But only norms and precedents, not laws, prevent this. In our system, the attorney general and the director of the F.B.I. sit within the executive branch and answer to the president.
How might a politically motivated prosecution actually unfold? The steps below show exactly how Trump could make his threats real — all while staying within the constitutional limits on presidential power.
The Constitution is a very short document, you can read the whole thing in about 10 minutes or so. It does not include very much in the way of details, generally speaking.
Reading it when you’re young is one thing, you don’t really understand how systems come together anyway at that age. Rereading it as an adult is a bit of an eye-opener though, as it’s easy to see just how little it really establishes, and what sorts of directions abuses could potentially come from.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
In general, preventing abuse via static rules is really difficult. People who want to abuse the system are innovative. Most systems really depend on having people who respond to the abuse by stopping it more than having specific written rules to block the kinds of abuse that have happened in the past.
Sure, why not? Who the hell is going to stop him? What’s legal or constitutional doesn’t matter if no one is going to enforce it.
Fascism makes all things but empathy possible.
SCOTUS:
They way over-complicated it. Once he installs loyalists (as in their step 1), he can just round up anyone he wants, send them to a private prison run by an aligned billionaire, and ignore the courts. If the people in the departments controlled by the executive are willing to break the law, Congress and the courts don’t really have any tools to combat that.
Right. There’s impeachment, but actually using it to remove people from power requires a supermajority, which makes it substantially ineffective against a criminal political party
