Virtually dictatorial’: Trump has ‘secret’ powers nobody knows about, experts reveal

(Source independent.co.uk)

The moment the president of the US declares a national emergency, powers obscured to the public become available to them – a series of far-reaching authoritarian measures that legal analysts fear could justify mass arrests and federal troops patrolling American streets. If invoked, so-called “secret powers” could supersede constitutional protections and set an authoritative precedent that legal scholars and analysts fear would effectively erase American democracy. Adding the caveat that it’s unlikely or uncertain that a sitting president could wage such drastic threats against civil protections without protracted political battles, legal and constitutional scholars have issued worst-case scenario outlooks ahead of crucial 2020 elections, as Donald Trump and his allies lay the groundwork to undermine voting confidence and amplify misinformation targeting other Americans.

On 12 March, amid speculation that the president would invoke the Stafford Act to direct an emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Trump told reporters: ”I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about.”

Those authorities are intended “to implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations.” While those measures themselves remain secret, unclassified documents reveal that as many as 60 of them had been drafted, the Brennan Centre found. “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be,” the president said on 14 April. “It’s total … The authority of the president of the United States, having to do with the subject we’re talking about, is total.” On 23 June 2019, the president declared that the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”