How the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling opened the door for a shocking question: Can presidents kill their rivals?

Can a president order a rival’s assassination and get away with it?

It was an absurd hypothetical raised by an appeals court judgeto point out the literally unbelievable and dangerous consequences of the legal argument from Donald Trump’s attorneys.

But it landed as a shocking warning from a Supreme Court justice in an earthquaking decision this week that shields Trump from accountability for crimes committed in office.

There has never been any legal precedent that would give a president such authority. But according to legal scholars, attorneys and the Supreme Court’s liberal justices, the decision has seemingly opened the door to question whether the commander in chief can commit legal murder.

“The whole assassination thing sounds far-fetched if you don’t view that hypothetical in light of what we just went through on January 6,” according to Donald Sherman, executive vice president and chief counsel with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan nonprofit government watchdog group.

“This is not an academic exercise. This is no longer theoretical. This is no longer the providence of academics in ivory towers. We know what Trump has said. We know what this court has said. We know what Trump has done. We know that on January 6, Trump incited a mob to violently storm the Capitol, threatening the lives of members of Congress and the sitting vice president,” Sherman told The Independent.

“How much farther do you think we need to go to get to the scenario that the Supreme Court just said falls under this blanket immunity?”

The ruling from the court’s Republican-appointed majority grants the president absolute “immunity” from criminal prosecution for actions under their “official” duties. If a