SEAL Team 6 can take care of that too

how can SEAL Team 6 even refuse a presidential order ?

He will do as he pleases, and a GOP led congress will simply let him, laws and precedent be damned (and the Supreme Court will comply). A DEM led congress will throw up their hands in uproar, and then refuse to actually do anything.

> that would never have happened.

What never would have happened? Some bizarre unknown chain-of-events which led to Trump staying in office? The occurrence which DEMs are somehow taking the heat for is the GOP outnumbering them and outvoting them in the senate to keep Trump in.

This, I believe, was originally set forth because the Senate was modeled as an “upper house” not subject to the whims of popular agitation (6 year terms vs 2 year terms. Appointment/selection by States vs direct election by district constituencies). The House, having more direct connections to the people is given the power to investigate and impeach a president, hopefully as a reflection of the public. The Senate, being composed of elder statesmen and slightly removed from the direct consequences of local constituents, is to be a check on potential rash impeachments.

So I’d dare say the impeachments were worth the paper the constitution was written on. The House impeached. The Senate tried, and acquitted him.

It is nothing, because nothing came of it.

Can you cite any other law or precedent that would restrict him from doing so?

That's the problem.

It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.

Again, citation needed. The whole problem today is that the category of immunity is so vague so as to be overly broad.

> It does not say that members of the military have immunity for following an unlawful order.

No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.

> It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.

It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.

That is a narrow standard. The only acts in this case which met that standard were discussions with Justice Department officials.

Everything else in this case was in fact remanded, and it remains within the power of the lower courts to deny Trump immunity on all other aspects of the case.

Your citation is exactly the bit that makes the President immune for directing Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival -- directing the military is within the President's "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority". According to the Supreme Court, such a direction is now "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution".

This is clearly an unlawful act that all military members are obligated not to obey.

> Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial. Pp. 30-32.

"Citation needed"

[1] nytimes, https://archive.ph/fz52u

Read the judgement. It's literally in the first pages.

> No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.

A President can't pardon non-federal crimes or overturn the a conviction through impeachment as it would remove power from Congress and the Senate, which a President can't remove.

> It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.

Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.

I read it. I read that it's absolute immunity in core function, which seems pretty damn broad to me. Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?

> A President can't pardon non-federal crimes

He won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties. Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.

> Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.

The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!

Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.

That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.

It's limited in scope, and still subject to impeachment, which immunity comes from because otherwise going through impeachment would be pointless.

> Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?

The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.

> e won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties.

You're beginning to understand

> Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.

And?

> The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!

These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. Because it was always the case, nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.

> Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.

If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece of paper and no amount of super-majority or SCOTUS rulings is going to make a difference.

> That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.

Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles. The oral hearings over the vaccine mandates is a good example: "but there are millions of dead children" she said crying. Yes, she did that. This is JFK assasination level conspiracy theory whether you like it or not.

Okay but the entire DOJ and military is a huge freaking scope, so what's the real limit here? We're talking about absolute nonreviewable control of the most powerful army and the biggest law firm on the planet.

> still subject to impeachment

This might be reassuring if we didn't go through two egregious examples of impeachment that didn't result in removal. In the first one, Trump attempted to us federal dollars to extort a bribe from a from the Ukrainian President. At the impeachment trial, Trump via Alan Dershowitz argued this conduct was okay because it was taken to increase his electoral chances, and Trump viewed his own election as benefitting America, therefore his actions were to benefit America and not grounds for removal. Because after all how can you be removed for doing what you think is best? From the trial:

  “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in an impeachment”

In the second impeachment, Trump attempted to stay in power by orchestrating a coup. Mitch McConnell all but voted to impeach, but fell short because in his view, the impeachment happened after POTUS left office and there was a criminal justice system to hold him accountable.

On the first part, well that just means the period between an election and inauguration is a now a crime-spree zone for any lame duck POTUS. They can commit any crimes they want using the DOJ and military during that period, and we know the Senate won't impeach because there's too little time for the impeachment to happen, and now we know the DOJ will probably not be able to prosecute due to this ruling hamstringing the types of evidence and charges that can be brought.

On the second part, we have yet to see whether the system of justice can hold him accountable for the coup. To date, it has not worked and it's been 3.5 years. So it's not clear the federal system of justice can hold any former executive accountable for any criminal conduct whatsoever. States have proven to be more effective at charging and trying criminal conduct, but we have yet to see if it results in any accountability.

So no, impeachment doesn't fix this system. This is a huge exploit. Since it was added intentionally we might call it a back door.

> The President can't just kill anyone he wants, it's just a power he doesn't have. The President is not judge, jury and executioner. Having control doesn't mean you can do what you want with it.

Who is going to stop him though? That's the thing people don't understand about executive power. Before the thing stopping that conduct was the thought it was illegal and he would be prosecuted for it after he left office. But now? Now as long as the act was "official", good luck proving it without evidence. Good luck even charging it.

How did people end up in Guantanamo Bay without trial? Tortured? Imprisoned for years without charges or a trial. Who stopped that from happening? What makes you think you're safe from the same treatment now?

> And?

Well that's a pretty big hole in your argument since you're trying to convince me the powers are limited. If the limits of the powers are currently unbounded and the bounds are left up to the people who just gave POTUS sweeping immunity over the DOJ and military, then what are the actual limitations? Neither you nor I nor the SCOTUS judges actually know, so your insisting that the powers are limited is not really true.

> These same legal scholars were fine with not charging the last 4 presidents with war crimes and other atrocities. nothing has changed except limiting the scope of presidential immunity.

The ones I had listened to had predicted some limited immunity around things like the military and DOJ, especially the DOJ.

> If the armed forces are killing politicians then at this point the Constitution is a mere piece

I mean... yes? The point is to raise the alarm before it gets that dire by pointing out the ways we can go from here to there. Are you suggesting that it's impossible the armed forces would kill politicians in America? Doesn't that happen elsewhere in the world? Hasn't there already been a civil war here?

> Sotomayor is an emotional militant judge and not taken seriously outside left leaning political militant circles.

Lol I wouldn't even say the same things about the right leaning justices, glad to see where your extreme biases are.

What do you think the odds are for this Supreme Court to declare e.g. that shredding official documents (or moving them to the president's private property) is an official act?

But is it wrong? That's what the legal scholars I've read said, otherwise the PRA wouldn't be constitutional.

Murdering political rivals isn't a core constitutional duty of the President with automatic immunity. If he orders Seal Team 6 to do it, it's an official act, for which he has a rebuttable presumption of immunity. That means the prosecution has to prove he hasn't got immunity.

Roberts at least strongly hints in the majority opinion that Trump's immunity for trying to coerce Pence to commit crimes on Jan. 6 should be rebuttable. If that's the bar then ordering Seal Team Six to kill people will definitely get a president sent to prison the day he leaves office, whether the regular way or by impeachment.

Immunity before impeachment has pretty much been the position of the Justice Department (I think wrongly btw) with regard to current presidents for decades, including the Biden justice department. This isn't as big of a change as it makes sense for the Democrats to make it out to be.

Weird. Sotomayor is one of the few credible justices we have.

Kagan's also a much better writer.

Enlisted oath adds they will obey the orders of the president.

So a president or his intermediary just needs to find the right Master Sergeant. In theory.

But not to worry, there are plenty of authoritarian-friendly colonels available. Their oath doesn't prohibit them from following a president's orders.

Wrinkle: all officers and enlisted are required to refuse illegal orders. But if you do so, you better be right.

Of course, in this new United States that the Supreme Court created this week, summary executions could become a motivational tool.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_A...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Uniformed_Serv...

https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/what-the-law-of-military-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_execution

Who ordered that code red? Not LT Weinberg, that's for sure.

No different than the judiciary, right?

---

I am constantly amazed by the number of new discoveries made on HN, like military coups.

If not so, is there a reason why not? "Murdering an oppositional politician in your own country" seems quite clean-cut bad and unjustified. I know your political system is very much "they vs us", but it can't be that bad?

The problem is, the way things have been for the last couple of decades, many of us are not absolutely certain that the Senate would ever convict a sitting president unless it was 2/3rds of the opposite party -- which is pretty rare.

Probably, if a sitting president (regardless of party) assassinated a political rival, the Senate would convict. Probably.

They are almost certainly hyper-partisan Senators (of both parties) who would not convict a president from their own party no matter what.

The reasons for that would be multiple... greed, fear, a weird sense of loyality to the person, or even just a warped view of reality.

For example, if you thought Trump was Hitler 2.0 coming to take over the government and hunt down minorities and LGBTQ people, then you might feel justified in doing anything possible to prevent that -- including assassination.

So henceforth from this Supreme Court ruling, the President can call up the Attorney General ("official duties," remember) and say, "find a reason to investigate and arrest my political opponent."

That act, that conversation is now protected. And that action will be carried out, and there is no legal recourse, at least not long after much damage has been done.

At many junctures, not only the January 6 capitol riot, but many others, Trump was only prevented from disastrous anti-democratic actions by principled staff and officials around him. This time around, Trump (or any other dictatorial pretender) will not make the mistake of filling their administration with anyone but sycophants. Trump installed many federal judges. Even leaving it up to the courts to decide if something is an "official" or "unofficial" act, after the fact, is now left to fiat.

It's even worse than that. The Supreme Court says prosecutors can't even question the motive for that corrupt action, meaning that essentially all conversations between a President and his AG are de jure assumed to be above board.

We must assume the President opened an investigation into his opponent because he had a good reason to do so. Otherwise we might restrict his ability to take bold and decisive action, according to the court.

It doesn’t map on in obvious ways to what you see in Europe. In Denmark, for example, immigration was a political issue. When it turned out the people wanted to restrict immigration, the left of center government supported “far right” immigration restrictions.

In America, a large part of the left sees immigration as a moral issue, not a political one. When Trump was first inaugurated, the left refused to even accept Trump as legitimate because of his opposition to immigration. Hilary Clinton called his supporters “deplorables” and said he was “illegitimate.” This was long before any of the bad things he did.

You haven't been paying attention for long, have you?

Donald Trump was known as a fraudster and a genuine piece of shit since the 1980s at a minimum.

I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of NYC in the 90s and early 00s and was well aware of Donald Trump being a sideshow joke and a wannabe rich dude about 20 years before he was elected. Nobody in my hometown that had real money thought Donald Trump was anything besides a lawsuit-happy wannabe with midget hands.

The reason Trump is now a convicted felon is due to conduct that happened while he ran for office.

Are we not allowed to call into question the legitimacy of someone who commits crimes to get elected, and then uses his position to cover up for those crimes?

You have it exactly backward. The law is clear that "campaign expenses" cannot have any personal component. That makes sense, because the focus of the law is to prevent candidates from calling things "campaign expenses" that are actually for personal benefit. John Edwards was prosecuted for using campaign funds to keep his mistress silent because hiding an affair has a personal component in addition to a political component.

If Trump had been charged with a campaign-finance violation, his straightforward defense under well-established precedent would be that paying off Stormy Daniels had a personal component (avoiding personal embarrassment and his wife finding out), in addition to whatever effect it had on the campaign. The prosecution would have been required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump's marriage was so dysfunctional that the only reason he would have paid off Stormy Daniels was the election.

That's why prosecutors didn't charge him with a campaign finance violation.

You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.

If you're running for public office, you can't commit fraud to hide things from the electorate because you don't want them to find out. That can't be allowed in free and fair elections. If you get elected doing that, people have every reason to question your legitimacy. If you get caught and lie about it, expect people not to trust you. If you get charged with a crime related to that conduct, don't be surprised when a jury finds you guilty, because it's shady af. This is all very straightforward stuff.

No, I’m talking about the law. You’re wrong about what you think campaign finance law says.

> You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.

The law is the exact opposite. You cannot call something a “campaign expense” if it is an expense you would incur “irrespective of the campaign.” (That’s the magic phrase in FEC regulations.) If you pay off your mistress and call it a campaign expense, you’ll be prosecuted for campaign finance violations, because the prosecutor would say that you could have non-campaign reasons to do that. John Edwards was prosecuted for doing exactly that.

The New York federal prosecutor (SDNY) investigated the exact theory you are talking about: charging Trump with a campaign finance violation. They didn’t bring the case because all Trump would have to do is prove that he would have paid off Stormy Daniels “irrespective of the campaign.”

> The law is the exact opposite.

As far as I know if you spend money on a campaign you have to report it. If you get someone to spend money for you, you have to report it.

Seems like what you're trying to say is he didn't have to report it because arguably it had a personal component. Okay but that apparently wasn't the case; after the trial it is clear the payments were mostly for the campaign and not to save his relationship or himself of personal embarrassment. If you're trying to say "well he wasn't charged that way so it can't be election fraud" then again, I think you're missing my point.

Either way, I'm left at trying to guess your point because you haven't been clear in making it.

> They didn’t bring the case because

And?? Leaving aside you don’t know why any prosecutor didn’t bring a case, what are you implying? Make your point instead of dancing around it for 2 days.

Whether a prosecutor thinks they can prove that at trial is a different matter. That he was charged under a different law doesn’t make the underlying conduct okay from an elections perspective whether or not some federal prosecutor decided to charge that.

Either way what he did was he committed fraud and lied about it as POTUS, committing some of those crimes in the Oval Office, all to increase the chances of being elected. That is not okay. That makes one arguably (and definitely in my mind) illegitimate as a public servant. Apparently it’s also a felony.

If you think that conduct is okay because of whatever technicalities you can come up with, you’re missing my entire point.

Meanwhile we’re sending billions of dollars to obliterate a people in the Middle East which is a crime that will someday result in violence on our doorstep. Bill Clinton is on record flying to Epsteins island, and I could go on about the insane things our government has got away with.

I dont know anything about politics but that’s my reaction when people bring up “34 felonies”.

So you don't know what you're talking about and you're just making up scenarios in your head?

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/g-s1-1848/trump-hush-money-tr...

However, I don't believe they would. Not after the crap the Uniparty have done for my lifetime. Any president part of the uniparty will be protected and any president against it will be persecuted. We already have seen that.

One single indiscutable example: Trump is a draft-dodger. How many troop-supporting, valor-praising Republicans support him?

Oh, another one: Trump is a liar and a filanderer. How many Republican "values-first" voters and officials have refused to vote for him?

No what I mean is, why is it that Democrats, those of the '68 Chicago riots, sit-ins, Occupy Wallstreet, etc., are the ones saying "Nobody is above the law"? That was always Republicans when I was a kid.

You can't blame Kagan or Sotomayor or Brown for persecuting the opposition, they haven't been a part of whatever you're talking about. They're just the ones saying that they don't want the president to be a king.

And this is good no matter what party you like best. There are three branches, they're supposed to be a check against each other so that no one branch one can attain supreme power. Congress has already abdicated so much power[1] [2] to the Executive branch that honestly the Judicial is our last chance to restore those checks. And they're failing.

And if you think political persecution of the opposition will be over once Trump is re-elected I recommend reading some of what he's said about exactly that topic, then think about how it relates to this Supreme Court decision.[3]

[1] https://www.cato.org/commentary/congress-willingly-abdicatin...

[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/emer...

[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/25/donald-trump-waco-ra...

Many Democrats have shown themselves to be unabashedly evil. What has happened to them? Apart from ballot stuffing to win and using exective power to target political opponents? And what has happened to the principled ones who put country before party? Apart from losing or being pushed to retire? One single indiscutable example: Biden is a racist. How many diversity-supporting, inclusive-praising Democrats support him?

Oh, another one: Biden is a liar and a pedophile. How many Democrats who focus so much on calling out lies voters and officials have refused to vote for him after his perpetual lieing?

See, the problem is some of us don't want to get to the point where we derive petty satisfaction of definitively knowing how evil someone can be. That's why we have (had) checks and balances: to prevent us from knowing -- in the most real way -- how evil someone can be. A significant check on presidential power was removed yesterday.

Where once the president was bound by law and constitution, now he is bound only by his ambition and personal moral compass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Don...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_trial_of_Do...

> Seven Republican senators joined all Democratic and independent senators in voting to convict Trump, the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction of a U.S. president or former U.S. president. After the vote on the acquittal, Mitch McConnell said, "There's no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day." but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation of the United States Constitution.

It's worth noting that the Supreme Court ruling here probably disagrees with McConnell's interpretation of the Constitution in a way that should have changed his vote.

To show what a different world it was then, the chair of the House committee, a Democrat, called his wife to tell her "we voted to impeach", *and then started crying" because it was horrible that it had come to that, and that the president had done such things. Today they would have been cheering.

Which we need to fix regardless, but in the interim it’s hard to conclude that the federal government isn’t starting to crumble under the combined weight of that problem and the general, concerning erosion of trust in expertise and institutions, and the rise of populism. The Supreme Court is very efficiently pouring gas on that fire.