Former U.S. presidents are authorized a security detail from the Secret Service for life. If Trump loses the election and flees the country, does his security detail have to go with him if he requests it?
I imagine this could go down in a variety of ways: He departs the U.S. before he’s sentenced and just never returns, or he attempts to flees or does flees the U.S. after his sentencing. Either way, what happens to his security detail?
If he attempts to flees after he’s sentenced, I would hope the detail would refuse to take part in it (if he can even board a plane/leave the country to begin with), but given all their failings, who knows.
AFAIK ex-presidents aren’t allowed to leave the country without specific permission, due to all the classified crap in their heads. If one tried to flee the country, it would be their detail’s duty to detain them.
Heck, they’re not even allowed to drive in public roads… not that Trump has probably ever driven a car.
not that Trump has probably ever driven a car
Thanks for the confirmation, robobruddah
That’s also not the look of a man with much of anything in his head.
Just concepts of a plan.
You could say the same about running off with boxes of classified docs and keeping them in a bathroom. Reality is they don’t care as long as he’s alive
No, most of this is untrue. Ex Presidents can refuse secret service detail. They are allowed to drive on public roads - that is a secret service rule that they can’t but it’s not against the law and Presidents don’t have to follow those rules. And they are allowed to live outside the US if a host country allows them.
You think that guy has a driver’s licence
He has had a driver forever.
But why bother? He has already sold everything he knows along with the contents of the documents he stole.
Security is a privilege, not a mandate. Nixon dropped his in 1985.
Becoming a fugitive from justice would count as voluntarily giving up lots of privileges, the very least of which would be a publicly funded security detail.
I imagine they would just arrest him and hand him over for protection. Any member who allowed it would be breaking their oath and supporting an enemy of the state at that point would they not?
Edit: I meant prosecution, not protection, but apparently people understood
If we’re gaming the whole scenario out, I imagine it would go something like this.
None of his current convictions are expected to come with a custodial sentence, but say he loses the election, and the more serious trials are heating up. At that point, he knows he’s toast. 2028 is too late to run a fourth time; he’s got no more hail marys, so he dismisses his detail completely, retreats to Florida, and sneaks away to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the night.
He’s got a private jet, so getting out of the country shouldn’t be a huge problem. But I think you’re right that he has to set all this in motion before a guilty verdict is delivered. At that point, getting away from the secret service would be much more difficult.
None of his current convictions are expected to come with a custodial sentence
Strict adherence to sentencing guidelines actually would see him jailed on his current convictions. If he isn’t given some kind of imprisonment it will be because the judge was afraid of the aftermath.
The minimum sentence is a hefty fine, but the judge in that very trial already determined that fines do not discourage Trump’s behavior, given the contempt punishment that he ignored, so I don’t think it’s going to be a slap on the wrist for him unless the judge truly is a hypocrite or a coward.
That being said, even if he gets prison for each of his felony counts, he can serve them all concurrently, a maximum of 3 years per count. So he could theoretically be out of prison right before the next election cycle with a year left to campaign for 2028, that is assuming he truly is sentenced immediately after the election in November and it’s not just pushed back indefinitely due to recount horseshit or Trump crazies doing another insurrection.
But there are other trials that are far more likely to result in additional prison time, the most important two being the classified documents case and the Jan 6th case. I have faith that the justice system will eventually follow through with punishing Trump, but the system is set up to slow-walk the rich and powerful to accountability.
That’s an accurate summation for my understanding as well. Things that the judge should look at when considering a minimum sentence are defendant cooperation, displays of genuine remourse, and indications that the defendant is unlikely to continue breaking the law. If the judge can find any of that, it’s beyond me how.
I don’t think he’s got four years left in him. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets slow-walked so hard that he dies before getting sent to prison.
he has to set all this in motion before a guilty verdict is delivered.
Well that ship sailed.
USSS is on this guy like flies on shit and you’d better believe he’s not going anywhere if he loses the election. TF do you think Harris is gonna do, just be like “yeah, that trump guy, fuck him, whatever.” Everyone knows that he’s a tremendous national security risk (which truly blows my mind - assholes are going to actively vote to sabotage their own country).
which truly blows my mind - assholes are going to actively vote to sabotage their own country
The problem is they don’t see it at all. Anyone who is truly in favor of Trump is watching propaganda that will always frame him as a poor victim of evil Democrat smear campaigns. Anyone else who is voting for him because they’re a Republican and they just always vote R is just not paying attention and also fall under the category of “not seeing it.” :(
I’m not so sure he’s much of a security risk, unless he is still in possession of sensitive documents. I sincerely doubt he is capable of remembering anything in the way of valuable secrets. Anyways, even if he did, any adversary would be daft to trust he remembered correctly.
I’m just imagining being the poor sap working for a foreign power trying to extract useful information from his cottage cheese brain.
“Do you have nuclear subs in the South China Sea?”
“We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame. … The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.”
“Where! Are! The nuclear! Subs! Deployed!”
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”
“I have the concept of a nuclear sub, it’s gonna be the best nuclear sub. People at gonna see it and be like: That’s such a nuclear great sub. Such sub.”
“Big, beautiful submarine captains come up to me. Covered with muscles, muscles like nobody has ever seen before. Tears running down their cheeks. They say ‘Sir, thank you for sending us to the South China Sea! Nobody ever sent us there before!’ But I don’t get angry! I should get angry and sometimes I do get angry, but with these captains I don’t get angry. They say ‘Thank you, sir! Thank you!’ But nobody ever thought of South China before! I came up with that, but nobody gives me credit for South China!”
“Where! Are! The nuclear! Subs! Deployed!”
In Alameda, I guess?
They aren’t lawsuits, they’re criminal indictments. Big difference.
The USSS would not have any obligation to a former president that is a fugitive from law.
As individuals they could abandon their service, which has serious legal remifications, and follow Trump of their own choice. I doubt any would do that because why they became USSS and how badly it would ruin their lives.
So I looked into the USSS, and here from their FAQ: "Under Title 18, Section 3056, of the United States Code, agents and officers of the United States Secret Service can:
Carry firearms
Execute warrants issued under the laws of the United States
Make arrests without warrants for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony recognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed such felony
Offer and pay rewards for services and information leading to the apprehension of persons involved in the violation of the law that the Secret Service is authorized to enforce
Investigate fraud in connection with identification documents, fraudulent commerce, fictitious instruments and foreign securities and
Perform other functions and duties authorized by law"
This leads me to wonder just how many times a SS Agent witnessed Trump committing a felony in their presence but didn’t arrest him.
They have no obligation to enforce the law, just as a patrol cop does not need to pull you over for speeding. There also is having to be the guy that arrests Trump and the response that would bring you.
More to the point, if there is a warrant issued for his arrest, his secret service detail would need to arrest him.
They have no obligation to enforce the law, just as a patrol cop does not have to pull you over for speeding.
I’m pretty sure the options would be to arrest him or be fired for insubordination.
The protection detail would not arrest him. The agency with the warrant would coordinate with the secret service to either get access to Trump or, more likely, give Trump the opportunity to surrender.
if there is a warrant issued for his arrest, his secret service detail would need to arrest him.
Also if he tried to flee the country, I would expect.
There’s a massive difference between watching someone commit arson and watching a document get delivered that turns everything into a RICO case. You’d never know unless you knew the business details.
Maybe Trump could escape the US by hiding in a box disguised as “music equipment” (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993). Then the USSS wouldn’t have to accompany him.
He is more of a fan of his wife dying and hiding things in the coffin.
Melania falls down the stairs and he has her casket sent to her homeland of Slovenia or burial, which is quite the convenient place for him to find himself.
Maybe he could ensemble some sympathisers?
USSS won’t just let him get on a plane and fly off to Russia. His security is their top priority, so allowing him to secrete himself somewhere without first verifying his itinerary and securing both the mode of transportation and the destination, would be unthinkable. That means they are reporting all of his movements to local law enforcement. Can’t exactly flee the country in secret when every cop in the state will know his exact position and have eyes on him at all times. If the courts think he is a flight risk, someone involved in the process will know what he’s trying to do and prevent him from going anywhere where it will be hard to get him back again.
The former presidents act seems to imply that a former president can decline Secret Service protection and even get $1 million for doing so. So I imagine he could just decline protection and hire his own security. But that would make it pretty obvious that he’s planning on fleeing.
But that would make it pretty obvious that he’s planning on fleeing.
As if that would be the first hint
I didn’t know that Secret Service was mandatory for former US Presidents.
I suppose he could dismiss them, but considering he just had two recent attempts on his life, that would probably be unwise to say the least.
I imagine the second he requests asylum or says he is a resident of another country, the USSS recalls every agent attached to him. They still work for a us government agency & are not answerable to a former, disgraced, president.
Or rather, they assassinate him themselves, since someone who has held clearance higher than any other member of the US government is a liability if he becomes disloyal to the US
Becomes?
Yeah I know he is already, but if he becomes more overt about it then the government will be more likely to be overt about treating him as such
Yeah. It’s a spiral that our media culture seems perfectly engineered for.
They aren’t assassins. They’ve spent up to a quarter of their career keeping this guy alive, they aren’t going to turn around and shoot him. In the highly unlikely case Trump let it be known that he actually had a photographic memory and wanted to write it all down for Putin the secret service would simply be recalled. And his plane would fall apart mid-air, as they tend to do when the CIA or FIS (Russian flavor) gets involved.
Most likely scenario is we all remember Trump didn’t even read his intel folders and we wave a fond bon voyage while offering free tickets to Russia for any die hard MAGA fans who want to go with him.
To be perfectly honest, I imagine the US government would see it as too big of a risk to just let him go without at least some sort of shadow watching and following his every move, ready to pounce the second he sneezes wrong. This would be if they were to let him leave.
Granted, it would all be speculation, but the possibility does exist.
The government and our laws really aren’t that put together. If he were to defect there would be no visible reaction to us. And the stuff we couldn’t see would be purely defensive, waiting to see what he could actually compromise and then trying to stay ahead of that. That’s what we have systems and procedures for and that’s what the government runs on.
Nah the USSS won’t kill him.
That’s the CIA’s job
While accurate, we’ll probably never find out if they end up being the ones responsible for his assassination.
Plane went down over the Atlantic during mysterious circumstances.
It would become public around 20-30 years later, if the contra program is any indication
You forgot about the old “What’s that over there?” trick.
🏃♂️👉⁉️
Good question, as is everything around trump as every situation with that loser is one that has never happened before
The whole point of the USSS protecting former Presidents is to prevent this exact thing from happening. The USSS would do everything in their power to prevent him from fleeing or to get him back.
No. Just no. It’s to prevent someone from un-aliving them for stuff they did as President.
It’s more an intelligence thing.
I imagine anyone trying to extract intelligence from that weird guy would end up less informed than before.
“Yes comrade, that’s right. He’s telling us that the country is ovverrun with woke transexual alien criminals that are eating all of the household pets. Yes…yes I tried asking for the nuclear codes, but he just started rampbling about a radical lesbian liberal agenda and now he’s talking about China and hamberders. Comrade, he won’t stop talking about Nancy Pelosi and Obama and now I think he’s trying to sell me his ugly golden sneakers…”
You are assuming he is going to be sentenced in the US which as we’ve all seen is impossible.
So you’re saying Trump knows this and doesn’t plan to leave the country?
“if Santiago was safe, why the order?”
Secret service takes their orders from the current president. So, if the order were given to bring him in they would have too.
Yes, but extradition back when the court issues a bench warrant would also be extremely easy. If there’s already an order keeping him from traveling they’d have to enforce it. Which is part of why that New York judge getting scared was bad, the system is poorly designed for rich defendants. Usually it handles it by getting their passport and restricting them from traveling.
He won’t be sentenced or ever face jail time.
Interesting question that hadn’t occurred to me. Great one to bring up as a thought experiment. I agree with a sibling comment that says he likely wouldn’t be covered if convicted, but this is also new (and previously unthinkable) territory.
It isn’t previously unthinkable, they just previously chose not to think about it. Reagan and Nixon are recent criminal presidents that were both spared prosecution and given full honors as former presidents.
Even those of us who wanted Bush Jr to stand trial for war crimes never thought it was possible. This is the first time it’s been a possibility for sure. That’s how far this asshole has run amuck.
I was strictly speaking violations of US law, not international law. That list is much more extensive.
