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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Guantanamo bay was practically designed for this scenario. Just dump his ass there and forget about him.
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?
Probably not but it’s also probably because they still have the secret service.
There was movie with Jame Gardner and Jack Lemon they were both ex presidents. James character asked that question and then said something about how they don’t give shit when you no longer president. Great movie wish it could end for Trump way did in that film.
Every president in or out of office has information of national security that is in our best interests to protect. Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the password to launch nukes 1234 for like 60 years. They could’ve kidnapped like 5 ex-presidents and been able to launch nukes from the info obtained even if common logic says it should be obsolete.
IIRC, the code was 00000000
Believe me, someone would try to kill trump.
Wouldn’t be a loss IMO
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.
legions of brainwashed drones roaming around blasting off assault rifles randomly in an expansion called american revolt. . . did this get back on-topic?
yeah persuedertron was pretty much my plan A on most levels - at least when i replayed it a few years ago on a decent computer. A nice layer of human shields.
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?
There’s lots of reasons. One is that prosecutors have one shot at it–they don’t get to appeal a not-guilty verdict in most circumstances–so they need to build their case very, very carefully. This is arguably a good thing, so maybe we shouldn’t fix it.
One thing we very much should fix, though, is that the size of the federal bench hasn’t been increased in a while, and judges have an overwhelming workload. Doubling or even quadrupling the number of judges would be in order. This will get labeled as “stuffing the bench” by whichever party isn’t currently in power, but it’s a good idea.
The justice system is just slow, though. Consider that depending on the outcome, it can take away everything you own, throw you in jail for years, or in some jurisdictions, end your life. There are reasons for those outcomes (well, except for the death penalty), and that means the process should be very deliberate. This isn’t just about Trump.
I’m convinced that the u.s government machine would assassinate him or poison him, before ever allowing him to set foot in prison.
Even the prosecutor was only asking for $1k for each violation of the gag order. That’s just limp wristed finger wagging. I don’t really see the point in this charade. Anybody else would be in prison for pulling that shit.
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 sure that there are other laws that could apply, like witness intimidation. Contempt can also carry jail time for each instance. The judge has discretion to hold him in jail during the trial as well.
Indeed, he could be locked up for up to 30 days, but I think Merchan wants to avoid feed this asshole’s martyr complex.
Personally I’d rather trump end up like Steve Biko than Nelson Mandela, but perhaps Merchan is far more level-headed than I am.
obviously it wouldnt be prison like real prison but more of like goodfellas prison
In there wit de two yutes
“how many onions you put in the sauce? That’s too many onions”
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.
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.
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.
They know too much to be left without protection.
It’s about our safety at that point.
Maybe they let things go down as long as national security isn’t at risk?
Edit: getting tired of edits and misspellings introduced to my posts after ive posted them.
Most would but Trump probably cant remember any secrets anyway.
The secret service will be there to prevent other inmates from beating national secrets out of him.
Shit all they have to do is tell him the Democrats said XYZ and he’d tell them why they’re wrong.
Is anything that man had access to even a “secret” anymore?
Trump would likely be segregated from other prisoners (aka solitary confinement) for his own safety & the safety of the guards.
Trump? Keep secrets?
Fair point, but the rules are not specifically for Trump, they’re for any US ex president.
Well in theory that’s why they’d be there…
Alright, they’re there to prevent him just blurting them out with no prompting whatsoever.
I think you need the Sedation Service for that.
This is why he’ll never be in general population.
I honestly doubt he remembers anything at this point.
I would hope that being found guilty of treason would revoke any duty to protect them by the secret service…
Surely they will build him his own prison or convert his house into a prison.
Like I get it if he needs to go to jail than so be it. But let’s be real, he can’t actually go to prison.
Unfortunately, of all the charges he’s facing, treason is not one of them.
Yet?
I’m surprised they didn’t consider selling classified submarine plans to be treason, as part of the classified documents case.
At one point in his interviews, Butler says he told investigators that Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt repeated classified submarine secrets following a conversation with Trump in spring 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/11/politics/trump-employee-5-classified-documents-mar-a-lago/index.html
If he was going to face treason charges, they would have brought it as part of the January 6 trial.
Those charges are:
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/01/1191493880/trump-january-6-charges-indictment-counts
one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States applies to Trump’s repeated and widespread efforts to spread false claims about the November 2020 election while knowing they were not true and for allegedly attempting to illegally discount legitimate votes all with the goal of overturning the 2020 election, prosecutors claim in the indictment.
one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding was brought due to the alleged organized planning by Trump and his allies to disrupt the electoral vote’s certification in January 2021.
one count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding is tied to Trump and his co-conspirators’ alleged efforts after the November 2020 election until Jan. 7, 2021, to block the official certification proceeding in Congress.
one count of conspiracy against rights refers to Trump and his co-conspirators alleged attempts to “oppress, threaten and intimidate” people in their right to vote in an election.
Yet. The electors scheme that dumps directly participated in to conspire with election officials to forge and mail in false elector documents is still undergoing investigation and, with new updates every month from Republicans giving information to the authorities.
This is the one that I thought would be the most likely of causing him serious legal trouble, but this happened across seven states with an unknown number but around a dozen election officials that agreed to forge documents at Trump’s and his team’s request and then send in the documents to trick the national archives and pence into falsely certifying Trump as the president-elect in the 2020 election.
It’s batshit insane, and he was directly involved, and multiple people can corroborate that. The doj the FBI, some of those Republican collaborators are already working with them, I check in every couple weeks just to see what the latest news is.
The investigations and prosecutions by individual states and government agencies are ongoing, so prosecution of trump is still very much on the table, but only when all of the circumstances and information available has been organized and arrayed, and all of the smaller fish have been targeted and dealt with first.
As of March 2024, the Arizona AG is said that they’re nearing the end of their investigation.
But that’s one state of seven. And there’s also the FBI and the doj investigating this, so there’s a lot going on.
Semantically, according to US Legal Code you can’t commit treason without being at war, and war has not been properly defined by the federal government.
And Arizona has begun active prosecutions.
Woop wooop.
Not against Trump himself, unfortunately, but as I mentioned everything’s still moving forward so just got to wait and see how everything is prosecuted.
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…
Would you believe trump still has any important secrets he hasn’t blabbed yet?
Fair point…
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…
Yeah you guys still execute traitors right ? That would be quite the signal xD
Apparently only if they are brown or Jewish.
With adequate lighting he certainly looks orange enough verging on brownish ;-)
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
Barring an act of Congress or a presidential executive order
Could definitely imagine Congress and/or Biden doing that to make sure that Secret Service agents aren’t sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit…
They wouldn’t be condemned to prison, they would work in a prison. The logistics would have to be worked out but I guess they would work alongside the prison guards and have agents constantly around prisoner Orange. It would suck for them but they would be normal rotations/breaks and such.
They can’t opt out, but HE can.
We just need to convince him that they’re spying for the libs or some shit.
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.
Cool, take them all to a black site in one of those shithole countries he rants about. Guantanamo Bay still open?
Why not just build a small presidential prison?
I’m imagining the Magneto plastic prison, but in the middle of the Capitol building rotunda.
We already have prisons to hold spies.
Just in case any future presidents need it. /s
Even then, I think that they’d have to protect him.
It’s solitary, then. 🤷♂️
If only there was somewhere…
somewhere Govt run, maybe Under militAry NoTice And oN An island Maybe
sOmewhere set up for people who are apparently conspiring against the nation?
