1y ago

Could Trump Go to Prison? If He Does, the Secret Service Goes, Too

www.nytimes.com

The U.S. Secret Service is in the business of protecting the president, whether he’s inside the Oval Office or visiting a foreign war zone.

But protecting a former president in prison? The prospect is unprecedented. That would be the challenge if Donald J. Trump — whom the agency is required by law to protect around the clock — is convicted at his criminal trial in Manhattan and sentenced to serve time.

Even before the trial’s opening statements, the Secret Service was in some measure planning for the extraordinary possibility of a former president behind bars. Prosecutors had asked the judge in the case to remind Mr. Trump that attacks on witnesses and jurors could land him in jail even before a verdict is rendered.

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I would hope that being found guilty of treason would revoke any duty to protect them by the secret service...
- Unfortunately, of all the charges he's facing, treason is not one of them.
  
  Yet?
- Is it only about protecting him or also avoiding him discussing unwanted topics with other inmates in that case? He’s still the recipient of privileged information…
  
  It's exactly this. It's protection for him is a side effect of protecting the country. While these two things will generally overlap, if they ever diverge...
- From what I remember the secret service can opt to stop protecting him.
  
  Nope.
  Under current United States federal law, all former presidents are entitled to lifetime protection from the Secret Service. Barring an act of Congress or a presidential executive order, the Secret Service is bound by law to protect former presidents for life. There aren't any exceptions listed in the statute governing the protection of former presidents. Source
Trump will not go to a normal prison / gen pop, etc. Toss that thought from your mind.
Trump will die in a shitty military barracks on a shitty military base where he has no internet connection, access to him can be easily controlled & he can't blab state secrets.
There is already a precedent here with Nixon's lawyer.
- Other than your first sentence, this is pure fantasy. He'll never go far enough to trigger actual accountability from those that matter...
  
  I remember when that line was "they'll never indict an ex-President".
  Trump is going to die in Federal custody if he doesn't win re-election.
  There is not a single example of the DoJ spending this amount of money & manpower to say "oh well".
The fact that this is where American is at is disgraceful.
This traitor needs the maximum penalty and his supporters need to undergo some sort of education on Russian propoganda.
- "I don't think he knows about second education on Russian propaganda, Pippin."
I feel like losing the protection of the secret service should be part of being tried and convicted of a crime if you are the president.
- The secret service will be there to prevent other inmates from beating national secrets out of him.
  
  Trump would likely be segregated from other prisoners (aka solitary confinement) for his own safety & the safety of the guards.
  
  Is anything that man had access to even a "secret" anymore?
  
  Shit all they have to do is tell him the Democrats said XYZ and he'd tell them why they're wrong.
  
  I honestly doubt he remembers anything at this point.
  
  Trump? Keep secrets?
- The problem is it makes them an easy target, especially in the future when a conservative court convicts a liberal president over jaywalking or some stupid shit. Slippery slope, I guess is what I'm saying
  
  I mean, it's pretty easy to limit it to felonies.
- yeah but the principle of the thing, whatever it was, says you shouldn't do that. Things are so bad right now its hard to give a shit.
So one thing I don't fully understand is this: the secret service is required by law to protect the former president, but...is there anything that actually requires the state of New York to accommodate the secret service in doing so?
In theory, couldn't the state of New York just actually throw Trump in prison, no special privileges, and also no special accommodations for the secret service?
- I would LOVE to see that scenario. Trump goes to prison as he deserves and gets his special accommodations all revoked either by the court or the prison or whatever.
  Being immune to repercussions of your crimes because you are in a certain position is a very bad thing.
- I'm pretty sure the Supremacy Clause would make it a very bad time for whoever is unconstitutionally trying to block federal agents from protecting the criminal-in-chief.
- Perhaps, but I don't think they'd push the issue.
Maybe they'll get lucky and his cameras will go off for a while when he's on "constant suicide watch."
Why? If he's a convicted criminal, strip his salary and all his benefits, including the secret service.
Cool, take them all to a black site in one of those shithole countries he rants about. Guantanamo Bay still open?
Other countries have jailed their leaders. If you’re a felon and get jailed as a former President I figure you should lose everything, SS protection, any pension and any benefits are gone too. Why should a jailed president get those things?
- I don’t like it any more than you do. But a former president is still a very significant national security concern. Assassination is quite honestly the most minor concern there is for a former president. Extortion, blackmail, sabotage, espionage, all these things (and more) become a viable threat once USSS protection is gone. There’s a reason why we protect our former POTUS.
Why not just build a small presidential prison?
- We already have prisons to hold spies.
- I'm imagining the Magneto plastic prison, but in the middle of the Capitol building rotunda.
Kind of like Egyptian kings getting buried with their servants.
- Never understood keeping secret service protection after they are no longer in power? As anyone tried to kill a former president?
Guantanamo bay was practically designed for this scenario. Just dump his ass there and forget about him.
I hope that this happens and every single SS agent assigned to this post quits. Who would take a job to be in jail protecting a farting lunatic? Welcome to the SS Johnson, your entire life will be spent behind bars!
- ACAB, and the Secret Service is full of cops. They like Trump. That's very clear from their internal memos about the Oath Keepers prior to Jan 6:
  https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/emails-reveal-secret-service-contacts-with-oath-keepers/
  If Trump tried to plan a prison break right in front of them, they would probably pretend they heard nothing.
  
  Instead of El Chapo it would be El Cheapo
  
  They would be helping him.
  
  I know they do, but nobody wants to spend their life guarding anyone in prison their whole life, no matter how much they love him, at some point they will want something else lol
- The SS assigned to Trump fight for the job. They love him.
  
  Love to see them spend life in prison being his canasta partner then
Even if convicted he'll get house arrest. I doubt he will ever see a club Fed from the inside, let alone a supermax.
Maybe a military prison?
- Exactly. The logistics of housing a president in a prison are too hard. It's already set up for his residence.
  It will be worse for him if he's locked up in Trump Tower or Mar-A-Lago. People who were locked up in Alcatraz said the worst part was hearing everyone in the city have fun and go on in their lives. It would literally be torture for someone who has never known adversity.
He's never going to prison. That's all power-fantasy at this point. How many times in the past 8 years have we've heard this shit in and out? "Oh he's so going to prison for this one thing he did!" "Oh he's definitely going to prison for THAT..."
8 years and this clown is openly doing his shit.
- For context, Frank DiPascali plead guilty to 10 federal charges in 2009 related to his role in Bernie Madoff's investment scams. He died of lung cancer in 2015 and had yet to be sentenced. That's how long it takes when there's a guilty plea, making things relatively easy.
  Trump walking around a free man for 8 years is not unusually long. One of the major federal cases, taking classified materials home with him and not giving it back, had no crime occurring until he was out of office.
  What I'm saying is that if the timeline is your argument for the government letting him get away with things, then you should find a different argument. This level of waiting is normal.
  
  Why is it normal? And how do we fix it?
- That’s the law, they literally can’t demand more; It’s a regressive fine, just like everything else in society. If they could call for a heftier financial penalty, they would.
- I'm convinced that the u.s government machine would assassinate him or poison him, before ever allowing him to set foot in prison.
In the extraordinarily unlikely scenario this Cheeto ever sees a day in prison, it sure as fuck won't be a normal prison. It will be a white collar situation and honestly he would probably be the only person there. Could you imagine the fucking shit storm putting him in gen pop??
- Could you imagine the fucking shit storm putting him in gen pop??
  He'd be too hard to protect in gen pop. The most realistic way to put Trump in prison is to make the entire SHU into a "presidential suite" for Trump and his security detail. Everything else goes through regular prison security as normal, anything or anyone entering or leaving the SHU goes through SS in addition.
And this is why Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell. The logistics are completely unprecedented and unworkable. At most he'll get house arrest, and personally, I doubt even that.
- That's not the reason why. It would be trivially easy to remove all his privileges if he were convicted of a crime. The reason is because the system is corrupt.
Probably cheaper for the state of New York to just do house arrest with ankle bracelet. How about a halfway house?
Maybe we would finally get prison reform, then
I would love to be the USSS person in charge of logistics for this.
I don’t know why. It would be like a strategy/sim game.
All the other agents have different attributes, and the conditions at the prison change during the day.
I’ve already put too much thought into it and I have no idea why I find it interesting.
- yeah Syndicate!
  Dumb VIPs walking into range of my agent with maxed out red-bar and a gauss gun .
  
  The Persuadertron was fun. You could scoop up the whole level on some of them, which my poor old Amiga really struggled with.
I was reading somewhere that congress has introduced legislation barring the secret service from protecting the president once the president is convicted. But good luck getting that passed.
- This one is something that would be opposed only because of the current situation. Once the tables turned, the opposing party would be all over it.
  
  If an ex-president is convicted, I don't care which side of the political spectrum he or she was.
obviously it wouldnt be prison like real prison but more of like goodfellas prison
- "how many onions you put in the sauce? That's too many onions"
He will never go to prison
- I mean he might be locked up in some way, technically.
  But yeah, he'll never go to normal people prison.
i vote that we just kill the president if they get arrested, it solves more than one problem 🤷

84 comments