The Supreme Court’s decision that Donald Trump has full immunity for “official acts” he took as president is so sweeping and vague that it opens the door for sitting presidents to do whatever they want without any accountability, including assassinating a political rival.
Legal experts said Monday that yes, as horrific and authoritarian as that sounds, the 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority means that President Joe Biden could theoretically order that Trump be killed and be immune from criminal prosecution.
“Presumptively, he has the power to assassinate a rival,” John Dean, who was White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon, told HuffPost on a call with the Defend Democracy Project, a group that advocates for free and fair elections.
Making matters worse, said Dean, is that the court ruled that “official acts” by a president can’t be used as evidence of criminal conduct for “unofficial acts.” So in a hypothetical scenario involving Biden ordering people to kill Trump, his actual giving of the order would be potentially unavailable for evidence, he said.
The former White House counsel, who called the Supreme Court’s decision “radical,” said the conservative majority also just raised questions about immunity for people who carry out a president’s “official” but criminal activities.
“When Nixon warned that, ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,’ he went on to say, ‘How could staff operate if they didn’t have a president who was totally immune?’” said Dean. “Presidents are good at giving orders…. They don’t execute those orders themselves. So you have a whole lot of people who have criminal exposure, and this opinion in my quick reading doesn’t cover that.” |
