The president could "assassinate" political rivals and still enjoy total immunity, Trump lawyer says

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 373 points –
salon.com
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I wish Biden would make the following announcement:

It has come to my attention that Mr. Trump's lawyers are currently attempting to convince the Supreme Court that it would be legal for me, the President of the United States, to have Mr. Trump killed. I imagine that this is a source of concern for Mr. Trump and so I want to reassure him and the American public that I believe doing so would, in fact, be a crime.

"I'll have Seal Team 6 waiting outside the Courtroom pending the outcome of the case. Choose wisely."

So theoretically the current president could fire up seal team 6 and clean house…

Why just use one SEAL team? Much quicker if you use them all.

Why use a team at all? As commander in chief doesn't Biden get touch any gun he wants?

He could just set up an XM250 and blast all the Justices he doesn't like as they leave court.

Mr. Biden, how did you restore legitimacy to the courts? Well I just started blasting...

Dick Cheney has entered the chat, as an example of why elderly people might not be the best people to be pulling the trigger.

SEAL team 6 is not an actual SEAL team, they are a special counterterrorist group instead of naval special forces. Their name was to confuse the Soviets in 1980.

Implies the existence of at least 5 other SEAL teams. ;)

Or the old X-Men quote:

Hey now, this court case is about the presidential ability to assassinate rivals, not the presidential ability to use the armed forces against American citizens on American soil. We would need the national guard for that.

they wished the US was a bit more like Russia don't they?

Even Putin has to use methods more subtle than sending a strike team after his political opponents. Nowadays there are a handful of monarchs that have full legal immunity on paper but I don't think any of them wants to highlight that they could just outright murder someone with impunity. Trump's team picking this example as a consequence of their deranged legal theory sounds completely bonkers to me.

Eh, Putin does send the GRU after political enemies. I don't think Prigozhin was killed by harshly worded letters, and the London sightseeing brigade was also not just some random guys.

He made one look like an accident and tried to blame Czechia for the other. It's a bit different than claiming publicly that he has the right to kill everyone he wants.

The end goal of the right is to do away with all the subtlety they have to do now, so the general population will just follow all their commands without any talkbacks, like "a good chiild does it to the words of their parents". (Viktor Orbán allegedly said that the average voter is on the mentality of a 12 year old child.)

With the Hungarian education system, I think he was doing the average voter favours there. Wonder why it's becoming more and more underfunded.

lol yea, even in Russia the headlines are always “person falls mysteriously out of window” and not “Putin stabs opponent in face with knife, lets out evil laugh”

So let me get his straight. Trumps lawyers are trying to legalize Biden killing Trump? So even his own lawyers prefer him to die instead of becoming president again.

Trump's lawyers are trying to delay his other trials. Create BS arguments that require a ruling before his other trials can proceed, elevate it to Supreme Court, run out the clock, hope he gets elected before other cases find him guilty.

Edit: Spelling

Once the election is over, there's no real incentive to pursue these cases, either. Good chance they all get dropped even if he loses.

That's not how this works. They will keep going because he committed real crimes

I saw a post elsewhere about this suggesting that Biden send SEAL teams to camp out on the steps of the courthouse where Trump is on trial in NYC, the steps of the Supreme Court, etc. Don’t give them any orders beyond them being stationed there.

If SCOTUS says it’s ok then Biden just orders the SEALs to immediately take out Trump, the SCOTUS justices (well, we know which ones, specifically). Etc.

It would be red meat for conservatives, to be sure. But also, consider the politics of your average Navy Seal...

An army of Dan Crenshaws

The Navy in particular tends to lean left. Not all of them obviously, but I knew some pretty left leaning SEALs when I was a Nuke.

Left relative to other military branches. But when you stack that up against the Fundie Death Cult that is the Air Force and the Hillbilly Hoosegow that is the Marines, that's a low bar.

It would be a mistake to turn this con man into a martyr. There are already enough baffling conspiracies with him as the main character.

Don't assign logic to a position that doesn't have any. Trump could shit his insides out on live TV and die live on air and the crayon eating retards would still turn him into a martyr. This talking point needs to die.

Can't someone just take one for the team and assassinate him? Like, I think he deserves worse than a quick or even a slow death, but at this point it seems like a totally acceptable option.

Long term thinking does not lead me to recommend martyrdom for Trump. He has earned more than enough of my enmity for it to feel right, but it's more important to destroy his movement at this point. The Union has to stop "losing the peace" to finally put this festering insurgency to rest.

He could die of natural causes and he will still be martyred by his cult unfortunately

When he dies, many of them will refuse to believe it. Some of them believe JFK is still alive. Not JFK Jr., JFK.

I think the idea is that when their leader is gone, they’ll scurry back to their sewers. Which is likely given they’re weak as f..k

It is hilarious to see you try to take the moral high ground on anyone. You can not begin to grasp what moral behavior is.

I want to watch him rot in prison.

I want him to watch them take his name off the tower.

I want him to watch Maralago go up for auction.

I want his assets to be sold for a fraction of their worth.

But I guess it's not about what I want and what justice can afford

He's scum but let's not make him a martyr for his cult. It's better to convict him and imprison him. He's so old and he's facing so many indictments, he'll likely die in prison. But let's also change the legislation for Secret Service protection so that our good Secret Service do not have to be in jail too. Taxpayer money shouldn't be spent protecting a former prez that couldn't fulfill their oath of office to uphold the law.

But let's also change the legislation for Secret Service protection so that our good Secret Service do not have to be in jail too.

This type of statement always makes it sound like they would be sitting in the cell with him.

Which is, of course, ridiculous.

If Trump actually faces prison time, it'll most likely be in a separate facility where he can be kept separate from other inmates. And the secret service detail would become essentially jail guards. Probably a much smaller group as well, as thwy wouldn't need to protect him in such a variety of locations and situations.

Secret Service agents should not be jail guards in a jail. Jail sucks on either side of the bars. Secret Service agents should be protecting former Presidents that kept their oath of office, not traitors.

that's your opinion, just like i also have an opinion that my landlord deserved a painful death. What should i do? Fucking kill him?

Please, Joe Biden, please just do this one thing and presidentially pardon yourself

I mean, I hate the precedent it would set, but I feel like this situation almost calls for it, if only for the poetic justice of it all.

It would cost us everything, but for a brief moment be ultimately satisfying.

Do we really want Trump to be a martyr? We will end up with him being deified by his followers who already want to believe he's the second coming.

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Would make the debates a lot more interesting.

Biden: "Your lawyers successfully argued before the Supreme Court, that a President has immunity even from assassinating rivals." (places gun on podium) "Let's have a serious talk about that."

It's a brave stance to take for the lawyer of the president's political rival, but I can think of worse ways to get rid of a particularly problematic client.

so either Trump winds up dead or in prison, win/win