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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/nyt-6-federal-prosecutor...

We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.

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> unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.

You can demand answers from Congress, but until a significant portion of the GOP base demands answers, they are just going to ignore your demands. As of now 39% of Americans support the administration. Also, you can't hold SCOTUS responsible, only Congress can.

That's straight up corrupt third world country stuff.

It is going to get a lot worse. Trump's eventual goal is to send the military to all Democrat-controlled cities. Back in September Trump gathered military leaders in a room and told them America is under "invasion from within". He said: "This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within."

We went from the "War On Drugs" to the "War On Ourselves".

You spend too much time on the internet.

I see you all over these comments. People were denying it would get as bad as it has already gotten.

I'm here indeed. How bad is it, objectively?

Ask the people who are dying on the streets.

These people wouldn't be dying if they weren't out there picking a fight with the officers.

Right, it is far better to let them roll us over with no protests.

Right. Meanwhile the military is preparing to deploy... not to the middle east, but to Minnesota.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/us/politics/military-poli...

"Sh*thole countries" was projection

Everything is a projection with these people. Including the pedophilia.

How is it corrupt? The DA chose to resign, they weren't forced out.

They were prevented from following just policy, and were being forced to perform actions that go against professional ethics, politically driven prosecutions unconnected from fact or law.

People resigned to send the message to the public: the integrity of the office had been compromised, and the lawyers (lawyers!!) couldn't stay due to their ethics. This is a difficult thing to understand for people that lack ethics.

"Just policy"?

If you boss asks you to do something that is a legitimate request, and you refuse for personal reasons, that's on you.

It is in no way "corruption".

I as someone with power over you will repeatedly force you to do an illegal and or immoral act. I have doubt you have the balls to resign rather than follow along, but if you do resign I hope you don't say you were forced out. Be honest.

> I have doubt you have the balls t

Reported for personal attack.

How's that a personal attack? And if it is, remove that. The rest of the argument still stands.

If those shooters don't get presidential pardons, they're going to get prosecuted sooner or later. No statute of limitations for murder, right?

That depends, the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired. And POTUS needs the civil service to execute his policy goals so his fellow party members and possibly himself can get re-elected.

Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution. I would expect especially DHS to basically become a non-functional (or even seditious) department if they prosecute those guys and they could purposefully make the president look bad by making his security apparatus look incompetent.

> the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired

Unless, as Doge showed us, you ignore the law, fire them anyway, and the SCOTUS says, "Yeah, whatever."

> Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution.

Won't help if the prosecuting sovereignty isn't the one they work for (state vs federal charges.)

Also won't work if the agency is disbanded and they are dismissed en masse before the prosecution happens.

But pardons only apply to federal crimes… murder is a state offense.

Correct, state charges are mostly pardon proof and there is no statute of limitations on murder.

Well, they are entirely Presidential pardon proof, but each state usually has its own pardon provisions. Unlikely to benefit ICE agents as a broad class in any of the places where conflicts over their role are currently prominent, though.

So ... you're saying that this militia as every incentive to overthrow democratie so that they never get prosecuted, right ?

See where this is going ?

The US couldn't win a war in the middle east with trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers dead, and tens of thousands substantially wounded. Hasn't won a war since WW2. Is everything going swimmingly? Certainly not. There are 340M Americans, ~20k-30k ICE folks, and ~1M soldiers on US soil. These odds don't keep me up at night. 77% of US 18-24 cohort don't qualify for military service without some form of waiver (due to obesity, drug use, or mental health issues).

I admit, US propaganda is very good at projecting an image of strength. I strongly doubt it is prepared for a civil ground war, based on all available evidence. It cannot even keep other nation states out of critical systems. See fragile systems for what they are.

There are 340 million Americans, but 80 million of them voted for this administration, and another 80 million were not interested either way. Only about 20% of the population voted to oppose it.

If you're imagining a large scale revolt, figure that the revolutionaries will be outnumbered by counter-revolutionaries, even without the military. (Which would also include police forces amounting to millions more.)

I have no confidence in the gravy seals of this country, broadly speaking. What’s the average health and age of someone who voted for this? Not great, based on the evidence, especially considering the quality of ICE folks (bottom of the barrel).

https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/trump-voters-on-medicai...

https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/voters-in-trump-c...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294501/

They don't need to overthrow democracy, they just need to use jurisdiction removal to have the state charges placed in federal court, and then appeal it up to SCOTUS who will overturn the decision.

They should charge it as a criminal conspiracy and use the state felony murder statute to go after leadership.

Presidential pardons have no impact and their liability for state-law murder charges (though federal seizure of crime scenes and destruction of evidence might, in practice.)

Yes, but In re Neagle (1890) is SCOTUS precedent granting federal agents immunity from state criminal prosecution for acts committed while carrying out their official duties (and the act at question in that case was homicide). Now, its precise boundaries are contested - in Idaho v. Horiuchi (2001), the 9th Circuit held that In re Neagle didn’t apply if the federal agent used unreasonable force - but that case was rendered moot when the state charges were dropped, and hence the issue never made it to SCOTUS. Considering the current SCOTUS majority’s prior form on related topics (see Trump v. United States), I think odds are high they’ll read In re Neagle narrowly, and invalidate any state criminal prosecution attempts.

In re Neagle (while, unfortunately, it does not state as clear of a rule as Horiuchi on the standard that should be applied) conducts an expansive facts-based analysis on the question of whether, in fact, the acts performed were done in in the performance of his lawful federal duties (if anything, the implicit standard seems less generous to the federal officer than Horiuchi’s explicit rule, which would allow Supremacy Clause immunity if the agent had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that he acted within his lawful duties, even if, in fact, he did not.)

But, yeah, any state prosecutions (likely especially the first) is going to (1) get removed to federal court, and (2) go through a wringer of federal litigation, likely reaching the Supreme Court, over Supremacy Clause immunity before much substantive happens on anything else.

OTOH, the federal duty at issue in in re Neagle was literally protecting the life of a Supreme Court justice riding circuit, as much as the present Court may have a pro-Trump bias, I wouldn't count on it being as strong of a bias as it had in Neagle.

I just realised another angle: 28 U.S.C. § 1442 enables state prosecutions of federal agents to be removed to federal court. Now, if Trump pardons the agent, does the federal pardon preclude that trial in federal court? To my knowledge, there is no direct case law on this question; there is an arguable case that the answer is “no”, but ultimately the answer is whatever SCOTUS wants it to be.

I'll eat your hat if any of these goons ever see in the inside of a holding cell

They're wearing masks. Have they been identified?

congress isn't going to do anything. All it would take is about 20 republican sentors to bring this shit to a halt. They are not doing anything, they all have blood on their hands.

At this point I think the only thing that will work is organizing a month where the nation stops spending money and going to work.

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