So here’s the situation. For whatever reason, possibly having nothing to do with politics, the POTUS has singled you out of a crowd and has declared “I am coming to KICK YOUR ASS!”
And he can do it!
So what are the legal implications?
This is not a matter of law enforcement or national security.
Presumably the Secret Service won’t simply act as hired goons and hold you for POTUS. But they will perform their job and protect the POTUS.
Similar to this thread, the Secret Service won’t simply abandon their duties to protect the President, even if he/she says “let me deal with this myself!”
You are still subject to whatever laws applies to getting into a fight with the President of the USA.
The President still has the power to pardon.
Local law enforcement will still perform their duties.
For whatever reason, you simply can’t run away and hide.
Seriously though, the last bullet point is the sticking point. The IANAL caveat applies here, but the obvious solution to the President “coming to kick your ass” is not to be there; when you’re put into a situation where you’re physically forced to defend yourself and cannot leave or refuse to participate, my understanding is that you’re pretty much legally absolved from any (reasonable) actions you take.
The President is clearly breaking the law here, which then gets into the whole question of what a sitting President can and can’t be prosecuted for, which as we’ve seen recently is not remotely a settled thing.
The other question is how legally culpable the Secret Service agents would be. If they’re protecting the President while allowing him to assault you, they are also breaking the law and I’m pretty sure they don’t enjoy the same level of protection from prosecution for such things.
Finally, what “duties” are you anticipating local law enforcement will perform? If it’s clear in advance that the fight is happening they may show up to stop the fight before it happens. As I’ve said above, it’s not clear whether they can get away with arresting the President (or indeed SS agents) and if they did there would be a massive shitstorm to deal with. But then given that the President is beating up random citizens, the shitstorm is already in progress anyway.
If the President wants to come to my country and go around blathering some talk-words for whatever reason, that’s fine. He’s allowed to, it’s a free country. If he wants to go stage-dive to have some of what I’ve got, I cordially invite him (or her) to step up and come get some. My fists are anxious to be introduced to presidential face.
(Good news everyone! My Twitter campaign worked after all!)
This just became a humiliating experience for the US. I doubt the president has brought enough secret service guys to overcome my army of furious punks, motivated by my ceaseless and highly-effective needling of the POTUS. The odds are basically infinitely good somebody’s got the whole thing on a cellphone camera, so even if I lose I’m never paying for a drink again.
(PS: For the humour impaired, I’m struggling to be more tongue-in-cheek. But I’d’ve totally fought the previous real president anytime, anywhere.)
Protecting the President would mean keeping him/her from getting into physical altercations. It would seem their job description would require them to physically prevent the President from getting into fist fights.
Just receiving punches, not giving them. Presumably if you got close to landing blows, more men would just be brought in, or they’d get their guns out. So given this scenario, the President is going to give you a beatdown. Even if you have your own people on your side, unless you are planning a coup, they will simply be held back or arrested as well.
TR boxed people, but I think he let them hit them. I don’t know what the implications would be of a modern day president doing this while maintaining his presidential privilege. Probably the prez gets away with it. So hiding is the best solution.
No, that’s an illegal act and the secret service isn’t going to do that. I understand that this is a hypothetical, but I’ve known a few SS agents and that’s simply not what they do.
I don’t think the President’s pardoning powers would help, as he could get caught up in state charges.
I agree the Secret Service would attempt to restrain him. I also think we’d have a 25th Amendment issue on our hands, claiming someone who would do that is unfit. So you’d need at least the Vice President to be okay with the fight. Similarly, you’d need at least a 24 Senators who were okay with it.
But, even with all of that, I see no reason state charges wouldn’t be brought.
I agree with all of this. I’ve never punched a man in his 70s before, but in a real fight I think there is some significant non-zero chance it would result in death. The Secret Service are not going to let the president die because he wanted to mix it up. If it looked like I was about to touch the president, I would be at the very least permanently disabled. It is hilarious to imagine the Secret Service allowing just some dumbass to murder the president just because the president said he wanted a piece of me, so their hands were tied. I would be a corpse and 99.9% of the population of the country would be like, yeah, well, I mean. You can’t kill the president.
Since I know this is true, practically speaking I’m just going to turtle up and get a few bumps and bruises until they pull him off me. Isn’t there a part of the first Game of Thrones book where Robert wants to mix it up in a melee and they have to tell him “nobody’s going to fucking fight you, man?” It would be like that. Please don’t smoke me too hard with your warhammer, Mr. Biden.
No, if the President was the aggressor they would restrain him, not you. Disabling the innocent person the president was attacking would be a crime, and they wouldn’t do that.
Oh, but legally, if I do swing back and survive: the federal charges I’m relying on the president to get me out of, just as a code of honor type thing.
State assault charges, I’m going to skate on. The guy was on TV saying he was coming to get me, then he showed up with a pack of armed goons. I was in reasonable imminent fear of bodily harm. Self defense.
I don’t mean to disrespect the people you know, and I believe you about their integrity. But I think if we’re just going to say “law enforcement would never do a crime,” we don’t have much to talk about in the scenario where the president is coming to beat me up.
Sticking with the OP hypothetical that the Secret Service isn’t going to attack me…
I assume every time I throw a punch at the President, a Secret Service guy will jump in front of him and take the hit. That means as long as I keep punching, I have a human shield between the two of us. So I do that, and advance slowly, and gradually edge them all over the cliff in my backyard.
It’s not their integrity, it’s what their job is. They are going to protect the president, and that means keeping him out of fights. They’ll deal with the fall out of that later, but the president in a fist fight is an immediate threat and they will respond to that. If someone attacks the president they will respond swiftly and forcefully against the attacker. But if the president goes after someone for no reason they will intervene and keep the president safe by removing him from the situation.
The idea that they’re his personal hit squad is misunderstanding their role.
I voted for him, but if he were to come at me swinging, I’d use my insider knowledge (Joe drops his left when he is setting up to throw a roundhouse right) to put him away early.
