I think I read somewhere that Mr Yoo has never travelled outside the US since he wrote those opinions.
He’s a prisoner of conscience, I tells ya!
The U.S. President has enormous power. Here’s a well-known quotation where POTUS placed himself above the Supreme Court:
(This was in the matter of Worcester v. Georgia, with Jackson refusing to enforce federal treaties with the Cherokee nation and allowing the State of Georgia to illegally seize Cherokee land.)
Please, it’s not “torture” when you tie someone up for days on end in a stretched position so they develop arthritis and have limited movement afterwards. It’s “enhanced interrogation”.
It’s only “torture” when the North Vietnamese do it to John McCain.
It’s difficult to answer because of the greater range of powers and immunity the president was given recently. Technically it would have to be done as “part of his duties” but that has been interpreted very broadly by some.
But even if we don’t invoke that, there’s certainly a number of ways he could do it legally, like siccing the DOJ on someone, especially if there’s some reasonable sounding cover story.
He also tries to expand the number of government workers who are appointed rather than hired, which would mean he could fire a lot more people for not being loyalists.
Certainly Biden was worried about what he could do, which is why he gave preemptive pardons to perceived enemies of Trump.