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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> legally the president and anyone acting under his command are immune from prosecution if they acted according to legal guidance from the white house council

“Counsel”, and, no, they aren't (there'd be a stronger, but not ironclad because of the reasonableness proviso, case if they were acting under guidance from the Justice Department, and given the Constitutional structure of the government, from the President himself, compared to White House Counsel, due to the general principal that the only case where ignorance of the law is an excuse under criminal law is when the mistake of law results from reasonable reliance on guidance from officials responsible for enforcing the law.)

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>> “due to the general principal that the only case where ignorance of the law is an excuse under criminal law is when the mistake of law results from reasonable reliance on guidance from officials responsible for enforcing the law”

Request for relevant citation(s).

The foundational case on the relevant principal (which reversedas a matter of Constitutional law the common-law principal that mistake of law was never a defense) is Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423 (1959).

Can you explain how someone is to hold the President accountable for an illegal act if it is committed in such a way where no citizen has standing to bring suit?

The way I understand it is that technically the fellow upthread is technically right in the eyes of the law; until a judge rules that something is illegal, it isn't. That's a staple of common law jurisprudence. Judges discover law. It is still possible even after the finding of illegality to continue to perpetuate the activity as well given that the legislature ends up too locked up to successfully convict the President for malfeasance, and there is still no means through which the sitting President's pardon power or executive discretion can be overcome.

And again, the lack of standing issue is also alarming in that... Well, maybe you can see something is clearly wrong, but if the wronged can't file a suit in their own defense, and no one else has standing...

I don't know, I feel like I fell off a wagon after reading that post. There's a vague sense of possible loophole there.

> Can you explain how someone is to hold the President accountable for an illegal act if it is committed in such a way where no citizen has standing to bring suit.

Impeachment. Criminal prosecution by a subsequent administration. Civil prosecution by public authority if the particular illegal act is one for which their is a public cause of action. Failing all that, retaliation by a subsequent, similarly difficult-to-punish President. (The last of which, obviously, is obviously fraught, but it's there...)

Curious as well, dragonwriter clearly has deep understanding of US law.

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