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Can the President Now Assassinate Anyone With Impunity? It’s Complicated for the Military.

“Every legal adviser in the Special Operations chain of command would say, ‘If you do this, it’s murder,’” one military legal expert tells NOTUS.

U.S. flag patch adorns the uniform of a paratrooper
The Posse Comitatus Act “forbids the use of the armed forces for civilian law enforcement purposes unless authorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Gerry Broome/AP

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.