One line from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 58-page dissent in the Supreme Court’s opinion on presidential immunity has captured the attention of politicos everywhere: “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” she warned of the majority ruling.
The idea of assassinating political rivals or eliminating public dissent by leveraging one of the most elite forces in the nation thrust the Pentagon into the hot seat: Could a president actually do this? And if they did, would the military comply?
“I mean, assassinate? … every legal adviser in the Special Operations chain of command would say, ‘If you do this, it’s murder,’” Geoffrey Corn, the director of Texas Tech University’s Center for Military Law and Policy, told NOTUS.