Could Biden order Trump’s execution and win the next election?
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.
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.
Do you mean theoretically according to Trump or theoretically according to real life?
US law keeps being interpreted in more and more absurd ways it seems!
According to the arguments currently being made to protect Trump from prosecution. The premise of the question was “If presidential immunity is absolute.”
Ok, so this is according to “Trump side”.
They argue many things, but very few of them really hold up to real life, so I personally don’t put too much weight on them any more. I trust that the legal system will shoot those arguments down if not fast, then at least efficiently. IMO it is basically just is a method of extending these cases for last as long as possible, and I am surprised that nobody can do anything against that!
True, but the original question was a hypothetical about the absurd consequences of ruling in their favor.
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?
You’ve been out of the loop for a while now then.
I honestly envy them.
Don’t. It’s people that are out of the loop (people that work too much, don’t care, people with busy lives, etc) who are at risk of falling for Republican propaganda about how bad Biden is and how good Trump is.
An informed populace is always for the best. It’s why Republicans attack education and freedom of information so hard.
Be thankful to be informed and thankful you can actually act on it. For now.
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.
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.
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 wins.
I’m surprised he could ever even indirectly acknowledge the chance that he could lose
Not in favour… as if it even was an option! WTH is going on over there!?
Ultra-right wing groups slowly taking over various branches of the government because roughly 30% of the population will always vote for them, no matter what.
That’s exactly why they won’t make a decision until they know who they are giving that power to.
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.
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.
Yes, but then we have a whole new set of problems.
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.
My tremendous girth is absolute
