I admit it had not occurred to me to think about him having a Secret Service detail, but of course he does as do all Presidents during and after their term of service. This raises a question I find interesting: what would the Secret Service do in the event of his arrest and/or conviction and sentencing? Presumably as law enforcement officers themselves, they would want to cooperate with the court and penal system; but they also can't simply allow him to be sent to Rikers Island and put in the general population.
Other nations that have imprisoned opposition political leaders have sometimes resorted to house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest over a 21-year period. Since the Secret Service will be providing police officers to literally stand over the top of him all the time, there's no reason why a similar arrangement couldn't work here too: you wouldn't have to put him in a New York state-owned facility.
Since a lot of the point of this exercise seems to be public humiliation, however, I expect that the Secret Service will be asked to somehow work with his enclosure in a New York prison or jail of some sort -- certainly if a conviction is obtained, as it may well be given the poisoned jury pool in NYC, and maybe even as he awaits trial. I would expect the Secret Service to demand control over a cordoned-off part of the jail under those circumstances, with NY officers allowed to access Trump but only under observation.
Commentators seem convinced the case is hopelessly weak, but I wouldn't put much hope in the law or the courts here. Trump is a designated object of hate, perhaps the foremost one extant in our country, and he is unlikely to receive a fair trial in Manhattan of all places (only DC might be worse in terms of jury bias). His ability to obtain a dispassionate and fair trial according to our usual aspirational standards anywhere in America must be close to Osama bin Laden's, except that there are areas where it would be unfair in his favor as well. The odds of us having a Political Prisoner in Chief soon are nonzero, no matter what one thinks of the legal strengths or weaknesses of the charge. If I were the Secret Service, I'd be planning now for how to handle this.
One of the keystones of a peaceful transfer of power lies in the fact the leader leaving his position will not be imprisoned or executed by the succeeding regime.
ReplyDeleteOnce that assurance is gone, very unpleasant possibilities arise.
People keep trying to compare the US to Late Imperial Rome, but they've got it wrong, it's Late Republican Rome.
ReplyDeleteI feel strange about this coming presidential election. If he runs, I would prefer DeSantis. I think he keeps it together better and yet has the fight in him we need.
ReplyDeleteBut this kind of thing makes me feel that justice would be putting Trump back in office.
I don't think 'justice' is the right word for that. Per Aristotle justice is fairness plus lawfulness, by which he means playing by rules that would make even the non-virtuous person behave like the virtuous one would do. It might be in some sense fair -- 'turnabout is fair play' -- but it definitely wouldn't be anything like virtue. At his age and temperament, I would say that Trump ought to enjoy his retirement.
ReplyDeleteI expect the Democrats will settle for film of Trump being frog-marched into booking, fingerprinted, and a mug shot but truthfully I don't expect any of them have actually planned that far, just wet-dreamed.
ReplyDeleteHm. I don't know the language of virtue the way you do, so it's good I'm here to learn.
ReplyDeleteIt would be lawful; I wouldn't advocate election fraud or other criminal activity to get him elected.
Would it be fair? That's a good question. I'm not thinking of 'turnabout is fair play,' because, again, I'm advocating something lawful and not a violation of democratic norms, unlike what they are doing to him.
Or maybe I am? When a boxer gets hit below the belt and returns with a rule-abiding knockout punch, that's not turnabout. That seems like a form of justice in the sense of just desserts. Maybe that's what I think of when I think of Trump back in office; a legal purge of our Praetorian Guard agencies. Is that just another form of turnabout?
So, what would this be called?
Or I suppose it could be the aesthetics of it: It would have a nice symmetry if the personal enemy they've been hunting for years now comes back to deliver their just desserts to them.
On the other hand, while it wouldn't have the symmetry, I would be happy if whoever the next president is cleans out the Praetorian Guard and returns those agencies to their proper roles. In fact, I think that's absolutely necessary, and I will probably vote for whoever I think most likely to do that. This is part of the Trump thing: He would have more reason than anyone else to drain the swamp.
NH has the first presidential primary every four years, so we usually have a couple of people threatening to kill a candidate or two or the president. I guess it happens everywhere, but there is the sense here that they could get close enough to make it happen. If they look the least bit mentally ill, they come to my hospital, and the Secret Service is in constant contact with us well before they ever get here. My experience with the Secret Service is that they tell everyone else what to do and have judges that will back them up. I often wondered what would happen if that were seriously challenged.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, AVI.
ReplyDeleteSo, Tom, the relevant part of this discussion is in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics V.
ReplyDeletehttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.5.v.html
So the most important thing to note is that Aristotle's discussion of lawfulness has a special meaning. 'Obeying the law' is not necessarily a sort of justice, because laws themselves can be unjust. Aristotle passes over this quickly and in a way that lots of people miss.
Since the lawless man was seen to be unjust and the law-abiding man just, evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts; for the acts laid down by the legislative art are lawful, and each of these, we say, is just. Now the laws in their enactments on all subjects aim at the common advantage either of all or of the best or of those who hold power, or something of the sort; so that in one sense we call those acts just that tend to produce and preserve happiness and its components for the political society. And the law bids us do both the acts of a brave man (e.g. not to desert our post nor take to flight nor throw away our arms), and those of a temperate man (e.g. not to commit adultery nor to gratify one's lust), and those of a good-tempered man (e.g. not to strike another nor to speak evil), and similarly with regard to the other virtues and forms of wickedness, commanding some acts and forbidding others; and the rightly-framed law does this rightly, and the hastily conceived one less well. This form of justice, then, is complete virtue, but not absolutely, but in relation to our neighbour.
Aristotle is talking about the laws as if they were more or less good, but it's easy to see from this framework what would make a law bad. A law that forbade you from doing the virtuous thing, and instead required a citizen to do the vicious thing, would be a bad law (and not just a hastily-constructed one that was less good than a better-considered one).
In fact we sometimes see bad laws in some places, for example, a law that mandates people not engage in self-defense in order to protect the lives of criminals. This means forbidding courageousness in defense of the common peace and lawful order, and instead mandating cowardice and submission. Obeying such a law is not just because the law is not just; 'lawfulness' requires that the law be well-constructed in order for it to be a virtue to obey it.
So, what would this be called?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure labeling matters. To the extent one does in this case, then given the Left's smear campaign and abuse of the DoJ, my label for Trump's reelection is "satisfactory."
Eric Hines
If Trump does go to prison, his chances of getting out alive are about those of J.Epstein.
ReplyDeleteAnd a third of the country would celebrate.
I would like to believe that the Secret Service would at least prevent that, if only out of a sense of the shame it would bring upon their institution and profession should they fail in it. It's not as if you could hide such a failure.
ReplyDeleteI would like to believe that the Secret Service would at least prevent that....
ReplyDeleteWhat's the law here? If an ex-President is convicted of a felony and sent to prison over it, can Secret Service protection be withdrawn?
Eric Hines
Apparently not.
ReplyDeletehttps://dailycaller.com/2021/01/13/donald-trump-secret-service-protections/
Interesting. Thanks, Grim.
ReplyDeleteYes, Eric, satisfaction would be a good description.
If it happens, some Secret Service agent is set for a book deal.
I would like to believe that the Secret Service would at least prevent that
ReplyDeleteAt least one Agent publicly said they wouldn't take a bullet for Trump while he was President. The article doesn't say what relationship this lady, who was in charge of their Denver office, had to his protective detail however.