Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
The article goes on to report that the staff who pointed to the illegality of the president’s demands have either been removed from their positions or left voluntarily. Every day there are fewer and fewer people in this administration to stop the president from engaging in illegal actions.
During a speech to the Federalist Society on Friday, Attorney General William Barr stated that he was not only proud to serve under Donald Trump, but argued that a president with those tendencies should be given unchecked executive power.
As most legal scholars sound the alarm about a growing unitary executive, Barr made the rather bizarre case for the opposite, demonstrating that there are conservatives who never got over the limits put in place following Nixon’s abuse of power.