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Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

I will not be surprised if he didn't know anything about the Insurrection Act and was saying all of this as act of bravado without any thought.

In seriousness, does this statement count as the proclamation/warning referred to in the article?

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The way the US legal system works is if the US Attorney General tells the US President an act is legal, regardless of if it is, until the Supreme Court or Congress act, the President is free to do as the US Attorney General said.

Under the US Constitution, The President is the Commander in Chief of the military, to not follow a direct order would be a likely be a crime for anyone within the military.

Trumps statements counted as a proclamation, if the US Attorney General said they did.

I would be a bit more tempered regarding the not following an order part. There’s long established cases in US law that doesn’t mean the person obeying the order is free, if the order was not lawful.

United States vs Keenan being one example — soldiers need to obey lawful orders, but obeying unlawful orders puts them at risk of criminal prosecution.

Hence “likely” - it’s impossible to tell what might happen.

The point is that an order to siege an American city would not be unlawful, under the Insurrection Act, because there are parts of the Act that give a lot of discretion to the President about when to use force. That siege order could be legal.

At that point, disobeying has to be a moral act, and the law isn’t a concern anymore.

I say this living in an apartment about three blocks from a tank in Los Angeles.

By the way, the U.S. armed forces includes in its ranks a small army of lawyers. That doesn't mean they'll necessarily identify unlawful orders as such and refuse to comply. But it's something.

So the soviets, Romania, East Germany* couldn’t be ruthless enough to fire on protesters but the US marines will? Hard to believe

* dictatorships

Your source?

There were many instances when they did. E.g.,

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)

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