Questions About Assassinations Test the Limits of Trump’s Immunity Claim
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Three Supreme Court briefs from former military leaders and intelligence officials explore whether presidents may be prosecuted for ordering unlawful killings.
“It is clear that as president, I will be bound by laws just like all Americans,” Donald J. Trump said in 2016, during his first campaign.
Times have changed, and he now says the opposite. Next week, the Supreme Court will consider his claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.
His 2016 statement, now largely forgotten, was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was, rather, a considered effort to put to rest a controversy over a question that has recently also figured in the case before the Supreme Court: May the president order the military to conduct unlawful killings?
In January, at an appeals court argument, Judge Florence Y. Pan asked Mr. Trump’s lawyer a question meant to test the limits of his argument that presidents are immune from prosecution for their official acts.
“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?” she asked.
The lawyer, D. John Sauer, said no.
Mr. Sauer does not seem eager to revisit the question in the Supreme Court. Indeed, in asking the court to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal, Mr. Sauer urged the justices not to be distracted by “lurid hypotheticals” that “almost certainly never will occur.”
