Will a US president order the assassination of any of the following, and get away without criminal charges before 2029?
โž•
Plus
37
แน€12k
2029
42%
Other US citizen
25%
Political commentator who isn't a formal member of the press
25%
Political underling
24%
Member of the press
18%
Political rival
16%
State supreme court judge
15%
Member of congress
14%
State governor
11%
Supreme court judge
11%
Former president

The recent Supreme Court ruling (Trump v United States - wiki, pdf) is being criticized for allowing absolute and presumptive immunity for various acts involving core powers. One of the recurring hypotheticals is (paraphrased) "ordering Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival".

Will a US president order the assassination of any of the above people by 2029?

  • Resolves YES to any assassinations that have been ordered by the president by the end of 2028 as they are ordered (assassinations that are publicly ordered but not carried out prior to 2028 still count).

  • Resolves NO to any assassinations that happen, but are not claimed responsibility by the president and are attributed to independent, presidentially-unrelated assassins prior to the end of 2028.

  • Resolves NO on December 31st of 2028 for any assassinations that have not yet been ordered.

  • Motivation doesn't matter, but it has to be a deliberate, targeted killing (for instance if something like this happened again, it would resolve "Other US citizen" to "YES"). Accidental or incidental killings don't count here, but explicit assassination orders, whether they're justified as lawful or not, do.

  • Impeachment in the house or senate, and subsequent removal from office alone does not count as "criminal charges" here. The president has to avoid being criminally charged for the act, whether or not he stays in office.

Get แน€1,000 play money
Sort by:
bought แน€10 Political rival NO

For the record, my prior on this is that the chances should be "basically 0%", except for the "Other US citizen" one, which has precedent. I'm happy to be educated about why I'm wrong about this, but I kind of semi-expect that education to come with a commensurate YES bet on the appropriate case.

bought แน€1 Other US citizen YES

Trump ordered an anarchist assassinated

Link?

Do jokes count?

Can you give an example situation here?

To โ€œorderโ€, one must act in the capacity of Commander in Chief; making it an โ€œan official actโ€ by its own very definition.

Ok?

bought แน€50 Other US citizen YES

Not an expert, but on cursory reading, yes something like that would resolve "Other US citizen" to "YES".

(Updated the question to clarify)

bought แน€200 Member of the press NO

Would he also count as a "political commentator"? If he had a side gig working for a Middle Eastern newspaper, would he count as a member of the press?

Ambiguous. He apparently had an active YouTube channel with (what was at the time) lots of views? I guess that might technically cross the line into "political commentary" depending on content. I've never heard of this channel before it was apparently nuked from orbit, so I don't trust my own judgement. If he had an actual (expected to produce writing) ongoing contract with Al Jazeera or something, yes, I'd consider him a journalist. I think this convinces me that I should disambiguate "Political commentator" to "Political commentator who isn't a formal member of the press".