All posts tagged "gitmo"

It’s time Biden sends Trump to Gitmo

Donald Trump is claiming that presidents need “total immunity” from being indicted for criminal acts. This is a cornerstone of Trump’s defense against the federal election interference case against him. No matter if his actions as president “cross the line.”

Trump, of course, is no longer even president of the United States. But let’s accept Trump’s argument. Once one does, it’s only logical to conclude that President Joe Biden can do whatever he wants while he’s still in office.

And that’s why Biden should not wait or hesitate — and send Trump to Guantanamo Bay, precisely because Trump, who faces 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, is a grave threat to our nation and its security.

That’d be fine, right?

Trump did, after all, show highly classified documents to people who weren’t supposed to see them. He tried to overturn a presidential election. He inspired an insurrection. He allegedly obstructed justice, falsified documents and statements and cooked his business books. Heck, he allegedly bullied his way into a “Home Alone 2” cameo. Send him to Gitmo. Put that orange jumpsuit on him. It’ll match his skin tone. Problem solved. Biden can serve his second term without that distraction bothering him anymore. You can’t do anything about it because Biden has total immunity.

Sound good?

Obviously, Biden should not do this. But here lies the folly of Trump’s legal strategy — one that serves only to protect him above all else. Just imagine an America where presidents could get away with countless abuses of power and not face any consequences for those actions. Trump’s lawyers are literally arguing — in a bid to save Trump’s skin — that a president could have his or her perceived political enemies killed by SEAL Team 6 so long as Congress didn’t previously remove that president from office.

If presidents can do whatever they want, why is Trump so hung up on Joe Biden being “crooked?” Being crooked is apparently a presidential right!

So when do presidents have actual immunity, and when should they have immunity?

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Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, tells Raw Story that presidents have immunity from civil cases that relate to official acts, but that’s about it. She says she doesn’t agree with Trump’s argument that presidents should have “total immunity.”

“It’s nonsense. I think that legal precedent tells us quite clearly that you do not have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution,” Levinson says.

Many of these questions were considered during the Nixon years, Levinson says. There was a Supreme Court case that ruled presidents are immune from those civil cases, and there was a decision where it was decided that former President Richard Nixon didn’t have executive privilege that would allow him to withhold his Oval Office recordings.

“Nixon accepted the pardon from Ford. I think that would also indicate that Nixon thought there was potential criminal liability,” Levinson says.

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Giving a president total immunity from criminal prosecution would “undercut” the idea that no person is above the law, Levinson says. Though Trump says presidents won’t be able to do their job if they don’t have total immunity, because they’ll constantly be worrying about getting indicted for their actions, Levinson noted we had 44 presidents before Trump who never needed total immunity to get the job done. The argument that presidents do need such legal protection is bogus, she said.

“History indicates that, in fact, you need a president who allegedly engages in this type of behavior to be here — where you have a president facing criminal indictment,” Levinson says.

The immunity question could end up before the Supreme Court, but it might not. It’s currently being considered by the D.C. Circuit. Levinson says she doesn’t think the Supreme Court is going to want to weigh in on this one.

“I think the Supreme Court is just going to let the D.C. Circuit decision stand. The Supreme Court is already looking at the obstruction statute,” Levinson says. “They’re already looking at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for ballot access. I don’t think they want anything to do with this.”

It doesn’t seem likely the courts will decide that presidents should have total immunity. It would put the president above the law and open the door to presidents abusing their power in ways we can’t even imagine.

Trump’s not exactly great at coming up with strong legal arguments, though, and this will accomplish his main goal of slowing down the legal cases against him.

In the meantime, Biden may want to check his maps of southern Cuba.

Trump considered sending political foes to Gitmo -- here's why he didn't: Ex-Trump official

Donald Trump actually once considered sending his political enemies to Guantanamo Bay, but didn't in part because it would be too expensive, according to a former Trump administration official.

Ex-DHS official Miles Taylor, known for secretly voicing his Trump criticisms while employed within the administration, appeared on MSNBC's Alex Witt Reports on Saturday and was discussing Trump's purported tendency to weaponize the justice system against his "adversaries."

"A number of folks who worked in the Trump Administration with me and have since spoken out against the ex president, we joke darkly about the fact that in the second term, a number of us will be in orange jumpsuits in Guantanamo Bay," Taylor said, adding that the joke isn't entirely outside of the realm of reality.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

"I say that the comment is half facetious, because Donald Trump actually did have a vision, while I was in the administration, to go use the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay to house political prisoners," he said. "In that case what he wanted to do is use it to move people from the southern border to send a message and put them in the same place where people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, sits behind bars, and send a message."

He noted that "the only reason Donald Trump didn't start sending people to Gitmo" is because "he was convinced it would be too expensive, and the facility couldn't house the number of people he wanted to send there. That was the mindset of the man when he was president of the United States.

Watch below or click the link here.

Prospects for Closing Gitmo 'very, very low': Gates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that prospects for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp were "very, very low" given broad opposition in Congress.

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Gitmo may be WikiLeaks' next target

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has reportedly told media contacts that he has a large cache of files on the US's detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

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Gitmo detainee acquitted on all but one charge

The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial was acquitted Wednesday of all but one of the hundreds of charges he helped unleash death and destruction on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 — an opening salvo in al-Qaida's campaign to kill Americans.

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Fox host ponders if Obama attorneys 'sympathetic to Al-Qaeda cause'

Fox & Friends devoted a segment Tuesday to speculating on whether Obama-appointed federal attorneys are "sympathetic to the al Qaeda cause."

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Fox News: US could send Haitian refugees to Gitmo

Just when you thought the situation at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba couldn't get more complicated, a new report claims that the US is considering hosting homeless Haitian refugees at the suspected terrorist naval prison.

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Maybe I'm completely wrong on this, and I'd love to hear how I am

Watching all this coverage of Obama's speech and Cheney's rebuttal---as well as endless tweeting and amusing digressions about whether or not "terrorists" are more powerful than superheros---I find myself feeling unusually cold about a political drama. The only thing that's gotten really up my ass is the way the word "terrorist" has crept into the discussion, being used even by liberals and even by Obama, even though the case hasn't been made against a single Gitmo prisoner in question. And I highly doubt there is an existing case against a single one, or else the Bush administration would have made that case. I can't believe they'd just turn down the urge to have a conviction for terrorism they could parade around in public as "proof" that they got one. I'm actually more shocked they didn't resort to kangaroo court convictions to justify the Gitmo situation. Calling people convicted of nothing "terrorists" is conceding the argument, and why a bunch of congresscritters feel free to treat the American public like we're stupid.

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