Legitimacy (political)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political) 

John Locke: consent of the governed confers political legitimacy.

In political science, legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime. Whereas "authority" denotes a specific position in an established government, the term "legitimacy" denotes a system of government—wherein "government" denotes "sphere of influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has the right and justification to exercise power. Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular régimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influential élite. In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC), the political legitimacy of a ruler and government was derived from the Mandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate therefore lost the right to rule the people.

In moral philosophy, the term "legitimacy" is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions, based upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally constituted government.

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the [Second] Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed." The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that "[l]egitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is exercised, both with a consciousness on the government's part that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that right". The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy also "involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society". The American political scientist Robert A. Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given level, political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level, political legitimacy is endangered.

Types

Legitimacy is "a value whereby something or someone is recognized and accepted as right and proper". In political science, legitimacy usually is understood as the popular acceptance and recognition by the public of the authority of a governing régime, whereby authority has political power through consent and mutual understandings, not coercion. The three types of political legitimacy described by German sociologist Max Weber are traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal:

• Traditional legitimacy derives from societal custom and habit that emphasize the history of the authority of tradition. Traditionalists understand this form of rule as historically accepted, hence its continuity, because it is the way society has always been. Therefore, the institutions of traditional government usually are historically continuous, as in monarchy and tribalism.
• Charismatic legitimacy derives from the ideas and personal charisma of the leader, a person whose authoritative persona charms and psychologically dominates the people of the society to agreement with the government's régime and rule. A charismatic government usually features weak political and administrative institutions, because they derive authority from the persona of the leader, and usually disappear without the leader in power. However, if the charismatic leader has a successor, a government derived from charismatic legitimacy might continue.
• Rational-legal legitimacy derives from a system of institutional procedure, wherein government institutions establish and enforce law and order in the public interest. Therefore, it is through public trust that the government will abide the law that confers rational-legal legitimacy.

Forms

Theocracy: Egyptian divine authority, Horus as a falcon.

Numinous legitimacy

Further information: Divine right of kings, Mandate of Heaven, and Imperial cult (ancient Rome)

In a theocracy, government legitimacy derives from the spiritual authority of a god or a goddess.

• In ancient Egypt (c. 3150 BC), the legitimacy of the dominion of a Pharaoh (god–king) was theologically established by doctrine that posited the pharaoh as the Egyptian patron god Horus, son of Osiris.

Theocracy: The coat of arms of the Holy See, the seat of Papal government.

• In the Roman Catholic Church, the priesthood derives its legitimacy from a divine source; the Roman Magisterium dogmatically teaches that Jesus Christ designated St. Peter the supreme and infallible head of the entire Christian Church, and thus each bishop of Rome is sanctified, legitimate, and possesses these charisms as well.

Civil legitimacy

One measurement of civil legitimacy is who has access to the vote, including women are able to vote.

 

The political legitimacy of a civil government derives from agreement among the autonomous constituent institutions—legislative, judicial, executive—combined for the national common good. One way civil society grants legitimacy to governments is through public elections. There are also those who refute the legitimacy offered by public elections, pointing out that the amount of legitimacy public elections can grant depends significantly on the electoral system conducting the elections. In the United States this issue has surfaced around how voting is impacted by gerrymandering and the repeal of part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Another challenge to the political legitimacy offered by elections is whether or not marginalized groups such as women or those who are incarcerated are allowed to vote.

Civil legitimacy can be granted through different measures for accountability than voting, such as financial transparency and stake-holder accountability. In the international system another method for measuring civil legitimacy is through accountability to international human rights norms.

In an effort determine what makes a government legitimate the Center for Public Impact launched a project to hold a global conversation about legitimacy stating, inviting citizens, academics and governments to participate. The organization also publishes case studies that consider the theme of legitimacy as it applies to projects in a number of different countries including Bristol, Lebanon and Canada.

"Good" governance vs. "bad" governance

The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commission (OHCHR) established standards of what is considered "good governance" that include the key attributes transparency, responsibility, accountability, participation and responsiveness (to the needs of the people).

Input, output and throughput legitimacy

Assessing the political legitimacy of a government can be done by looking at three different aspects of which a government can derive legitimacy. Fritz Scharpf introduced two normative criteria, which are output legitimacy, i.e. the effectiveness of policy outcomes for people and input legitimacy, the responsiveness to citizen concerns as a result of participation by the people. A third normative criterion was added by Vivien Schmidt, who analyzes legitimacy also in terms of what she calls throughput, i.e. the governance processes that happen in between input and output.

Negative and positive legitimacy

Abulof distinguishes between negative political legitimacy (NPL), which is about the object of legitimation (answering what is legitimate), and positive political legitimacy (PPL), which is about the source of legitimation (answering who is the 'legitimator'). NPL is concerned with establishing where to draw the line between good and bad, PPL with who should be drawing it in the first place. From the NPL perspective, political legitimacy emanates from appropriate actions; from a PPL perspective, it emanates from appropriate actors. In the social contract tradition, Hobbes and Locke focused on NPL (stressing security and liberty, respectively), while Rousseau focused more on PPL ("the people" as the legitimator). Arguably, political stability depends on both forms of legitimacy.

Instrumental and substantive legitimacy

Weber's understanding of legitimacy rests on shared values, such as tradition and rational-legality. But policies that aim at (re-)constructing legitimacy by improving the service delivery or 'output' of a state often only respond to shared needs. Therefore, substantive sources of legitimacy need to be distinguished from more instrumental ones. Instrumental legitimacy rests on "the rational assessment of the usefulness of an authority ..., describing to what extent an authority responds to shared needs. Instrumental legitimacy is very much based on the perceived effectiveness of service delivery. Conversely, substantive legitimacy is a more abstract normative judgment, which is underpinned by shared values. If a person believes that an entity has the right to exercise social control, he or she may also accept personal disadvantages."

Sources

Max Weber: societies are politically cyclical.

 

Max Weber proposed that societies behave cyclically in governing themselves with different types of governmental legitimacy. That democracy was unnecessary for establishing legitimacy, a condition that can be established with codified laws, customs, and cultural principles, not by means of popular suffrage. That a society might decide to revert from the legitimate government of a rational–legal authority to the charismatic government of a leader; e.g., the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, and Francoist Spain under General Francisco Franco.

Mattei Dogan

The French political scientist Mattei Dogan's contemporary interpretation of Weber's types of political legitimacy (traditional, charismatic, legal-rational) proposes that they are conceptually insufficient to comprehend the complex relationships that constitute a legitimate political system in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Dogan proposed that traditional authority and charismatic authority are obsolete as forms of contemporary government (e.g., the Islamic Republic of Iran (est. 1979) rule by means of the priestly Koranic interpretations by the Ayatollah Khomeini). That traditional authority has disappeared in the Middle East; that the rule-proving exceptions are Islamic Iran and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the third Weber type of political legitimacy, rational-legal authority, exists in so many permutations no longer allow it to be limited as a type of legitimate authority.

Forms of legitimate government

In determining the political legitimacy of a system of rule and government, the term proper—political legitimacy—is philosophically an essentially contested concept that facilitates understanding the different applications and interpretations of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative concepts such as "art", "social justice", et cetera, as applied in aesthetics, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion. Therefore, in defining the political legitimacy of a system of government and rule, the term "essentially contested concept" indicates that a key term (communism, democracy, constitutionalism, etc.) has different meanings within a given political argument. Hence, the intellectually restrictive politics of dogmatism ("My answer is right, and all others are wrong"), scepticism ("All answers are equally true or [false]; everyone has a right to his own truth"), and eclecticism ("Each meaning gives a partial view, so the more meanings the better") are inappropriate philosophic stances for managing a political term that has more than one meaning.

Establishing what qualifies as a legitimate form of government continues to be a topic of great philosophical controversy. Forms of legitimate government are posited to include:

• Communism: The legitimacy of a Communist state derives from having won a civil war, a revolution, or from having won an election, such as the Presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–73) in Chile; thus, the actions of the Communist government are legitimate, authorised by the people. In the early twentieth century, Communist parties based the arguments supporting the legitimacy of their rule and government upon the scientific nature of Marxism.
• Constitutionalism: The modern political concept of constitutionalism establishes the law as supreme over the private will, by integrating nationalism, democracy, and limited government. The political legitimacy of constitutionalism derives from popular belief and acceptance that the actions of the government are legitimate because they abide by the law codified in the political constitution. The political scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich (1901–84) said that, in dividing political power among the organs of government, constitutional law effectively restrains the actions of the government.
• Democracy: In a democracy, government legitimacy derives from the popular perception that the elected government abides by democratic principles in governing, and thus is legally accountable to its people.
• Fascism: In the 1920s and the 1930s, fascism based its political legitimacy upon the arguments of traditional authority; respectively, the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists claimed that the political legitimacy of their right to rule derived from philosophically denying the (popular) political legitimacy of elected liberal democratic governments. During the Weimar Republic (1918–33), the political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)—whose legal work as the "Crown Jurist of the Third Reich" promoted fascism and deconstructed liberal democracy—addressed the matter in Legalität und Legitimität (Legality and Legitimacy, 1932), an anti-democratic polemic treatise that asked: How can parliamentary government make for law and legality, when a 49 per cent minority accepts as politically legitimate the political will of a 51 per cent majority?
• Monarchy: In a monarchy, the divine right of kings establishes the political legitimacy of the rule of the monarch (king or queen); legitimacy also derives from the popular perception (tradition and custom) and acceptance of the monarch as the rightful ruler of nation and country. Contemporarily, such divine-right legitimacy is manifest in the absolute monarchy of the House of Saud (est. 1744), a royal family who have ruled and governed Saudi Arabia since the 18th century. Moreover, constitutional monarchy is a variant form of monarchic political legitimacy which combines traditional authority and legal–rational authority, by which means the monarch maintains nationalist unity (one people) and democratic administration (a political constitution).

Popular sovereignty

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_sovereignty

 

Popular sovereignty is the principle that the authority of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with social contract philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect or describe a political reality. Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns".

Earlier development of popular sovereignty arose from philosopher Francisco Suárez and became the basis for Latin American independence.

Origins

Popular sovereignty in its modern sense, is an idea that dates to the social contracts school (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries), represented by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), author of The Social Contract, a prominent political work that clearly highlighted the ideals of "general will" and further matured the idea of popular sovereignty. The central tenet is that the legitimacy of rule or of law is based on the consent of the governed. Popular sovereignty is thus a basic tenet of most Republics, and in some monarchies. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were the most influential thinkers of this school, all postulating that individuals choose to enter into a social contract with one another, thus voluntarily giving up some of their natural freedom in return for protection from dangers derived from the freedom of others. Whether men were seen as naturally more prone to violence and rapine (Hobbes) or cooperation and kindness (Rousseau), the idea that a legitimate social order emerges only when the liberties and duties are equal among citizens binds the social contract thinkers to the concept of popular sovereignty.

A parallel development of a theory of popular sovereignty can be found among the School of Salamanca (see e.g. Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) or Francisco Suarez (1548–1617)), who (like the theorists of the divine right of kings and Locke) saw sovereignty as emanating originally from God, but (unlike divine right theorists and in agreement with Locke) passing from God to all people equally, not only to monarchs.

Republics and popular monarchies is theoretically based on popular sovereignty. However, a legalistic notion of popular sovereignty does not necessarily imply an effective, functioning democracy: a party or even an individual dictator may claim to represent the will of the people, and rule in its name, pretending to detain auctoritas. That would be congruent with Hobbes's view on the subject, but not with most modern definitions that see democracy as a necessary condition of popular sovereignty.

United States

The application of the doctrine of popular sovereignty receives particular emphasis in American history, notes historian Christian G. Fritz's American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, a study of the early history of American constitutionalism. In describing how Americans attempted to apply this doctrine prior to the territorial struggle over slavery that led to the Civil War, political scientist Donald S. Lutz noted the variety of American applications:

To speak of popular sovereignty is to place ultimate authority in the people. There are a variety of ways in which sovereignty may be expressed. It may be immediate in the sense that the people make the law themselves, or mediated through representatives who are subject to election and recall; it may be ultimate in the sense that the people have a negative or veto over legislation, or it may be something much less dramatic. In short, popular sovereignty covers a multitude of institutional possibilities. In each case, however, popular sovereignty assumes the existence of some form of popular consent, and it is for this reason that every definition of republican government implies a theory of consent.

— Donald S. Lutz

The American Revolution marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had been discussed and employed in the European historical context. With their Revolution, Americans substituted the sovereignty in the person of King George III, with a collective sovereign—composed of the people. Thenceforth, American revolutionaries generally agreed and were committed to the principle that governments were legitimate only if they rested on popular sovereignty – that is, the sovereignty of the people. This idea—often linked with the notion of the consent of the governed—was not invented by the American revolutionaries. Rather, the consent of the governed and the idea of the people as a sovereign had clear 17th and 18th-century intellectual roots in English history.

1850s

In the 1850s, in the run-up to the Civil War, Northern Democrats led by Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois promoted popular sovereignty as a middle position on the slavery issue. It said that actual residents of territories should be able to decide by voting whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory. The federal government did not have to make the decision, and by appealing to democracy Cass and Douglas hoped they could finesse the question of support for or opposition to slavery. Douglas applied popular sovereignty to Kansas in the Kansas Nebraska Act which passed Congress in 1854. The Act had two unexpected results. By dropping the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which said slavery would never be allowed in Kansas), it was a major boost for the expansion of slavery. Overnight outrage united anti-slavery forces across the North into an "anti-Nebraska" movement that soon was institutionalized as the Republican Party, with its firm commitment to stop the expansion of slavery. Second, pro- and anti-slavery elements moved into Kansas with the intention of voting slavery up or down, leading to a raging civil war, known as "Bleeding Kansas". Abraham Lincoln targeted popular sovereignty in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, leaving Douglas in a position that alienated Southern pro-slavery Democrats who thought he was too weak in his support of slavery. The Southern Democrats broke off and ran their own candidate against Lincoln and Douglas in 1860.

Assassination threats against Barack Obama

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_threats_against_Barack_Obama 

 

Barack Obama, who was the 44th President of the United States, was the target of several assassination threats and alleged plots starting from when he became a presidential candidate in 2007. Secret Service protection for Obama began after he received a death threat in 2007, while serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois and running for president. This marked the earliest time a candidate received such protection before being nominated. Security was increased early for Obama due to fears of possible assassination attempts by white supremacist or other racist groups or individuals against the first African American major party presidential nominee.

Some of the threats were extended to members of Obama's family, including former First Lady Michelle Obama. Obama and his officials generally declined to discuss death threats against him during the presidential race. Some commentators suggested the unusually high number of death threats targeting Obama are at least partially tied to the use of racist imagery and words by some of Obama's critics to describe him. In 2009 journalist Ronald Kessler reported that Obama received 400 percent more death threats than his predecessor. However, later that year the Secret Service stated that the volume of threats against Obama was "comparable to that under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton."

2008

North Carolina Waffle House threats

Jerry Blanchard, an accountant from Charlotte, North Carolina, was indicted for threatening to kill Obama during a July 15, 2008, breakfast at a Charlotte Waffle House. Two customers said Blanchard told them, "Obama and his wife are never going to make it to the White House. He needs to be taken out and I can do it in a heartbeat." The customers contacted the Secret Service, who questioned Blanchard. He denied making the threats, but allegedly told the Secret Service agents he believed Obama was the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible. The Secret Service later got a second call from an employee of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Charlotte, where Blanchard was overheard in the lobby restroom saying into his cell phone, "I'll get a sniper rifle and take care of it myself. Somebody's got to do it ... We both know Obama is the anti-Christ." Blanchard had claimed he would buy a sniper rifle and pistol from the Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte. The gun shop owner said Blanchard has visited the store but did not buy any weapons. Blanchard was placed into custody on felony charges of making threats against a major candidate for president, and a psychiatric evaluation was ordered. It was questioned how much evidence existed that he planned to go through with an assassination attempt later, according to a federal affidavit, there was no proof of any furtherance of his crime. In June 2009, Blanchard was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for making the threats. He was also fined $3,000 and ordered to be under supervised release for three years following his prison term.

Miami bail-bondsman training threats

Raymond H. Geisel was charged with making threatening statements against Obama during a bail-bonds training class on July 31, 2008, in Miami, Florida. During the course, Geisel referred to Obama with a racial epithet and said, "If he gets elected, I'll assassinate him myself." Geisel also threatened to put a bullet in the head of then-President Bush, although Geisel later claimed he was joking. In his hotel room, authorities found ammunition, body armor, a combat-style hatchet, tear gas, a loaded 9 mm handgun and four loaded magazines. Geisel said he collected firearms, and was only using the gun for his bail-bonds course. Geisel remained in custody for a month. He pleaded "not guilty" on August 20, 2008. With trial date set for January 2009, in December 2008 there was discussion of a plea agreement for Geisel, who faced up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all four counts brought against him. In December 2009 Geisel was convicted on weapons charges and served three years' supervised probation stemming from that conviction. The threat charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement.

Assassination plot in Denver

Three men allegedly discussed shooting Barack Obama, then the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee, during his acceptance speech on the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. Cousins Tharin Gartrell and Shawn Adolf, and their friend Nathan Johnson, allegedly came to Denver specifically to kill Obama, and discussed in their hotel room how they could assassinate him. On August 24, 2008, Gartrell was arrested when police found his truck filled with weapons and narcotics. Johnson and Adolf were arrested shortly thereafter and, during a televised interview, Johnson later indicated Adolf was the one who planned the alleged threat. Authorities later downplayed the threats and indicated the trio had little chance of successfully killing Obama. The three men were charged with drug and weapons charges and sentenced, but did not face federal charges of threatening a presidential candidate.

Assassination plot in Tennessee

Wikinews has related news: Two men arrested in Tennessee for plot to kill Obama and school children

Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart, two men with strong white supremacist beliefs, allegedly planned a murder spree of 88 African-Americans (14 of whom they were planning to behead) in Tennessee, many of whom were to be young students at an unidentified, predominantly African-American school. They allegedly planned to end the spree by driving their vehicle toward Barack Obama as fast as they could and shooting at him from the windows. The two men were arrested on October 22, 2008, after they bragged to their friends about firing shots at a church in Brownsville, Tennessee. Schlesselman and Cowart were in possession of several guns during their arrest, and they allegedly told police they intended to rob a firearms dealer and other stores to secure more weapons for the attack. Both plotters pleaded guilty to various federal charges; Judge J. Daniel Breen of the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee sentenced Schlesselman to 10 years imprisonment on April 15, 2010, and Cowart to 14 years in prison on October 22, 2010.

Scranton "Kill him" threat

In October 2008 it was widely reported that someone yelled "Kill him!" at a Scranton, Pennsylvania, Sarah Palin rally when Obama's name was mentioned. The Secret Service denied this claim, but a Scranton Times-Tribune editor said, "We stand by the story. The facts reported are true and that’s really all there is." Also, MSNBC clips of McCain rallies, while unclear, appear to show two similar incidents.

Maine "dirty bomb" threat

On December 9, 2008, 29-year-old James G. Cummings, a wealthy white supremacist, was shot dead by his wife, 31-year-old Amber Cummings, in their Belfast, Maine, home. When police arrived at the scene they discovered components and instructions for making a dirty bomb and notified the FBI, who sealed off the scene. The FBI discovered four one-gallon containers of 35% hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon as well as literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. Child pornography was also found on his computer. Cummings had connections to various white-supremacist groups, including the US National Socialist Party. According to tradesmen who worked at the home, Cummings idolized Adolf Hitler and openly kept Nazi memorabilia, including flags, displayed around the home. According to his wife, James Cummings was not happy that Obama was elected president, and planned to set the bomb off at his inauguration. She also claimed that her husband was frequently physically, mentally and sexually abusive towards her and their daughter, citing this as her reason for the murder. Amber Cummings plead guilty to his murder but was given a suspended sentence by Justice Jeffrey Hjelm, who ruled she would not face prison time due to "extenuating circumstances".

2009

Kristy Lee Roshia, 35, called the Boston office of the Secret Service on November 10, 2009, and told them she planned to "blow away" First Lady Michelle Obama while the family visited Honolulu, Hawaii, for a Christmas vacation. She also indicated she planned to shoot members of the United States Marine Corps. Roshia told authorities she knew "the exact location" the Obama family would be staying. Information that Roshia provided to the Boston office was consistent with the itinerary of the Obama family at the Secret Service office in Hawaii, and authorities believe Roshia had observed Secret Service agents in the area of the Kailua Beach home where the Obamas had previously stayed.^[7] Roshia had a history of calling the Boston office and making threats, and told the agency in 2004 that she intended to assassinate then-President George W. Bush, although she contradictorily added that she had no desire to hurt him. Following her threatening call, Roshia was arrested two miles from the Honolulu house the Obama family had booked for their vacation. She allegedly struck an officer in the face and arms while he tried to detain her. Roshia was charged with threatening a family member of the president and assaulting a federal agent while being arrested. A federal judge ordered Roshia to undergo a mental competency examination. She was held in custody until a subsequent hearing in February 2010. Roshia was transported to a facility in Texas and her competency continued to be evaluated through April 2010. In January 2012, Roshia was sentenced for her crime.

2011

Khalid Kelly

In May 2011 Irish Islamist militant Khalid Kelly was arrested for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama. In an interview with the Sunday Mirror he said that al-Qaeda was likely to kill Obama on his upcoming trip to Ireland. He reportedly said he would like to do it himself, but was too well known. He stated, "Personally I would feel happy if Obama was killed. How could I not feel happy when a big enemy of Islam is gone?"

Shots fired at White House

On the night of November 11, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired a Romanian Cugir semiautomatic rifle from his car parked on Constitution Avenue. At least seven rounds struck the White House, though no one was injured. He was arrested five days later in a hotel in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Obama was not at the White House at the time of the shooting. Federal prosecutors launched an investigation to determine if Hernandez acted out of hatred for Obama. Writings by Hernandez and testimony from those who knew him showed that he believed President Obama was the Antichrist and the Devil. In September 2013, Hernandez pleaded guilty to one count of destruction of property and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, thereby avoiding the charge of attempting to assassinate the President. Originally scheduled to be sentenced in January 2014, Hernandez's lawyers objected to the "terrorism enhancement" as unconstitutional, though he accepted it as part of his guilty plea. On March 31, 2014, Hernandez was sentenced by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer to a term of 25 years of imprisonment.

2012

Plot by terrorist group within US Army

In 2012 a case was brought against four U.S. Army soldiers in the state of Georgia, claiming that they formed a paramilitary group called the FEAR militia within the U.S. military with plans to overthrow the U.S. government: Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, Pfc. Michael Burnett, Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon. The group purchased $87,000 worth of guns and bomb-making materials, conspired to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in Savannah and Washington state and assassinate the president. Burnett pleaded guilty to lesser manslaughter and gang charges in the December 2011 slayings of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend Tiffany York, who were killed because they knew of the group’s plans. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but in May 2014 Peden was given a life sentence that included the possibility of parole after serving at least 30 years. Aguigui and Salmon also struck plea deals to avoid a possible death sentence and both were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Threats made by Denver man

In October 2012 Mitchell Kusick was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service at his parents' suburban Denver home after his mental health therapist told police that Kusick wanted to kill the president and had been trying to keep track of his visits to the Denver area. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Hosley stated that the Secret Service arrested him because "they were concerned for the community's safety". "It's clear to the court that the defendant has a severe mental illness," U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Kristin Mix said in denying a request from Kusick's attorney to allow him to be released on bond. Kusick had been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and Judge Mix said he posed a "risk to the community." In August 2013 Kusick pleaded guilty and was sentenced for the threats. After nine months in federal prison he was released, his release agreement including three years of supervision and comprehensive mental health treatment. He must also live with his parents, both of whom are psychotherapists.

2013

Death ray plot

In 2013 two men from upstate New York were arrested after building a "death ray" x-ray device and plotting to use it against Muslims and other perceived enemies of the US and Israel, including Obama. The men, Glenn Scott Crawford and Eric J. Feight, were arrested by the FBI after a 15-month operation involving FBI agents posing as co-conspirators. A court affidavit described the device as "a mobile, remotely operated, radiation-emitting device capable of killing human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation."

Crawford, affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, had allegedly contacted an Albany synagogue and a Jewish organization and asked for their assistance with technology that could be used against Israel's enemies. Crawford also plotted to kill President Obama with the device. The undercover agents rendered the weapon inoperable to eliminate potential danger to the public. Crawford and Feight were charged with "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists". In 2015 Crawford was convicted and on December 19, 2016 he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

Ricin plots

One attempt was made in April 2013 when a letter laced with ricin, a deadly poison, was sent to President Obama along with other government officials. Another attempt was made in June 2013, when another ricin-laced letter was sent to President Obama by actress Shannon Richardson. The letter contained a threat to kill anyone attempting to take away the sender's guns or impair their "constitutional God given" right to bear arms. It was later revealed the letter's message was fake as the sender's sole intent was to incriminate her estranged husband. In November 2013, Richardson reached a plea agreement and faced up to five years' imprisonment on each of three counts. The following month she pleaded guilty. In July 2014, she was sentenced to eighteen years in prison.

2014

Omar J. Gonzalez

The 2014 White House intrusion occurred on September 19, 2014, when Omar J. Gonzalez, an Iraq War veteran, jumped over the White House's fence and entered the building's front door before being stopped by security officers. He was then arrested and taken to George Washington University Hospital after complaining of chest pains.

Later that month, Gonzalez was indicted for entering a restricted building while armed with a knife. He was also charged with two violations of local laws: carrying a weapon outside a home or business, and ammunition possession.

2015

Plot by three New York City men

In February 2015, three men from New York City were arrested and charged in a terrorist plot that included joining ISIL, killing President Obama, hijacking an airplane, and bombing Coney Island. One of the three men, Abdulrasul Hasanovich Juraboev, an Uzbekistan native, posted a comment on August 8, 2014 on the ISIL-related website Hilofatnews.com saying that he wanted to pledge allegiance to ISIL and become a martyr by killing the president. During an August 18 interview with law enforcement agents, Juraboev also allegedly said he would plant a bomb on Coney Island if he were so ordered by the ISIL. He had bought a plane ticket to Turkey for March 29. He was arrested at his home in Brooklyn.

Another accused, Kazakh national Akhror Saidakhmetov, plotted to travel to Turkey with an informant and proposed finding an excuse to gain access to the pilot’s cabin and diverting the plane to the Islamic State, so that the Islamic State would gain a plane. During a secretly recorded conversation on November 14, Saidakhmetov allegedly told Juraboev that he wanted to enlist so he could serve as an ISIL spy and when Juraboev expressed skepticism, Saidakhmetov responded that he could always open fire on American soldiers and kill as many of them as possible. On January 11, 2015, Saidakhmetov allegedly told the informant that if he could not get travel documents to go to Syria, then he would buy a gun and use it to kill police officers and FBI agents. He was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport while attempting to board a 12:30 a.m. flight to Ukraine en route to Turkey, where he allegedly planned to sneak across the border into Syria and join ISIL.

The third man, Arbor Habibov, an illegal immigrant from Uzbekistan, was arrested in Florida, one of several states where he ran shopping-mall kiosks that sold kitchenware and repaired cell phones.

Plot by a South Korean man

On November 11, 2016, a Korean man, surnamed Lee, was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for attempted intimidation, after he posted two letters on the White House website in July 2015, in which he threatened to kill the US ambassador to South Korea and rape the second daughter of President Obama; however, Prosecutor Chung Woo-jun appealed, asking for a four-and-a-half year sentence, the highest sentence in court, for derogating national prestige in the U.S.–ROK 'blood alliance.' In his letters, titled "Declaration Terror to Mr. President Obama" and "Dear Mr. President Obama and Mrs. First lady Michelle", Lee threatened to assassinate Mark Lippert, who had been injured in a stabbing earlier that year. Lee also threatened to rape Sasha Obama, President Obama's second daughter, in another letter. On July 15, 2015, Natasha M. Poeschl, U.S. Embassy Seoul (Embassy of the United States of America) Security Attaché, found those threat messages and first reported to Mr. KIM, Seong Geun, Director General of KNPA (Korean National Police Agency) Foreign Affairs Bureau. 

Following a request from the US Embassy, the South Korean authorities arrested Lee on July 16, 2015. On July 14, 2016, approximately a year later, Poeschl presented evidence of the IP addresses of the threat messages provided by the United States Secret Service to Judge PARK, Sarang (박사랑 판사님), Seoul Central District Court (서울중앙지방법원, 형사 17 단독).

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  Threat Message: Dear Mr. President Obama and Mrs. First lady Michelle.
  
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  Threat Message: Declaration Terror to Mr. President Obama.
  
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  July 15, 2015, From: Natasha M. Poeschl, U.S. Embassy Seoul (Embassy of the United States of America) Security Attaché To: Mr. KIM, Seong Geun, Director General of KNPA Foreign Affairs Bureau
  
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  July 14, 2016, From: Natasha Poeschl, Special Agent, U.S. Embassy Seoul, ARSO-I Office To: Judge PARK, Sarang (박사랑 판사님), Seoul Central District Court (서울중앙지방법원, 형사 17 단독)
  

On March 12, 2020, Supreme Court of South Korea overturned the previous ruling and acquitted Mr. Lee of insufficient evidence. In an e-mail to foreign journalists, Mr. Lee raised the conspiracy theory that "the Assassination threats against Barack Obama is a Park Geun-hye and Obama administration's Undercover operation of North Korean Cyberwarfare" and claimed that revealing the facts would affect Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign in the 2020 United States presidential election. In fact, Mr. Lee worked part-time at the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) (Korean: 한국방송공사; Hanja: 韓國放送公社; RR: Han-guk Bangsong Gongsa; MR: Han'guk Pangsong Kongsa) before the 2013 South Korea cyberattack on 20 March, 2013; moreover.

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  Confirmation of Work Experience on Mr. Lee's Receiving AP and Reaters Tape Part-time job (Published by Kim Myung-sub, head of the international team at the Korean Broadcasting System)
  

2018

Mail bombing attempt

In late October 2018, officials intercepted a series of pipe bombs that had been mailed to multiple Democratic Party leaders, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, and several other high-profile individuals, such as Robert De Niro. No one was injured, and the FBI launched an investigation. A single individual, Cesar Sayoc, was subsequently charged with several felony charges related to the incident.

2019

On April 20, 2019, the FBI arrested Larry Mitchell Hopkins. According to the FBI, Hopkins stated that he and his militia band, the United Constitutional Patriots, were training to assassinate Obama.

Threatening the President of the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_President_of_the_United_States 

 

Threatening the president of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. It consists of knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States". This also includes presidential candidates and former presidents. The United States Secret Service investigates suspected violations of this law and monitors those who have a history of threatening the president. Threatening the president is considered a political offense. Immigrants who commit this crime can be deported.

Because the offense consists of pure speech, the courts have issued rulings attempting to balance the government's interest in protecting the president with free speech rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. According to the book Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures, "Hundreds of celebrity howlers threaten the president of the United States every year, sometimes because they disagree with his policies, but more often just because he is the president."

The prototype for Section 871 was the English Treason Act 1351, which made it a crime to "compass or imagine" the death of the King. Convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 871 have been sustained for declaring that "President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself"; and for declaring that "Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there." In a later era, a conviction was sustained for displaying posters urging passersby to "hang [President] Roosevelt".

There has been some controversy among the federal appellate courts as to how the term "willfully" should be interpreted. Traditional legal interpretations of the term are reflected by Black's Law Dictionary's definition, which includes descriptions such as "malicious, done with evil intent, or with a bad motive or purpose," but most courts have adopted a more easily proven standard. For instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a threat was knowingly made if the maker comprehended the meaning of the words uttered by him. It was willingly made, if in addition to comprehending the meaning of his words, the maker voluntarily and intentionally uttered them as a declaration of apparent determination to carry them into execution. According to the U.S. Attorney's Manual, "Of the individuals who come to the Secret Service's attention as creating a possible danger to one of their protectees, approximately 75 percent are mentally ill."

Frequency

The first prosecutions under the statute, enacted in 1917, occurred during the highly charged, hyperpatriotic years of World War I, and the decisions handed down by the courts in these early cases reflected intolerance for any words demonstrating even a vague spirit of disloyalty. There was a relative moratorium on prosecutions under this statute until the World War II era. The number increased during the turbulent Vietnam War era. They have tended to fall when the country has not been directly embroiled in a national crisis situation.

The number of reported threats rose from 2,400 in 1965 to 12,800 in 1969. According to Ronald Kessler, President George W. Bush received about 3,000 threats a year, while his successor Barack Obama received about four times that amount. This figure has been disputed by Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, who says that Obama received about as many threats as the previous two presidents.

According to the U.S. Attorneys' Manual, "Media attention given to certain kinds of criminal activity seems to generate further criminal activity; this is especially true concerning presidential threats which is well documented by data previously supplied by the United States Secret Service. For example, in the six-month period following the March 30, 1981, attempt on the life of President Reagan, the average number of threats against protectees of the Secret Service increased by over 150 percent from a similar period during the prior year." For this reason, the agency recommends considering the use of sealed affidavits to keep news of threats from leaking to the press.

Incidents

Convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 871 have been sustained for declaring that "President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself."; and for declaring that "Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there." In a later era, a conviction was sustained for displaying posters urging passersby to "hang [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt".

In a 1971 interview, comedian Groucho Marx told Flash magazine, "I think the only hope this country has is Nixon’s assassination." U.S. Attorney James L. Browning, Jr. opined, "It is one thing to say that 'I (or we) will kill Richard Nixon' when you are the leader of an organization which advocates killing people and overthrowing the Government; it is quite another to utter the words which are attributed to Mr. Marx, an alleged comedian."

This cartoon by Michael Ramirez led to his questioning by the Secret Service.

In July 2003, the Los Angeles Times published a Sunday editorial cartoon by conservative Michael Ramirez that depicted a man pointing a gun at President Bush’s head; it was a takeoff on the 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Eddie Adams that showed South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner (Capt. Nguyễn Văn Lém) at point-blank range. The cartoon prompted a visit from the Secret Service, but no charges were filed.

In 2005, a teacher instructed her senior civics and economics class to take photographs to illustrate the rights contained in the United States Bill of Rights. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the president's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster." A Wal-Mart photo department employee reported it to police, and the Secret Service investigated. No charges were filed.

In 2007, Purdue University teaching assistant Vikram Buddhi was convicted of posting messages to Yahoo Finance criticizing the Iraq War and stating, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush" and "Rape and Kill Laura Bush." The defense had argued that the defendant never explicitly threatened anyone.

In September 2009 the Secret Service investigated Facebook polls that asked whether President Barack Obama should be assassinated. Some question has arisen as to how to handle Facebook groups such as "LETS KILL BUSH WITH SHOES" (a reference to the 2008 Muntadhar al-Zaidi shoe incident) which had 484 members as of September 2009; similar issues have arisen on MySpace. Tweets have come under Secret Service investigation, including ones that said "ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations and Lincoln & Kennedy. We'll surely get over a bullet to Barrack [sic] Obama's head," and "The next American with a Clear Shot should drop Obama like a bad habit. 4get Blacks or his claims to b[e] Black. Turn on Barack Obama."

In 2010, Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. was sentenced in Louisville, Kentucky, to 33 months in prison for posting a poem entitled "The Sniper" about the president's assassination on a white supremacist website. He apologized in court, saying that he was, as WHAS news put it, "upset about his mother's death and had fallen in with a white supremacist group that had helped him kick a drug habit."

In 2010, Brian Dean Miller was sentenced in Texas to 27 months in prison for posting to Craigslist: "People, the time has come for revolution. It is time for Obama to die. I am dedicating my life to the death of Obama and every employee of the federal government. As I promised in a previous post, if the health care reform bill passed I would become a terrorist. Today I become a terrorist."

 

Later in 2010, a 77-year-old white man named Michael Stephen Bowden, who said that President Obama was not doing enough to help African Americans, was arrested after making murder-suicide threats against Obama.

On July 19, 2011, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Walter Bagdasarian for making online threats against Obama. The court found that his speech urging Obama's assassination ("Re: Obama fk the niggar [sic], he will have a 50 cal in the head soon" and "shoot the nig country fkd for another 4 years+, what nig has done ANYTHING right???? long term???? never in history, except sambos") was protected by the First Amendment.

History

The prototype for Section 871 was the British Treason Act 1351, which made it a crime to "compass or imagine" the death of the King. The statute prohibiting threats against the president was enacted by Congress in 1917. The maximum fine it allowed was $1,000. The law was amended in 1994 to increase the maximum fine to $250,000.

Among the justifications that have been given for the statute include arguments that threats against the president have a tendency to stimulate opposition to national policies, however wise, even in the most critical times; to incite the hostile and evil-minded to take the president's life; to add to the expense of the president's safeguarding; to be an affront to all loyal and right-thinking persons; to inflame their minds; to provoke resentment, disorder, and violence; and to disrupt presidential activity and movement. It has also been argued that such threats are akin to treason and can be rightly denounced as a crime against the people as the sovereign power. Congressman Edwin Y. Webb noted, "That is one reason why we want this statute – in order to decrease the possibility of actual assault by punishing threats to commit an assault ... A bad man can make a public threat, and put somebody else up to committing a crime against the Chief Executive, and that is where the harm comes. The man who makes the threat is not himself very dangerous, but he is liable to put devilment in the mind of some poor fellow who does try to harm him."

Prisoners are sometimes charged for threatening the president though they lack the ability to personally carry out such a threat. The courts have upheld such convictions, reasoning that actual ability to carry out the threat is not an element of the offense; prisoners are able to make true threats as they could carry out the threat by directing people on the outside to harm the president. Sometimes prisoners make such threats to manipulate the system; e.g., a case arose in which an inmate claiming to be "institutionalized" threatened the president in order to stay in prison; there was a case in which a state prisoner threatened the president because he wanted to go to a federal institution.

Penalties

Threatening the president of the United States is a felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. The offense is punishable by up to 5 years in prison, a $250,000 maximum fine, a $100 special assessment, and 3 years of supervised release. Internet restrictions such as a prohibition on access to email have been imposed on offenders who made their threats by computer. The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines set a base offense level of 12 for sending threatening communication, but when a threat to the president is involved, a 6-level "official victim" enhancement applies. Moreover, "an upward departure may be warranted due to the potential disruption of the governmental function." Further enhancements can apply if the offender evidenced an intent to carry out the threat (6-level enhancement); made more than two threats (2-level enhancement); caused substantial disruption of public, governmental, or business functions or services (4-level enhancement); or created a substantial risk of inciting others to harm federal officials (2-level enhancement). Since each 6-level increase approximately doubles the Guidelines sentencing range, it is not particularly rare for an offender who threatens the president to receive a sentence at or near the maximum, especially if he/she has a criminal history and/or does not qualify for a reduction for acceptance of responsibility. There is a 4-level decrease available for a threat involving a "single instance evidencing little or no deliberation", which would usually apply to spur-of-the-moment verbal threats. The maximum penalty for threatening a United States judge or a Federal law enforcement officer is 10 years imprisonment — double the maximum penalty for threatening the president.

Interpretation

There has been some controversy among the federal appellate courts as to how the term "willfully" should be interpreted. Traditional legal interpretations of the term are reflected by Black's Law Dictionary's definition, which includes descriptions such as "malicious, done with evil intent, or with a bad motive or purpose." In U.S. v. Patillo, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a threat to the president could lead to a verdict of guilty "only if made with the present intention to do injury to the president". Specifically, the court opined that "The word [willfully] often denotes an act which is intentional, or knowing, or voluntary, as distinguished from accidental. But when used in a criminal statute it generally means an act done with a bad purpose...We believe that a 'bad purpose' assumes even more than its usual importance in a criminal prosecution based upon the bare utterance of words."

Most of the other circuits have held that it is not necessary that the threat be intended to be communicated to the president or that it have tendency to influence his action. The legislative history, which contains debate over a rejected amendment that would have eliminated the words "knowingly and willfully" from the statute, reflects that the word "willfully" was included in order to avoid criminalizing behavior carried out with innocent intent (e.g. mailing to a friend, for informational purposes, a newspaper article containing a threat to the president). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a threat was knowingly made if the maker comprehended the meaning of the words uttered by him. It was willingly made, if in addition to comprehending the meaning of his words, the maker voluntarily and intentionally uttered them as a declaration of apparent determination to carry them into execution.

Watts v. United States

In the case of Watts v. United States 394 U.S. 705 (1969), the United States Supreme Court ruled that mere political hyperbole must be distinguished from true threats. At a DuBois Club public rally on the Washington Monument grounds, a member of the assembled group suggested that the young people present should get more education before expressing their views. The defendant, an 18-year-old, replied:

They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.

According to court testimony, the defendant in speaking made a gesture of sighting down the barrel of a rifle. The audience responded with laughter and applause, which the Court of Appeals would later view as potentially ominous:

[I]t has not been unknown for laughter and applause to have sinister implications for the safety of others. History records that applause and laughter frequently greeted Hitler's predictions of the future of the German Jews. Even earlier, the Roman holidays celebrated in the Colosseum often were punctuated by cheers and laughter when the Emperor gestured thumbs down on a fallen gladiator.

The boy was arrested and found to be in possession of cannabis, but a Court of General Sessions Judge suppressed the cannabis because he found that there had been no probable cause for the Secret Service agents to believe the defendant's words constituted a threat to the president. This did not prevent a federal court from convicting him for threatening the president. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed his conviction, but the Supreme Court reversed, stating, "We agree with petitioner that his only offense here was 'a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the president.' Taken in context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners, we do not see how it could be interpreted otherwise." In a concurring opinion, William O. Douglas noted, "The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters; and I had thought we had done with them forever ... Suppression of speech as an effective police measure is an old, old device, outlawed by our Constitution."

Other cases

Courts have held that a person is guilty of the offense if certain criteria are met. Specifically, the person must intentionally make a threat in a context, and under such circumstances, that a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by persons hearing or reading it as a serious expression of an intention to harm the president. The statement must also not be the result of mistake, duress or coercion. A true threat is a serious threat and not words uttered as a mere political argument, idle talk, or jest. The standard definition of a true threat does not require actual subjective intent to carry out the threat.

A defendant's statement that if they got the chance they would harm the president is a threat; merely because a threat has been conditional upon the ability of the defendant to carry it out does not render it any less of a threat. It has been ruled that taken together, envelopes containing ambiguous messages, white powder, and cigarette butts that were mailed to the president after the 9/11 anthrax outbreaks conveyed a threatening message. The sending of non-toxic white powder alone to the president has been deemed to be a threat. A broad statement that the president must "see truth" and "uphold Constitution" or else the letter writer will put a bullet in his head count as not expressly conditional as it does not indicate what events or circumstances will prevent the threat from being carried out. However, the statement "if I got hold of President Wilson, I would shoot him" was not an indictable offense because the conditional threat was ambiguous as to whether it was an expression of present or past intent.

The posting of a paper in a public place with a statement that it would be an acceptable sacrifice to God to kill an unjust president was ruled not to be in violation of the statute. The statute does not penalize imagining, wishing, or hoping that the act of killing the president will be committed by someone else. Conversely, the mailing of letters containing the words "kill Reagan" and depicting the president's bleeding head impaled on a stake was considered a serious threat. An oral threat against the president unheard by anyone does not constitute a threat denounced by statute.

Since other statutes make it a crime to assault or to attempt to kill the president, some question has arisen as to whether it is necessary to have a statute banning threats. As the Georgetown Law Journal notes, "It can be argued that the punishment of an attempt against the life of the president is not sufficient; by the time all the elements of an attempt have come into existence the risk to the president becomes too great. On the other hand, the punishment of conduct short of an attempt runs the risk of violating the established principle that intent alone is not punishable ... While ordinarily mere preparation to commit an offense is not punishable, an exception may perhaps be justified by the seriousness of the consequences of an executed threat on the president's life."

Psychiatric matters

According to the U.S. Attorney's Manual, "Of the individuals who come to the Secret Service's attention as creating a possible danger to one of their protectees, approximately 75 percent are mentally ill." The Secret Service notes, "These are probably Secret Service's most serious cases because it must be determined whether the person making the threat really wants to hurt [Secret Service protectees] or whether they may have some medical problems of their own, for which they need help." It is not uncommon for judges to order psychological evaluations of defendants charged under this statute in accordance with United States federal laws governing offenders with mental diseases or defects. Psychiatrists divide people who threaten the president into three classes: Class 1 includes persons who have expressed overt threatening statements but have made no overt action, Class 2 comprises individuals who have a history of assaultive behaviors toward authority figures, and Class 3 includes person who are considered dangerous and typically have been prosecuted under Section 871.

Dilemmas related to patient confidentiality sometimes arise when a mentally ill subject makes a threat against the president. The termination of nurse Linda Portnoy was upheld after she reported such a statement to the Secret Service. The court noted that the patient was restrained and unable to act on his threats, so he wasn't an immediate safety risk. It also considered the patient's psychiatrist, not Portnoy, the appropriate person to assess the gravity of his threats. In a study found that in those who threaten the president, the primary differentiating variable related to lethality was "opportunity and happenstance". Conversely, a defendant's writings in his anger management workbook threatening to kill the president upon the defendant's release from the penitentiary were ruled to have fallen within the dangerous patient exception to psychotherapist-patient privilege.

Federal law provides that the director of the facility in which a person is hospitalized due to being found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty only by reason of insanity of a Section 871 violation shall prepare annual or semiannual reports concerning the mental condition of the person and containing recommendations about the need for his continued hospitalization; a copy of the reports shall be submitted to the Director of the United States Secret Service to assist it in carrying out its protective duties. The Ninth Circuit ruled that it is constitutional to hold a presidential threatener beyond Section 871's prescribed five-year statutory maximum if he is found to be dangerous and mentally ill. It is possible under federal law to hold some presidential threateners indefinitely.