Is the US President immune from civil lawsuits? I read in the news that recently inaugurated US President Donald Trump has been sued for "ethics violation" by a private entity for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. I thought that the President was immune from lawsuits by private citizens?
From Clinton v. Jones 520 U.S. 681 (1997): Deferral of this litigation until petitioner's Presidency ends is not constitutionally required. [...] The separation-of-powers doctrine does not require federal courts to stay all private actions against the President until he leaves office. [...] Nixon v Fitzgerald provides no support for an immunity for unofficial conduct. Regarding official acts, the President is immune. Nixon v. Fitzgerald 457 U.S. 731 (1982): Petitioner, as a former President of the United States, is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts. [...] The President's absolute immunity extends to all acts within the &quot;outer perimeter&quot; of his duties of office.
First of all, as noted in the comments, Babylon Bee is SATIRE. It's not intended to be news, just entertainment. But the real question is whether or not a President COULD do such a thing. Or perhaps better, could a President attempt to do something like this. If a President did attempt to do this, it would be totally without precedent and also without any constitutional authority. Since the US Constitution enumerates the powers between the branches and gives the President only the authority to appoint, with the advice of the Senate, a SCOTUS justice, trying to change things by giving an existing justice 2 votes would almost certainly be immediately challenged by the Senate. It also seems unlikely that such an action would be upheld as constitutional. Of course this is all speculative since nothing of this nature has happened.
Florida bar membership is something that can be determined from public records to see if he is an attorney or not. I would be stunned if he was not. It could be that he was an enrolled patent agent prior to being admitted to the practice of law and has never updated the record. Alternatively, it could simply be that there was a data entry error. No large database is 100% accurate. For most purposes, the rights of an enrolled patent agent and an attorney admitted to patent law practice are the same in PTO practice, so correcting this error (assuming that it is one), even if it was discovered, wouldn't be an urgent priority.
A statement cannot be libel unless it actually identifies the plaintiff to defame him. The identification need not be by name, but it must be specific enough that the public would be able to determine who the statement referred to. You can read more about this concept at Prof. Eugene Volokh on Libel Law Therefore, if nobody other than the plaintiff or defendant learned about the connection before the filing of the case or the publication of discovered emails, the original work of fiction was not a libel. And by telling everyone that the connection existed, yes, the plaintiff was impliedly consenting to any further alleged libel and it would be a defense from liability for the plaintiff. Furthermore, there wouldn't be libel unless whatever the fictional character did was untrue (something the real plaintiff didn't do) and the public would think that whatever the character did was actually an assertion that the real plaintiff did it. I could write a satire about a President Brock O'Bama who is actually a lizardman in disguise, and that's my First Amendment right, not a slander of the President. Disclaimer: only describing the common law and majority rules. State laws may differ.
The law is really bad at protecting whistleblowers From my understanding of US law, this is not unauthorised access to a computer: the reporter made a legitimate request to a remote computer, that computer provided data,the reporter accessed the supplied data on their own computer. However, pointing out the failures of people in power is fraught even if it is not illegal. It is certainly within the Governor’s power to authorise an investigation of the reporter. On the face of the law, it seems reasonable to suspect that what was done might be a violation so there is nothing legally wrong with initiating an investigation. I suspect that such a broad interpretation of the law would fall foul of the First Amendment which may partly explain why it wasn’t prosecuted: the government doesn’t want to find out. Similarly they can issue press releases, which, due to the First Amendment, don’t have to be true, just not defamatory. Saying it’s a possible violation is true and not defamatory. Saying the reporter was an evil person who is only doing this for political purposes is a statement of opinion and not defamatory. It’s a fact of the world that people with power can use that power in ways that are malicious, unethical, and unfair but not necessarily illegal.
Double jeopardy in its usual sense wouldn't attach because impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, which is the only thing double jeopardy applies to (esoteric estoppel matters not withstanding). You might recall that OJ Simpson was tried and acquitted of murder in a criminal court, and then subsequently tried and found liable in a civil court for those murders. There was no double jeopardy protections of which he could avail himself. But the constitution says that the Senate shall have the sole power to try impeachments, so for the most part we can expect that whatever they say goes. So they can dismiss for any reason they desire, in principle. The impeachment of Senator Blount is one example: the House impeached him, and on the same day the Senate expelled him under their constitutional power to do so, and then dismissed the impeachment for lack of jurisdiction (arguing that Congress members cannot be impeached; the impeachment was otherwise still relevant after his expulsion because it could result in preventing him from gaining office again). The costs here are political: in your hypothetical situation with very strong evidence, if popular opinion turns too strongly in favor of conviction then refusal to do so may cost the Senators and their party in subsequent elections. Attempts to argue arcane technicalities might not save you at the ballot box. Under existing impeachment precedent (as well as Congressional rules precedents), the courts would be loathe to get involved by default. Though if the action was sufficiently egregious (not even superficially resembling what a judge might call a trial, say) maybe they would feel judicial intervention and action was warranted and justified. But that's purely speculative.
Part of the problem you'll find is that there are so few impeachments in U.S. History (Only 21 articles of Impeachment have ever been drafted, of which only 8 resulted in convictions) and SCOTUS is so selective on cases it chooses to hear, that only one case has ever been heard and that was upheld (Nixon v. United States). In that case, SCOTUS ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to rule on the legal question before it (was the new trial format a proper trial by the senate), but did not have an opinion one way or another to suggest that SCOTUS could not review other cases that come before it. One of the reasons they also haven't is in order to have a legal case in the U.S., the plaintiff must suffer actual harm. More impeachments ended without a conviction than with either acquittal (8), resignation before trial conclusion (4), and expulsion from senate (1, and will never occur again as Congressional office holders are not impeachable following this particular case). Since no harm was caused and courts do not rule on hypotheticals, a case with actual harm (conviction) must occur in order for SCOTUS to even consider hearing the case. Nixon does not bar SCOTUS from hearing more appeals resulting from Impeachment, it only bars those relating to the manner in which the senate chooses to hold the trial.
No But they aren’t suing over defamation against Trump; the are suing over (alleged) defamation of the campaign: the Campaign "assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia's help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table."