this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I keep seeing post and comments like this.

You all realize it’s only immunity from criminal prosecution, right? It’s not instant dictatorship power over the nation. He’d have to order the assassination of Trump and members of SCOTUS to leverage the ruling for those goals.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

You are correct. But the fact that the ruling enables those actions is batshit crazy.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Kill the SC then replace them with ones to sanction anything he likes?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That’s pretty much all this ruling liberates him to do. There’s no additional executive power.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

State sanctioned murder of political dissidents doesn't seem like a significant additional executive power to you? I'm not convinced that's enabled by this particular ruling but that's how you're framing it and the fact that doesn't seem concerning to you is pretty wild.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Of course it’s concerning. It’s batshit insane.

All of the posts and comments I keep reading are making it seem like he was granted full executive control of the government. I’m legitimately almost as concerned with the literacy of people as I am the new criminal immunity of POTUS.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

That's fair. That didn't seem like what you were getting at but I understand that point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Not even order it, he'd have to do it himself

Anyone who'd hypothetically take the order has an obligation to refuse it, all he's doing there is passing the prosecution that he wasn't going to be in for anyways.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but he can just pardon them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Depending on the jurisdiction the assassinations are prosecuted under, and I can very well see the Judiciary hard intervening to keep that shit well out of reach of a pardon.

The precedent of sanctioned assassinations of judges might come across to them specifically as a rather especially bad one to set.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean yeah, but as long as they do it in dc, is there anything they could really do?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

DC has it's own criminal court

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Yeah, but the president has pardon power over the dc courts.

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/apply-pardon

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does a member of the military have the right to refuse the direct order of the president?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If the order is illegal, they'd be in hotter water if they didn't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Is that so? I thought one main staple of military ranks was that if the soldier rejects an order because of judicial concerns but the superior tells them to do it anyways the judicial blame is on that superior

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Indeed this is not correct. Practically speaking, the soldier should keep refusing the order and will be relieved of duty and thrown in the brig. They will then have to hope that by the time the court martial date rolls around their name has been cleared and the officer who gave the order has been or will be court martialed in their place.

Theoretically the officer should go through every underling and find nobody willing to execute illegal orders, but practically they'd only need to go through three or four at most before they had a volunteer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Nope, I was just following orders is no valid defence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

It depends, if the soldier should obviously have known better courts are a lot less sympathetic to "but I was ordered to!"

Being ordered to assassinate a political enemy of the president is definitely one of those "you should know better!" examples.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

That’s a really good point. They’d need plausible deniability to avoid being convicted.