The Man Who Would Be King
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Donald Trump boasted during the campaign. According to his attorney and adviser Rudy Giuliani, if he tried it today, he could get away with murder.
“I said, you know very theoretically, the answer is the president can’t be prosecuted for anything,” Giuliani told CNN, defending an earlier assertion to HuffPost that the president could shoot former FBI Director James Comey and avoid prosecution. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”
The scenario Giuliani proposed—the president publicly executing a political antagonist—is not likely, imminent, or even desirable from the White House’s point of view. The point is that from the perspective of some of his closest advisers, it would be perfectly legal for him to stave off prosecution, pardon himself for the act, and even order the prosecution of those who try to hold him
