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If the only thing stopping POTUS from assassinating his political rivals is the threat that his own Attorney General is going to prosecute him for the crime, then we were already in a world where authoritarian dictatorship was inevitable. Any such POTUS that has consolidated enough political power to even consider such an option would clearly have a strong enough political ally as AG to not prosecute him.
In general, they say that coups aren't often the birth of a new distribution of power; they're the sudden realization (as in "being made real" not "people mentally realize") of what the distribution of power actually was already. Think Saddam Hussein publicly executing opposing members of parliament (there's a crazy video on youtube of that day if you have an odd curiosity to see how exactly these things can go down). It is wholly irrelevant whether or not a correct interpretation of Iraqi law made this a criminal offense. He had the power; he had the allies; anyone who could have plausibly prosecuted him for the offense was either already confirmed as an ally, already targeted, or at least wasn't stupid enough to have not gotten the message. The types of considerations that could actually constrain such a political actor's actions are just entirely different in type.
There are a variety of hypos that are within the domain of, "This is a possible problem that can arise in situations where everything is not already a lost cause and where having a different rule could actually make a difference," but this one isn't in that domain (it fails the first test).
Who’s “they”? I would like to read up on this idea, if you have any sources for it
I don't have a clean singular cite for that as sort of a solitary claim, sorry. Perhaps it's even something that I'm somewhat wrong about, but it's my impression from reading a variety of things over time about factional struggles for political power via means of raw power, consolidation of authoritarian power from opposition, things like the "rules for dictators", and all sorts of little pieces of work about why different sorts of governments came to be historically (things like whether a society is agrarian and what types of crops are dominant) and what the different end goals are of different uses of raw military power are and such (e.g., do you want to directly take control of governance, do you want to set up a puppet government, do you want to just displace people, etc.). These are unfortunately probably often treated separately in specialized academic works.
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I agree with your points that this does not really have a material impact right now. But the prevention of authoritarianism also relies on a broader culture of accountability and respect for democratic norms in addition to the legal framework. I worry this opinion negatively influences this culture. I imagine the slide towards authoritarianism to be “death by a thousand paper cuts” so-to-speak, and this is one of the paper cuts.
This is very plausible, though I think the traditional answer in the US is that the primary mechanism of accountability and respect for democratic norms is political, i.e., impeachment. There are tradeoffs in using political mechanisms vs. criminal law mechanisms, for sure. A complete discussion of those tradeoffs is probably even bigger than the 500000 character limit of a mottepost and would require significant engagement with an extremely large body of centuries worth of political theorizing. I don't think there is currently a singular tome in existence that is generally regarded as the 'bible' of this topic.
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