the powers of the US Government against his political enemies and answer to no one. The Republican Party won’t challenge him. But who out there actually thinks that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to undermine their own constitutional authority to this asshole dictator wannabe who attacks the courts because they won’t bend to his will.
We’ve never been in a position quite like this in our history. There are Constitutional issues that will have to be resolved because Trump is having to deal with the interview with Mueller. If he refuses Mueller can issue a subpoena The Trump administration is setting the table to challenge the Justice Department before the Supreme Court. It amounts to a power grab by the executive, in a challenge to the courts. He’ll likely challenge the authority of the court to have any jurisdiction over him. And he’ll do it in the courts. Basically, he wants to go unchecked. Without any judicial restraint. I predict he’ll lose, badly. The courts owe their very existence to Article three of the Constitution. An independent judiciary is necessary to our democracy. They aren’t going to undo Article three for a moron, with the morals of a slug.
The President of the US can be indicted. He cannot pardon himself. He would be blocking an investigation where he is the subject. Article 2 sec 2 states; “he shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment. And that is because “you cannot be a judge in your own case”, and the only case of impeachment where this comes into play is the impeachment of the guy issuing the pardon. The principle comes from Justinian Code dating back to ancient Rome. But you can go back further to Ancient Greece and Aristotle to see where the Justinian Code comes from. Aristotle is the father of logic and he gave us the Law of Non-contradiction. According to Aristotle, first philosophy, or metaphysics, deals with ontology and first principles, of which the principle (or law) of non-contradiction is the firmest. Aristotle says that without the principle of non-contradiction we could not know anything that we do know. Presumably, we could not demarcate the subjective from the objective in any matter of any of the special sciences, for example, biology or mathematics, and we would not be able to distinguish between what something is, for example, a human being or a rabbit, and what it is like, for example, pale or white. Aristotle’s own distinction between essence and accident would be impossible to draw, and the inability to draw distinctions, in general, would make rational discussion impossible. We can’t have rational discussion’s or debates if we can’t agree objectively that the furry thing on the couch is a sleeping cat. According to Aristotle, the principle of non-contradiction is a principle of scientific inquiry, reasoning, and communication that we cannot do without.
There are arguably three versions of the principle of non-contradiction to be found in Aristotle: an ontological, a doxastic and a semantic version.
1.“It is impossible that the same thing belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect.”
2.“No one can believe that the same thing can (at the same time) be and not be.”
3. The most certain of all basic principles is that contradictory propositions are not true simultaneously
The first version concerns things that exist in the world, the second is about what we can believe, and the third relates to assertion and truth.
The first version (hereafter, simply PNC…Principle of Non-Contradiction) is usually taken to be the main version of the principle and it runs as follows: “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect”. The “same thing” that belongs must be one and the same thing and it must be the actual thing and not merely its linguistic expression. Also, the thing that belongs must belong actually, and not merely potentially, to its bearer.
The second version is as follows: “It is impossible to hold (suppose) the same thing to be and not to be.” Although this version is ambiguous as it stands, it is best understood as the claim that it is impossible to hold the same thing to be F and not to be F . In Hamlet, Shakespeare poses the question: “To be, or Not to be”…that is the question“. He doesn’t offer “to be and not to be” because that’s not a logical possibility. It’s either/or. You either Are or you Are not. You cannot be both at the same time and in the same context.
The third version is that “opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time, in the same respect (context)”
Aristotle says that PNC is one of the common axioms, axioms common to all the special sciences. It has no specific subject matter but applies to everything that is. It is a first principle and also the firmest principle of all. Like modus ponens, ( a deductive reasoning process presented as a conditional: If/Then. If this, then that) as Lewis Carroll memorably showed, PNC does not function as a premise in an argument. Unlike modus ponens, PNC is not a rule of inference. Aristotle says that it is a principle which “is necessary for anyone to have who knows any of the things that are”
Aristotle explains that, given its peculiar status as the firmest first principle, PNC is not susceptible to demonstration. A demonstration is a deductive argument, the conclusion of which is deduced from firmer, prior premises. It follows that if PNC could be deduced from another premise, then that premise would have to be a firmer and prior principle, with the result that PNC could not have been the firmest first principle. Aristotle also says that if PNC could be demonstrated, then everything would be subject to demonstration, which would lead to an infinite regress. Therefore demonstration is ruled out, and one must be wary of reconstructions of Aristotle’s discussion in terms of ordinary deductive arguments. Anyone asking for a deductive argument for PNC, as Aristotle points out, is missing the point, or, rather, is asking for something that is impossible without using PNC. You cannot engage in argument unless you rely on PNC. Anyone who claims to reject PNC “for the sake of argument” is similarly misguided.
PNC assumes the notion of identity: It is impossible for (one and) the same thing to belong and not to belong to (one and) the same thing at (one and) the same time. PNC is presupposed by Leibniz’s law, which states that if x and y are discernible (if one has a property that the other lacks), then x is not identical with y.
Justice must be impartially served or it isn’t justice. No man can be objective about himself. Therefore, no man can be the judge in his own case. Trump insists that there was no collusion over and over again, and expects that everybody should believe him. But he sees himself through a biased and tinted lens which is always self-serving. Pardoning himself would be an obstruction of justice, because he is the subject being investigated, and he can’t be the investigator and the subject of the investigation at the same time. ( PNC…you cannot be and not be at the same time in the same context) The investigation would become tainted by subjectivity when objectivity is required for justice to be served.
So the Justinian Code which is based on the first Principles of First Philosophy informs our courts why no man can be the judge in his own case. Blocking the investigation by pardoning yourself when you are the subject of the investigation obstructs justice because it presents a contradiction that cannot stand without subverting justice and that’s the very thing that Rudy says the president can do and not be indicted for.
An innocent man has no need for a pardon. By pardoning himself. Trump would be admitting to criminal acts that require a pardon or forgiveness. But you cannot objectively judge yourself, and since a pardon is given to a criminal, Trump cannot be a criminal and NOT a criminal at the same time in the same context. ( PNC again) If a pardon is an admission of guilt, then pardoning himself for committing a crime means that Trump is forgiving himself. What man gets to be his own judge in his own case? He places himself above the Law and no man is above the Law in this country. A criminal seeks a pardon. That admission of criminal behavior would result in impeachment, assuming that his political party would actually do it and convict him which is unlikely in todays climate of political tribalism. So Trump could literally get away with any criminal activity without ever being held accountable. He could literally get away with murder. His party would never allow his impeachment, ( he may be an Ass-hole, but he’s our Ass-hole) and as long as he’s president, he could never be indicted.
Rudy is probably too dense to know all of this, since he’s demonstrated his ineptitude as a lawyer and displayed his inability to apply reason or any degree of critical thinking before he opens his mouth and inserts his entire foot up to the ankle, and is arguing that the laws of non-contradiction don’t apply to Trump. That’s a completely irrational position to take and sets the table for an autocratic authoritarian dictator. When laws contradict themselves then we have a breakdown on our legal system. And that would be a miscarriage of justice and an abuse of power. It would place one man above the law. The laws would no longer apply to him because theoretically he can’t be indicted. And since there’s no indication that his party would allow him to be convicted in the Senate, he could literally avoid impeachment and get away with murder. At this time they show no willingness to challenge him, and will in fact go to extremes to ignore or defend his reckless behavior to the extent of attacking the Department of Justice and the FBI itself as well as the intelligence community of the United States claiming a conspiracy among these agencies to frame him as a criminal. Ignoring the fact that the investigation of his campaign is led by a lifetime Republican and career professional with impeccable credentials, Trump, and his surrogates attack the credibility of the investigation which has already yielded 5 guilty pleas, and 32 indictments as being a witch hunt. It’s no coincidence that these outrageous attacks on Mueller and the Justice Department and the AG and the Deputy AG are heating up as the investigation begins to point to the Oval Office itself. It’s all getting too close to Trump and even members of his family.
The President can fire people for almost any reason, but he cannot fire somebody for not agreeing to commit a crime for him or for breaking the law in any way, like firing Comey for not letting Flynn off or stopping the investigation of his campaign. The President cannot require loyalty to him. The director of the FBI and the AG have sworn loyalty to the Constitution of the US. He cannot take a bribe of a million dollars to put a guy on the bench. He cannot end an investigation nor can he start one. He can’t launch an investigation against his political enemies and he cannot stop an investigation directed at him. In both cases, it’s an abuse of power.
The most obvious reason why none of these things can take place goes back to the very beginnings of this country. The Framers of the Constitution would NEVER have allowed any loophole to exist that would allow the existence of an autocratic regime to grab hold of power in the United States. We had just fought a revolution to break away from exactly that kind of authoritarianism. They would never allow for a monarchy or autocratic dictator to exact tyranny on the population. That would contradict everything about the constitution. It would nullify Article 3 since the executive would never have to obey the Courts. So the Revolution and the bloody cost of it, and the drafting of the Constitution would all be meaningless if an autocracy could establish itself. The courts will never allow this to take place. They aren’t going to cut their own throats and destroy the institution of the Judiciary for Donald Trump.
But the constitution was ratified prior to the existence of political parties, which the framers opposed. Parties didn’t exist until the election of 1801 when Jefferson; the third President, and the Democratic/Republicans defeated the Federalists. They wouldn’t have anticipated the tribalism that a political party would demonstrate by blocking the impeachment of a sitting president of their own party for ideological reasons, despite clear evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. Nevertheless, there should be no doubt that the framers intent would be to never allow a president to assume the position of being above the law. Without the power to indict a sitting president, that possibility exists, and that undermines the entire principle of a nation built upon law, and not the dictates of one man. The question becomes, is the Supreme Court now infected with the same political bias that dictates their voting along party lines. We may find out soon enough.