If presidential immunity is absolute..
If presidential immunity is absolute..
Could Biden order Trump's execution and win the next election?
If proven in court yes, only way to stop him would be to impeach him. But good luck impeaching a man who can make his enemies disappear with a waive of his hand. Also, I don't think the Dems want thar look.
Don’t need to worry about elections if all your opponents are dead. Only revolution could save us from such a regime, and not a sure thing even then.
That said, I do have hope that most people would refuse to carry out such orders. Even in the Trump administration this was a problem for him. But this is an obstacle that can be overcome with enough attrition and yes-men.
Reminds me of CGP Greys' "The Rules for Rulers". It's just a matter of navigating the keys to power.
I do have hope that most people would refuse to carry out such orders
Most wouldn't but most of the cult definitely would - refer to Charles Manson.
I'd be thinking more about how they'd plan to do it. Trump does have the Secret Service.
But good luck impeaching a man who can make his enemies disappear with a waive of his hand.
Friend, that's why you just sign something in your office with the doors closed and not make it public.
Honestly, I didn't even think enough about the whole thing enough to realize that the President could possibly get away with murder. Wouldn't that make it an obvious ruling then? Could then appoint new judges to the Supreme Court. There would magically be a few openings all of a sudden after all. How is this ruling really something they're actually considering?
He should fake it and make Trump shit his pants. Order a hit on him and his role family and see Trump lose his mind only to then go "SIKE!" and ensure it can never actually happen.
He should instead have half of SCOTUS disappeared, and then appoint replacements who were not MAGA tools. (And who would reverse all of these shitty rulings.) the irony would be delicious.
Theoretically, Biden could do it and not be prosecuted.
But if he ordered a member of the military to do it, they are required to refuse illegal orders. I don't know the rules about illegal orders but I bet this would fall under that. At the same time, the President can pardon people convicted in military court so that's not much of a deterrent.
Similarly if he ordered a civilian (say, CIA) to assassinate Trump, that person could be tried. But again, the President's pardon power makes federal charges not much of a threat.
BUT — the President cannot grant pardons for convictions in state courts. So anyone involved would be in trouble if it happened in a US state. And if the Supreme Court did not make the President immune from state-level prosecution, Biden could be tried for being involved... but it seems unlikely that they would go for "the President is immune from federal prosecution but not state prosecution."
Of course, all this show how insane and dangerous the idea of Presidential immunity is. It's a terrible idea.
Sounds like the answer is for him to pull the trigger himself?
In theory that gets around the legal issue but then you're getting into practical issues: Trump is protected by the Secret Service so either it will be extremely difficult from a practical perspective, or you would have to get quite a few people to go along with the conspiracy. Again, this highlights what a terrible idea immunity is because the possibilities get horrifying really fast.
This looks like a warrior president future timeline.
Not in our timeline
But if he ordered a member of the military to do it, they are required to refuse illegal orders
But the argument is that if the President orders it, it's not illegal. Nixon tried that and got shot down.
I didn’t realize the CIA was considered civilian. What about the NSA or the Secret Service?
NSA is civilian, they work closely with CSS which is the military side. The determining factor for civilian vs military is whether the people working there are enlisted soldiers/commissioned officers or civilians who just get hired like other jobs.
- Trump's lawyers would argue that Biden can order Trump's execution without any punishment, but that it would not cause him to win the next election because the military and other federal officials are not immune and are "obligated" not to follow illegal orders. So basically the argument is that illegal orders are unlikely to be followed.
- Problem with this argument is that the president has the pardon power, which means he could promise to pardon people for following his illegal orders.
- But the problem with that argument is that some believe the president could pardon himself, so maybe that situation is already a reality even if the president is not immune
- What would actually happen? It seems like in both Watergate and Jan 6, some people did refuse to follow corrupt orders. But in the case of Watergate where there was more time and a more intelligent corrupt president, that wasn't itself a major problem. In Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, he forced his AGs to resign until he landed on future Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, who carried out Nixon's illegal order to fire a special prosecutor. The bad news for Nixon is that the move was so unpopular it eventually led to his resignation as he probably would've been impeached otherwise.
Well,what if Biden shoots Trump during a debate? If he would be immune he cannot be put to trial for it.
Trump's lawyers would argue that Biden can order Trump's execution without any punishment, but that it would not cause him to win the next election because the military and other federal officials are not immune and are "obligated" not to follow illegal orders. So basically the argument is that illegal orders are unlikely to be followed.
As Biden, I'm not going to risk publicly having Trump killed. I'm getting a hitman
Wait, I've been out of the loop for a bit; is Trump actually saying that he should be immune to charges because he was the president??? How in the world could he think that would work?
Yes, his lawyers have argued that he could order the assassination of a political rival and be immune. And the conservatives judges agree.
Yes, that is exactly what he is saying. Yes, it is completely absurd and would undermine the bedrock principles of our legal system. However, apparently somewhere between 3 and 6 members of the US Supreme Court may be seriously considering it.
(To be fair, he does claim that this absolute immunity would go away if half of the House and 2/3 of the Senate decided to impeach the President.)
Then again, with that same theory, he could just eliminate Congress altogether before the voting starts for impeachment. Or place specific justices on house arrest before they vote. Basically, the idiotic idea of a president not beholden to laws is mostly the same as a despotism if the "president" wishes it to be.
What do you mean how? He did a bunch of crimes and has not seen any jail time. It’s been working
Yep that's the argument. At the end of the day it's a stalling tactic to push the trial past election day.
Yes. But, just an FYI, that's not the actual reason they're trying to claim it in court. They know it will never succeed, they just want to use it to delay his election trial until after the election.
That was brought up as an argument to the supreme court.
I honestly think that's what should happen though if the court decides on full immunity, Biden should take out Trump and then help Congress change the rules so that he isn't a king anymore and go to jail.
It would be the single biggest win for democracy possible if the supreme court is stupid enough to end democracy as we know it.
An incredible sacrifice by both men, for the benefit of the country.
You missed a step in that plan of yours of also taking out every single supreme court justice that decided to give the president full immunity at the same time he took out Trump. Anyone willing to do that is clearly both too traitorous to the nation to be allowed to keep their and too stupid for not seeing that coming to be allowed to live and continue to do such damage in the future.
(Disclaimer, not actually advocating for murder, I don't think)
Also not advocating for murder, but that would be some chef's kiss level of irony.
Biden could just pardon himself, and then let congress fix the issue. He shouldn’t have to go to jail if he’s going to play by SCOTUS’s dumb rules
I think the going to jail part is the "right" thing to do. The point is to force the country to make sure nobody else can ever do this, while recognizing that it's still a bad action that needs to be taken in order to ensure it gets corrected.
Send Trump and a few Supreme Court justices to Gitmo indefinitely, until they get the whole democracy thing sorted out.
No. In the likely event of Trump getting off the hook, you can bet that SCOTUS will come up with some obscure and obfuscated legal hand waving that the judgment pertains to the matter at hand and does not constitute a precedent. The goal isn't to nullify laws that can be used against the Democrats later, but to keep the Republican nominee in the running, which can only be accomplished by temporarily displacing the law.
I fucking hate displacing the law. I swear it was right here a minute ago.
This is the real problem on our hands. If you like the rule of law, there's no winning scenario here no matter who comes out on top, because we're already talking about abusing the law or changing it to suit political aims, rather than the operation of a coherent body of law being impartially carried out. In a sense the damage to our judicial norms and the larger issue of the credibility of an international rules-based order is at stake, and we're just not winning that battle lately. Too many bad actors.
All you need to know about this subject is that Putin passed full immunity for himself. It was one of the nails on the coffin for modern russia.
Most of SCOTUS is not in favor of "broad immunity", for exactly this scenario. They want to make sure that Trump is never held responsible for his actions while in office, and that every President after Trump(if he doesn't declare himself President for life) is criminally liable for everything. Trump has even said that he'll have Biden prosecuted if he wins.
If he declares himself president for life y'all better follow meal team six's example and storm the capital. Otherwise the fuck are your guns for.
Fucking right? We're at risk of a president declaring himself Emperor of the United States and he's not dead yet?
We're at the precipice of becoming Russia where "democracy" is nothing but a veneer, where the people don't have a real choice in their leaders.
if he wins.
I'm surprised he could ever even indirectly acknowledge the chance that he could lose
Absolutely, if presidential immunity was ruled absolute the peaceful transfer of power in the US would pretty much be doomed. The president is not a king, and America was founded in that spirit.
Nothing other than common decency stops a president from executing all rivals of their party, pardoning all those involved, then resigning from the office, turning it over to the VP, before Congress could impeach. Now if the only remaining members of Congress belong to the President's party, the odds of impeachment diminish significantly. In any case, only one person - the President - could ever be held responsible.
But anyone dumb enough to try this would start Civil War 2.0.
But anyone dumb enough to try this would start Civil War 2.0.
i lol'ed when i got to this line because you perfectly described the circumstances describing nixon's resignation (excluding the execution).
So Trump if he attains office. Got it.
That's exactly why they won't make a decision until they know who they are giving that power to.
Honestly, I think a really quick way to resolve this is for Biden to jail Trump just because...
If Trump wants out he'll need to abandon his case, or he can remain in jail and know that he won.
Basically it'd be win-win for sanity.
That would definitely solve the immediate question, but I've a feeling it would create more problems than it solves.
The idea does give me the warm fuzzies though!
Yea... I'd have some serious concerns if Biden actually did it but it's a hilarious as fuck thought experiment.
How many divisions has the Supreme Court?
They can order him released but unless they're going to send a bailiff to try to break him out of federal prison, they're just words on a sheet of paper.
Yes, but then we have a whole new set of problems.
Yea, we get rid of Trump... along with our democracy.
Biden could announce that he’s set up a deadman switch so that once the law is enacted, mercs would take out the people that ruled in favor of the law.
If you want to be hyper-technical about it, he could order a hit on Trump, but if Trump was already on the ballot and received 270+ EVs, he would be ineligible to be President. His Vice President would take over as President.
If both were assassinated, the Speaker of the House of the newly-seated Congress would become President.
I don't think you meant that specifically, but yes if ordering a hit is an "official act", he could conceivably order the murder of anyone who cares to stand against him, including those in Congress who might wish to impeach him or remove him from office.
If he can murder his opponents he can declare the election fraudulent and ignore it too.
Aren't most of the claims of immunity because congress is supposed to be the one that holds the president accountable? So as long as the House doesn't hold the president to account, they can do anything... but clearly Democrats are more willing to prosecute those in their own party than Republicans... so it's far more likely that Biden would face consequences for his actions than Trump did.
Biden could just resign, if a successful impeachment is a pre requisite of prosecution. Kill Trump, fiften other Republicans spread between the House, Senate and SCOTUS, immediately resign.
That introduces all sorts of timeline issues because you can't impeach someone who isn't in office anymore. It stands to reason that resigning, or ending your term, shouldn't immediately prevent prosecution since often these kinds of cases take years to put together even with a congress that wanted to impeach. Hell, the evidence of illegal actions may not have even come out until after they resigned, in which case congress would never have an opportunity to hold them accountable.
Yes, but he’d never do that, because he’s a Democrat, and when the Republicans go low, the Democrats go high.
Well, he does wear lifts