Immunity for Trump?

Even if the president was handed a sack of money and said, would you issue this person a pardon because I gave you this sack of money, and he does so, he cannot be prosecuted for doing that. He can be impeached and removed if it's midway through his term, but again, that's...

But if he's walking out the door. Which is why they are always done as they walk out the door, yeah.

And every cousin of every president who's in jail is sending a letter after the letter. You remember when we used to play as kids, Mr. Joe Biden? I mean, you know, was Joe Biden ever a kid? I don't know, maybe in the Great Depression.

But we're heading back. Yeah, exactly. His, his, if he was Joe Biden, Joe Biden's inauguration date, or rather, Joe Biden was born closer to Abraham Lincoln's inauguration date than his own. Think about that for a second.

Show Introduction and Sponsor Mentions

Yorkalvinist podcast is filmed before a live studio audience. Welcome back to Yorkalvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I am Yorkalvinist. And I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Sovereign Grace Family Church.

If you're in the Jacksonville area, we would love for you to come and worship with us at Sovereign Grace, and you can find out more about us at sgfcjacks .org. Also, we are a partner with Tiny Bibles.

If you're interested in the smallest Bible that you can get on the market and available in both King James and New King James, go to tinybibles .com. Also, this month, they're running a new campaign to have a tiny Gospel of John printed.

And if you'd like to get involved with that and get, be part of the pre-order, you can go and find out more about that as well. Finally, I want to remind you also that we are supported by you guys through buymeacoffee .com.

So if you want to support the show, you can go to buymeacoffee .com slash Yorkalvinist and become a member or simply leave a one-time donation, and it helps us out a tremendous amount. Well, I'm very thankful to be able to welcome my guest today, a guest who really needs no introduction because he is such a friend of the show, has been here since the beginning, and a man that I have come to love very much, my good friend and not-yet-Calvinist friend, Matthew Henson is with me today.

Matthew, thank you for joining me on the show.

So glad to be here. And just an update to those who've been praying for my Calvinist conversion. I did preside, as an elder of the church, I did preside over communion this Sunday and read from John 6 and quoted John Calvin in so doing.

So there you go.

Maybe you're making progress. I don't know. I don't know. I've never been so happy at the beginning of a podcast. I've just, I'm going to have to stop and just, you know, my heart is fluttering. There you go.

So, but it's interesting. Have you been on since you became an elder?

One time. Yeah. What episode was it we were doing? Gosh, I don't remember, but it was one time and you got to introduce me for the first time because it had been quite a road to get there, but it was a sweet time.

I remember how I felt.

I just don't remember what the topic was. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I'm excited today to be talking because I brought you in as a subject matter expert and we've done this before, but today is going to be continuing on.

And the reason why I say a subject matter expert is because I know that you are a person who has studied the Supreme Court and particularly the decisions of the Supreme Court. And you have spent a lot of time learning about it, a lot of time investigating how the process works, how our legal system works, particularly at the highest level there at the Supreme Court.

And what I have learned from you has been a tremendous amount, especially I know we did the episode when Roe v. Wade was struck down and you just had tremendous insights as to how that worked, why it worked, and it was so certainly important to me.

And you even gifted me Supreme Court documents regarding the Second Amendment, which I remember was very grateful when you gave me that as a gift. So not only has our friendship been a beneficial thing because I love you and enjoy being around you, but I also just enjoy the fact that you are such a knowledgeable person in many areas.

Also on the subject of weather, which we've done a weather episode, you're my personal meteorologist, which I've jokingly said that before. And speaking of that, I know it's not the subject of today, is there any updates on Beryl, the hurricane that was heading towards Texas?

I believe they said it was going to landfall sometime Monday morning, which would be at the time this is being recorded. So I don't know. It's kind of fallen apart a little bit after it went across the Yucatan.

So when you get a disorganized storm, sometimes you can see, okay, that's the eye of the storm right there. But when they get a little disorganized, it's kind of a judgment call on when did it actually make landfall.

But if I'm not mistaken, it would have by now as a Category 1.

Well, I know yesterday in church we were praying for some folks that used to be members of our church and had moved to Texas and were right in the middle of where it was supposed to come plowing through.

So we continue to pray for them. And if you are in Texas, know that you are in our prayers as you face this storm. All right, my friends. So recently we know there has been a lot of Supreme Court decisions that have come down that have made, well, have made the news.

And a lot of people like me, we hear about it, we see it, but we don't know really what's going on and what brought about, like when people say, oh, the Chevron decision. I know that as a concerned citizen, I should know more about that, but I don't.

I know that like the Donald Trump decision, which regarded immunity for the president, I mean, to me that's a huge deal, but I don't really understand it. And I imagine there are some people in the land of YouTube who are watching this show who don't understand it.

And I realize some of you might be saying, hey, you're supposed to be doing theology. Understand this, we live in this world and we are supposed to engage with this world with the gospel. And some of these end up affecting how we are engaging with the world around us.

And it may affect our freedoms and our abilities and things that we can do and can't do. Not that we wouldn't go out and share the gospel if it became illegal, but it certainly would make a difference for how our lives work and how we operate in the conditions that we're in.

So keeping up with the culture is important. I'm very thankful for men like Al Mohler who provide a daily briefing of news and events from a Christian perspective. I've listened to that for years and found it to be very helpful on subjects like this one.

So without any further introduction, I know one of the ones that we're going to talk about is the Trump decision. I think that's going to be of great interest to people, especially people going into the political election season.

So I want to ask you, Matthew, what's it all about? What does it mean and why should we care? Matthew Feeney. Sure.

Well, just one little other bit of introductory material. I did purchase as a gift for Keith a copy of one of the Second Amendment concerning decisions, that being D .C. versus Heller. And I will move up into the camera frame.

He got me this shirt here, which if you're listening audio only, you just heard some dead air. But it says, ask me about the Supreme Court. And the careful viewer will note how worn this shirt is because I wear it all the time.

I love it. And it's been through many wash cycles. So yeah, so the Supreme Court, like why should Christians care about this? Well, I mean, on the one hand, you are afforded—we just had July 4th, right?

And a lot of churches take the whole God and country thing a little too far. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't—. Matthew Feeney. Yeah. I mean, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't recognize and appreciate the blessings that God has given us.

We have so much light right now. What Keith and I are doing is criminalized in so many different countries to talk about theology and, God forbid, to discuss the workings of government and potentially express our disagreements over them.

That's just something that other countries—a lot of other countries, you can't do that. And so Christians should know where the bounds are. We should know the workings of our government. When Paul is in the latter chapters of Acts, he's working the Roman judicial system to spread the gospel.

Eventually, he says, I appeal to Caesar. And they said, to Caesar you appeal and to Caesar you will go. And so that's how he ends up going on his journey to Rome. And like—.

Darrell Bock And you don't strike a Roman citizen. Matthew Feeney Yeah, you don't do that.

Yeah. He got beat by this centurion, and then the guy freaks out. He's like, oh my gosh, I just did this to a Roman citizen. Darrell Bock You done messed up, A .A. Ron. Matthew Feeney You done messed up, A .A. Ronius or whatever the Latinized version of that is.

Darrell Bock. You done messed up, A .A. Ronius. That's our new catchphrase.

Matthew Feeney. There it is, yeah. But no, like—and Paul knew his rights as a Roman citizen. And it wasn't—it was not something he was grasping onto for his personal gain. It was to spread the gospel.

So Christians, we need to know where the boundaries are. We need to know how our system works so that we can work it for the sake of the gospel, and so that we can have, you know, as effective of an outreach as we can.

We need to know that sort of thing. Darrell Bock. Amen. Matthew Feeney. Yeah. So all right, so what did we get? The Supreme Court hears cases basically the same time period as a school year. They start up in October hearing cases, and they hear them all the way into really April.

And then they are—they hear the cases and they're writing opinions generally starting in like February, and then they release a couple per week—a couple per month, rather, here and there throughout February, March, April.

And then in May and June, that's when they really kick up and they release the rest of the opinions. And a lot of it's because these are complicated 100-, 200-page documents, and every single sentence and syllable is a binding precedent for future generations.

And so they're very careful about how they do—well, the good justices are. We'll get into that in a minute. But they try and be very careful about how they do phrasing, what words they choose. It's very much—and again, I'm going to keep making parallels.

Whenever I preach or, like I was saying, had a chance to preside over communion, I go back and listen to that video, especially preaching, because I'm so new at it, you know, six or seven times, and I take notes on my own sermon, and I'm like, oh, whoa, that phrasing could be interpreted this way, and I make points to improve.

Anyway, the same weight is—not the same weight—a similar category of weight is put on when there's a Supreme Court decision, because if you ever go pull one up, most of it is citations of other Supreme Court decisions.

They're building a case. They're saying, as we held in this case here, in this case here, in this case here, in this case here, so therefore that would mean this, you know.

Yeah, and real quick, because you mentioned something I When the decisions are being released, these decisions have already been made sometimes months in advance. Am I understanding that correctly, or is this—.

Kind of, sort of. So Justice Scalia actually did an interview towards the end of his time—end of his life, and he didn't—he died fairly suddenly, so he wasn't, like, terminal with some illness or anything that he knew of, but towards the end of his life, he did this interview, and they were like, okay, so what happens after oral arguments?

And he would put pause, and he'd say, all right, well, every issue effectively that the court deals with that you really hear about starts at a district court. It starts with party A suing party B in federal court, saying that there's been a violation of constitutional rights or federal law or something like that, and then the district court will do what it does.

You know, one judge, sometimes a three-judge panel kind of depends on the jurisdiction and the issue that's being addressed, and then they'll issue a ruling. Now, they've compelled witnesses, and they've done fact-finding, and they've done all the things we think of when we hear a trial.

It's a very traditional trial, and a jury is present, you know, and that kind of thing for some of them, depending on the parties and what the issue is. Okay, so then if you are on the losing side of the judge's ruling, then you can appeal.

Now, the thing is, appeals are not, I didn't like the ruling, so I'm going to go to someone else and ask for a different ruling. At least they're not supposed to be. You have to allege a specific constitutional violation occurred or there was a federal rules of evidence problem.

For example, evidence was admitted that shouldn't have been or something. You have to allege that there was a procedural or legal issue. You can't just say, I didn't like the ruling. Give me another shot.

That's not what an appeal is for. And so when you do that, you get, after the district court level, you will file for an appeal in the federal circuit that you're in. So we're at Florida's in the 11th circuit, for instance, and there's circuits all over the United States.

And that level of court, they don't hear all the appeals that are asked for, because sometimes people's appeals are dumb, and they're just like, I didn't like this, and they say, well, go away. We're not taking your case, basically.

I don't know why I'm laughing. It's like, we didn't like it, you dumb. You dumb, basically, yeah.

No, there was one, the Supreme, so okay, very, very minor digression. The Supreme Court releases lists of orders, they're called, about once a week. And these are very, most of them are just clerical things, like we accept we're going to hear these five cases in the next term, but we're not going to hear these hundred cases.

And usually that is about the ratio of people asking to be heard. There was this one time where it was like, we are denying review on this case, and furthermore, the clerk is directed to no longer accept this guy's petitions, because basically he won't shut up, and he keeps sending the same thing over and over again.

And I was like, that's the nicest legal way I've ever heard of right-click, mark as spam. Like, that's basically what they were doing. So that guy had to pay a fine if he wanted to submitting it. Anyway, so these appellate courts….

Everything's legal, as long as you're willing to pay for it. Basically, right, yeah. When something has a fine, we're not saying it's illegal, we're saying it's legal for a cost. For a cost, that's right, yeah.

It's legal for a price. He can submit, but it's going to cost you. Right.

So an appellate court hears the case, and then an appellate court is usually a three judge panel, and then they hear…. Now, again, at this point, they're not finding facts anymore. Did the guy shoot the guy?

Whatever the district court determined, they will take as given, because the district court had the ability to compel witnesses, get testimony, and stuff like that. They're asking, what is the specific constitutional or federal law violation that occurred here that you believe you didn't get a fair trial?

OK? So they'll hear it. If you don't like the result you got from that, you can do something called an en banc appeal, which is E-N, new word, B-A-N-C, which is where you get the entire appellate court to hear it, because normally an appellate court has anywhere from 12 to 20 judges sitting on it.

And if you don't like the result you got from the three judge panel, you can petition for an en banc review. At that point, they will do it again. And if you still didn't get the answer you want, you have one last avenue, and that's an appeal to the Supreme Court.

And so at that point, that's how a case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, which is why, you know, some of this stuff, like, there's still in appellate court levels hearing cases from rights violations during COVID four years ago.

I mean, this stuff takes time. Everybody, they file a motion, then the other side gets 30 days to respond. The wheels turn slowly, but it's a very deliberative process.

Darrell Bock. And I want you to know why I'm not the guy who has this type of mind like you, like thinking through these type of things, because ever since you said en banc, I've just been thinking about Montblanc, the pen.

Jay Haynes. Or the mountain in France or wherever.

Darrell Bock. Well, I'm thinking, actually, I'm quoting the 007. We'll see here, 007. This looks like an ordinary Montblanc pen. But when you depress this lever...

Jay Haynes That's right. Yeah, I got to get the quartermaster in there. Darrell Bock I'm sorry.

Jay Haynes That's okay. Darrell Bock To my audience, I want you to know, I'm just a goofball. Jay Haynes I love you.

Darrell Bock. I'm a goofball in my own life. But I'm very interested. Jay Haynes. Sure, so let's say you're one of the cases that actually makes it to the Supreme Court. Now, again, the Supreme Court, they will very much jump in if there's something called a circuit split.

Let's say you have an identical issue in the Second Circuit and the Eighth Circuit, and those two appellate courts came to differing conclusions, that's a very high chance the Supreme Court's going to take that case because they want to have a definitive word on that.

But they are not compelled to take any case. They do not have to hear any case. The other thing is they can only hear cases and controversies constitutionally. So what that means is that, excuse me, there has to be a plaintiff and a respondent or a defendant.

You can't go get an advisory opinion from them. The president cannot call up the Supreme Court and say, hey, I want to take this executive action. Is it legal? And then have the Supreme Court issue a preemptive statement.

He can't do that. So it has to be a case that has to make it through all levels of appeal. The Supreme Court does have the option of sort of plucking a case out of the normal process from the district court, from the appellate court.

They very, very rarely do that. But they do have that option. Bush v. Gore, for instance, which was a very time-sensitive case in the 2000 election. It only had to be decided in a matter of weeks or something.

There was not enough time. So the Supreme Court used its authority to do that and took that case. That was the hanging chads thing. Florida became very famous for that. And yeah. Florida's famous for a lot of stuff.

Yeah, that one was. Florida man. Well, again, I could talk for hours about that case because it was much more complicated than people would give it credit for. But anyway, so let's say you make it to all that level and the Supreme Court accepts your petition.

Well, then you're scheduled an oral argument date. They generally hear two cases per day, one at 10 a .m. and then one at noon. And that's in D .C. in the Supreme Court, in the chambers of the Supreme Court.

And that starts in October. And usually it's like I may have this wrong. It's like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. They're hearing cases. And then Wednesday, they have what they call a judicial conference.

Does anybody in government work a 40-hour week? Oh, these guys do.

No, let me tell you. I'll tell you. So before the case gets there to oral arguments, they've the the basis on which they accepted the case or not is based on what we call the briefs. And so the petitioner files a brief that says you should hear my case because this and the other.

Here's the violation I'm alleging and whatever. And then if the and then the respondent will also file a brief if the case is accepted, the Supreme Court will give them some amount of time to file a brief and say, here's why that person's wrong and why you should rule in our favor or whatever.

And then you have something called amicus curiae briefs, which is Latin for friend of the court. And so where we get the word amicable, for instance, or amicable, however you pronounce it.

And amity, as you know, means friendship. Tell me what movie that's from in the comments. There you go. Get after it. Do you know?

No, I don't. Oh, I'll tell you later. Okay, that's fine. If you do that, you get a... No, I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep. So they have amicus curiae briefs. So, for example, if you have a case on, yeah, I don't know, on well, the one we talked about Dobbs when it came to overturning Roe v. Wade.

I mean, Planned Parenthood filed an amicus brief. They weren't a party in the suit, but they said, hey, court, you should you should think about us when you make your ruling because this will impact us.

But I'm reliably told only three percent of their business. I don't know why they're crying so much, right? Yeah, anyway. But then you have national right to life. You have the Catholic Church filed an amicus brief.

You know, like there's that's what they do. So the Supreme Court has to. Well, they don't have to. I guess they are provided with literally thousands of pages of briefs for every single case. And that's why they can only accept 60 or 70 cases per year, because there's just so much reading to do.

Now, does every justice read every word of every brief? Doubt it. Honestly, doubt it. They have clerks to help them with that. They're using technology like we are. They're doing fine to look for different phrases.

They're looking at what cases are cited. They have their own review method.

They have chat GPT and they're going, summarize this like I'm five. Yeah, TLDR.

I'm not reading your brief. Anyway, so then they get the briefs and on they schedule oral argument. Now, oral argument, some courts in other countries don't even do this anymore because it's considered old fashioned and we can just take your written briefs and call it a day.

But oral argument can make a difference in cases. It really can. There was one Citizens United, which is one of the most hated cases by the left on free speech. And at that point, it was Chief Justice Roberts that actually asked the question and said, under the standard you're proposing, which is something about campaign finance, if a group wanted to get together and publish a book in favor of a particular candidate, could the federal government under this law ban it?

And the guy was like, yeah, we could. And literally you heard a gasp in the courtroom because the justices who'd read the briefs were not on board with that or were sympathetic to the government's case flipped like that.

I think oral arguments really made a difference there. So the oral arguments happen. Then they go to judicial conference, which is on a Wednesday, and they sit in a room, just the nine of them. And they say, OK, in the matter of Hinson versus Foskey, you know, if we ever made it all the way up there.

Let's hope not. Let's hope not, right? What are you guys thinking in favor of the plaintiff or the respondent? And then they literally just do a show of hands. And whoever has them, seriously. They don't even do a secret ballot.

No, they literally just do show of hands.

OK, Roberts, is it going to be a thumbs up?

Yeah, basically, it's like the thing from, was it Gladiator? So they vote essentially just like that. And then they say, and Scalia was funny about this. He said, and then we have to decide who's writing it.

And his thing was no one wanted to write the opinion because it's a lot of work. But the majority, the senior most justice in the majority can write the opinion or assign it to someone else in the majority.

Now, the one that overrides that is the chief justice, whichever if the chief justice is in the majority or the dissent, he gets to assign that sides who writes the opinion. He can assign it to himself if he wants to.

So that's a power that he has. The chief justice can do that. And once that happens, they begin writing the opinion and they'll circulate it. So let's say it's a 7 -2 decision and you're in the majority and you've been assigned the opinion.

You write what you think is the best opinion and you send it out to your seven colleagues who agree and they will respond back and say, I agree with everything except this part here on page seven. This is I won't join your opinion with this in it.

But if you rephrase it this way, I could join that. And there's some not a ton, but there's some kind of negotiations. The wrong word harmonizing.

Really, I was going to ask, is there does that get corrected? You just answered.

Yeah, I wouldn't say Scalia said it wasn't negotiation because, well, he said some people did that, but it was frowned upon because he's like, you know, either they're right or they're wrong. Like what?

You know, how do you what do you mean? Horse trading like, well, does it mean what it says or does it not? You know, well, what if it kind of means what it says? You know, he didn't he didn't like that.

And then they will once that's the case and it's it's all settled and they've they've decided and they've written the majority in dissenting opinions, they are compiled and then they're released on what are very unimaginatively called opinion release days in the spring.

Generally, like I said, generally starting in like March, April, something like that, they'll begin releasing opinions. They release them at 10 a .m. on on the website. And then also the clerk will come out into like a waiting room and actually hand out paper copies to the various reporters.

And they have interns because they're not allowed cameras or anything in this room. But CNN and Fox and MSNBC, whoever else will have interns in the room. They're given a paper copy. And then there's this fun tradition called the running of the interns, where they sprint from the Supreme Court building down to whatever road it is right in front of it to hand the opinion to the anchor.

And he's shuffling the pages live on the air is like, oh, Trump wins. You know, that's basically it. So just one thing. I just know I wouldn't do that. You wouldn't run with an opinion. I don't sprint.

I am in training for my first half K. Half K? It's about about 1 ,500 feet. OK, just go with special K instead. That was my nickname in high school. Was it really?

Gosh, that's OK. This is for the audience. Because that's what I'm known for is a little bit of fun, a little bit of fun. All right. So Trump wins. Yeah. So did Trump win? That's the next logical question.

Did he win?

So that I don't even I was going to say, you know, that scene from Ghostbusters, but I don't even have to preface it with that because you're Keith. That poster over there proves it. Yeah. So basically to the to the listener, you've heard this decision, Trump versus United States comes out and you have that scene in the mayor's office and Ghostbusters, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

Yeah, that's right. Basically what you're talking heads are saying. And unfortunately, a lot of your folks on the right are like total Trump victory. He destroyed them. No, no, that's not what happened.

That is that is not the case. The president is not a king. The president cannot assassinate his political opponents just because he feels like it and have immunity. That's not what happened here. So. OK, let's start with the facts of the case.

So Donald Trump. Gosh, I'm going to alienate half the audience here. Donald Trump loses the 2020 election. OK, the rest of you can just come on down. So he loses the 2020 election ostensibly. Yeah, ostensibly.

He loses the 2020 election. I don't know what that means. It just sound like the right word of the time. Ostensibly. Yeah, I didn't say it right. Ostensibly. There you go. OK, so he loses the 2020 election and he, of course, doesn't concede.

Right. And so between November 3rd, I think, was the election day. And when Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20th, that's about a two and a half month period or something like that. And during that time, he is still the president of the United States.

And he begins taking various measures to try and they keep saying overthrow an election. No, he was pursuing legal remedies in most of these cases, appealing to the Supreme Court, appealing to whatever to to try and and and again, I don't want to say change the outcome to try and, I guess, verify what he believed was the true outcome.

And so he was for these actions, there were cases where he would call local election officials and say, you know, the one with Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, I need you to find me 11000 votes or whatever, which was clipped wildly out of context because he cited three or four different issues that he saw with the Georgia election.

And he's like, I need you to look into this because there's fraud there. You can go and find it. And in fact, it's not his point was it's not small scale fraud. It's not one mail in ballot. If you could find 11000 votes, you would change the outcome of the election.

That's what he was saying. And then it was like, oh, I need you to go find me. So I need you to go find me some.

Yeah. Find me some guys that are willing to sign a card.

Yeah. Find me some votes sounds very corrupt or whatever, but that's not what he was. That's not what he was getting at. So he did that. He gave the famous speech on the ellipse on January the 6th, where he was, you know, saying we're going to fight like hell for our country and stuff like that.

Just very inflammatory rhetoric that I wouldn't have given that speech, honestly. It but he explicitly was calling for peaceful action and all that. And so anyway, Jack Smith, a special prosecutor, is prosecuting Trump.

And he's prosecuting him now three years or two, two and a half years before he waited to file charges. So there's this narrative that the court system and the Supreme Court's been slow walking this so that Trump can get to the election.

Well, it was the special counsel that spent two and a half years before he finally filed the charges. So, you know what? Anyway, if he's an imminent threat to democracy, maybe ought to have gotten on that a little bit faster.

So he says he files a bunch of charges under various federal laws about obstructing Congress and stuff like that. OK, so the Supreme Court rather works through the district court in D .C., then the district the D .C. Court of Appeals.

And Trump's main argument is something called presidential immunity. What he's saying is that a president is broadly immune from any kind of federal prosecution while he is in office on the basis of a few different arguments.

One, he is the executive, right? Like he's the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States, says Constitution Article two, section one or clause one section, whatever. The first thing in Article two, it shall be vested in the president.

That's law enforcement power. So you can't like it's like hanging yourself. I mean, you can't that doesn't work. You can't do that is his argument. And furthermore, that it would violate separation of powers issues if you have people trying to, you know, muscle in on the president's role and stuff like that.

So his argument was basically, I cannot be prosecuted for anything ever while I'm the president, like nothing ever.

And the Supreme Court, what about things like impeachment? I mean, he's not saying he can't be at fault.

Well, so the that's a good that's a great question. The impeachment provision in the Constitution is primarily a political rather than a judicial process. So the House impeached him twice on completely ridiculous grounds both times, and it was a party line.

He didn't leave. I mean, it wasn't like I mean, you know, when Nixon was impeached, he resigned.

Is that correct? Well, so impeachment, there's two stages. The House impeaches and then the Senate votes to acquit or to remove. OK, so impeachment is all impeachment. The House acts as a grand jury in that case.

The House is saying there's enough evidence here to send this to a trial in the Senate. That's all impeachment is. So Bill Clinton was impeached. Donald Trump was impeached. Various other federal officials have been impeached, and a few have been removed by the Senate for bribery, corruption, things like that.

But a president has never been removed from office. They've been impeached, but they've never been removed from office. Was I right about Nixon, though? Didn't he leave? Nixon resigned before impeachment proceedings started.

He saw the writing on the wall of what was coming.

Yeah, so he was. He knew it was coming. He knew it was coming. Yeah, yeah.

And we'll get into Nixon in just a minute, because Nixon versus Fitzgerald is a very important precedent that the Supreme Court relied a lot on, relied on a lot here. So so OK, so what does the ruling actually say?