00:00Now, Chief Justice Roberts, who authored this opinion, has portrayed it or tried to portray
00:05it as a very narrow ruling, but he also gave some sort of really broad sweeps of how courts
00:12can look at this and how prosecutors will look at this that they cannot consider, for
00:16example, a president's motives in determining whether or not there's criminal activity.
00:23And he also said that, you know, he spoke specifically to Trump about leveraging the
00:27DOJ authority to replace electors is not prosecutable, pressuring Pence to reject
00:32electors, electoral votes is not prosecutable.
00:35What are your thoughts on the fact that they spoke to specific facts related to Trump,
00:39but they also gave sort of broad strokes, ways for the president in the future to potentially
00:46get away with things, so to speak.
00:47So that's a really concerning part of the opinion, because it suggests that if President
00:54Trump becomes president again and decides to fire Jack Smith, for example, that he
01:01would be immune to prosecute, first of all, that he would be within his constitutional
01:07rights to do that, but first of all, but second of all, that he could not be found guilty
01:15for obstruction for doing that, because one would think that if you fire a special counsel
01:21who is investigating you or prosecuting you, that that would be a prime example of obstruction
01:28of justice.
01:31So right.
01:34But this decision essentially says that Congress doesn't have the authority to hold, to create
01:43statutes that make the president liable for obstruction if it would cut into his core
01:50constitutional powers, and it says that courts don't have the ability to find a president
01:59liable for obstruction if he is acting within his core constitutional competence.
02:07So that's a really significant, strikes a really significant blow against accountability
02:16for presidents and says basically that a president can't be found liable for obstruction, at
02:23least not as far as any removal of an executive branch official is concerned.
02:32And the court already sort of expanded or narrowed the ability to find obstruction in
02:37an earlier ruling related to January.
02:38The Fisher case, the Fisher case, so between the Fisher case and this case, that really
02:44strikes at the heart of obstruction laws applied to presidents.
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