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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> I consider it pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a former President even be charged with a crime...

You could have stopped the sentence here; most US presidents are responsible for acts that appear to be criminal but for the fact that it is political convention not to charge them. The most egregious case I recall was Anwar Al-Awlaki [0] - where he seems to have been killed on the president's orders without actually having done anything specific to justify it. Searching for "crime" on his Wikipedia page turns up nothing much. If a president isn't publicly investigated by the judicial system for having a US citizen killed it is hard to see when charges would be appropriate.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

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> where he seems to have been killed on the president's orders without actually having done anything specific to justify it.

This was an assaination as part of an armed conflict if i understand correctly.

There are a lot of things you can argue about with the morality of the drone strike program, but its at the very least grey. As a general rule, armed conflict involves killing people who have done nothing wrong other than being on the wrong side of the conflict.

Its possible it still might be a crime, but i think it would be on the standard of if its a war crime, and not an ordinary murder.

P.s. i dont understand what him being an american citizen has to do with it. Its not any more ok to kill non-citizens.

If you feel the US executive unilaterally assassinating a US citizen without even any particular accusation of a crime (while he was breakfasting, apparently) is clearly legal then that is cool, I just don't see what conditions would lead you to expecting the US president to be charged with a crime are. It is quite clear that unless he does something that the majority of Congress objects to there isn't going to be a prosecution, Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024) or otherwise. This is longstanding convention; if the president does something dodgy while in office it is broadly ignored by the legal system.

I think the accusation was that that person was a member of a non-state armed group that the united states was in an armed conflict with. There is certainly a bunch of grey area with that (given we are talking about a trans-national "war" against non-state entity, which is a bit out there legally), but at the same time i don't think its exactly out there as far as presidential powers go. Shooting at combatants during a war is a very normal state of affairs. Generally we assume such combatants have not done any crimes. The relavent question is if this person was a legal target (is he really a combatant), not if he comitted any crimes.

I mean sure. You're asserting a bunch of mitigating circumstances. The point of a trial is (its in the name) to test the evidence to see if it justifies a response. That step got skipped, so we can't really say if those mitigating circumstances are a good enough justification under the law.

If that is your standard then under what conditions is the US president going to be prosecuted for a crime? He or she will always claim there are mitigating circumstances and/or that they think their actions were legal. Nobody is going to stand up and say "oh gee, I've just done something clearly criminal!".

I suppose I'll put my challenge one more time just to be clear - if you feel the US executive unilaterally assassinating a US citizen without even any particular accusation of a crime is clearly legal, what conditions do you anticipate where the US president would be charged with a crime? While acting in an official capacity? The Trump decision codified it but the standard has been set for decades if not centuries - unless Congress gets involved there isn't going to be a prosecution.

Honestly i think its pretty clear the office of the us president has become king, Rex non potest peccare. So i do agree with your broad point.

I just mostly think this is a particularly bad example of executive ignoring laws - using military force in armed conflict is not usually considered a crime and certainly not unprecedented. It is in fact very, very precedented throughout the history of the united states. There are circumstances where it can be illegal (war crimes, crimes against hummanity, etc) but generally the justice system around that is quite different than normal domestic laws around murder.

I would contrast that with some of the accusations against trump which are much less wrapped up in armed conflict and very unambigiously crimes (if you want an older example i would say the same thing about watergate)

We've probably reached the point where I bow out. But, on a related note, was the US even officially involved in the armed conflict in Yemen? I don't think there is such a thing as a declaration of armed conflict and my memory is the drone strikes were being kept relatively secret-squirrel. Obviously at the time everyone knew they were involved but I don't recall how official it got.

Declerations of war are not really a thing anymore in international law. Its not like usa ever declared war on Vietnam, but it clearly was one. Ditto for the iraq war. And its not just USA either. Declerations of war more or less stopped being a thing after the UN charter was signed.

You're right that that makes it messy. The us wasn't engaged in an armed conflict with the state of yemen, but with a non-state armed actor operating within yemen (and elsewhere). (And its not like that isn't true right now either - america bombed houthi positions in yemen just a few weeks ago. Different group but still a non-state armed group i would consider america to be in an armed conflict with). A lot of the ways we think about wars and what is just and unjust implicitly assume two states fighting each other. Its much more ambigious with non-state armed actors.

I'm guessing if Trump conducted a drone strike on the US Congress and claimed that the Democrats were associated with the Houthi you'd say that was illegal (correct me if I'm wrong). Would you say the major difference is the attack happening on US soil or would you draw a different distinction?

I agree.

The story of Anwar Al-Awlaki and his American US-born son who was killed in the attack authorized by the Obama administration must not be forgotten.

The issue of presidential powers and conduct must be a non-partisan issue. Trump merely walked through the cracks created under Obama.

Being well-intentioned (“protecting Americans against terrorism”) is not sufficient excuse for murdering an American minor due to the sins of his father no matter how much the Obama administration DOJ attempted to make it legally permissible to do so.

Which were dependent on the GWB administration (forced renditions, torture prisons), the Reagan administration (Iran-Contra etc), the Nixon Administration (Watergate etc), FDR's admin (concentration camps), on and on and on.

The expansion of Presidential power is non-partisan. Congress would be the logical counterbalance but other than in fits and starts has generally abdicated this role to the SCOTUS which has now been captured by believers in the unitary Presidency.

Did you actually read the article you linked, or just search for the word “crime?”

Both. I was doing the search because I was thinking "well maybe there was a crime in there somewhere that I missed".

Okay. Well in that case, my (uninformed) take is that both holding the president personally criminally liable for actions of the US government that they authorized, and not holding the president accountable for campaign finance violations they undertook on the path to getting elected, are about equally ridiculous. But it seems that we’re doing the second one.

I'm honestly lost on what you might be alluding to with the "campaign finance violations"; but that is a classic up there with the remarkable rate that whistle-blowers turn out to be guilty of sexual assault nothing-burgers. I expect candidates will routinely violate campaign finance laws and don't see why that is more than a minor problem until someone outlines what the actual issue is in a specific case.

If they're taking millions of dollars from Chinese NGOs that would be a problem. If they filled out a form wrongly and there is no motive involved that isn't interesting. Might be worth a few political points on a slow news day.

Those laws are a poster child for the high risk of selective enforcement leading to political corruption.

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