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Maybe it's time to float rewriting the pardon powers so there's checks and balances that can't be abused, because you know if one did it more will do the same otherwise. Invalidate his pardon power, invalidate his pardons, crimes committed by those in office should not be pardonable, etc.
We need to make it so that the president can only pardon people who they don't personally know, and who didn't commit crimes that directly benefit them.
The J6ers shouldn't have been pardonable, members of his administration should not be pardonable. Only private citizens whose crimes had no benefit to the president.
And there should be a limit to how many they get. Like 36 a year or something. Thats 3 per month; more than enough!
It's never that simple. Even the limit is a good idea on paper, but pardons also apply to people who have been convicted of "offenses" that should never have been offenses to begin with (IMO marijuana possession is a huge one.) If the prez happens to have heard or met any of them personally, they wouldn't be eligible? Hardly seems fair. And yet, someone out there would argue this, you just know it.
can only pardon people who they don’t personally know, and who didn’t commit crimes that directly benefit them
Easy to abuse the other way too. Just have a group lobby to pardon someone so there's no direct relationship between pardoner and pardonee. Would probably meet "legal criteria", or there'll be a subtler move that does meet legal criteria, because legal criteria change.
Unless there is a mechanism to PREVENT pardons from being issued without prior review, but even then: the review process can be abused (see: Supreme Court full of bought judges).
I also don't understand why anyone can uphold the logic of "guilty, but there won't be punishment". Any system that's based on that kind of logic needs to be abolished. If there's a confirmed offense, there need to be consequences, period. If the offense shouldn't have been an offense in the first place, there needs to be actual restitution made and some other mechanism than just saying "sorry, my bad"--it shouldn't have more weight when it comes from the president, come on. Presidents are just people, human beings holding an office. (The fact that they're venerated in some places is a fucking problem, not a feature.)
In some cases there can't be restitution without causing damage to innocents; "heads need to roll" when that happens (there should be damage to those who continued enabling whatever went wrong.) And so on, but all of those steps can be abused.
Yet we go the other way these days (oh, nobody's really "guilty" of anything) and it's no wonder the president can be a convicted felon. I'm fucking tired.
"Pre-emptive pardon" is just another way of saying you are giving someone an exemption from having to follow the law.
Tell me you're guilty as fuck without telling me you're guilty as fuck.
Everything out of that loser's mouth for the last decade has been screaming that he's guilty.
Preemptive pardon should not even be a thing.
And if it is, the executive should list explicitly what crimes, on what days, against which individuals, cannot be brought to trial.
This is the real crux of the issue. Blanket pardons shouldn’t be a thing. If you want to pardon someone, it should be specific. Which crimes? Where? When? Who was victimized? Who else was involved? What was the outcome of the crime?
The SCOTUS has already ruled in Burdick v. US that accepting a pardon requires admitting guilt of the crime you’re being pardoned of. The wording of the ruling was that a pardon carries “an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.” The SCOTUS has consistently held that a pardon does not overturn a guilty conviction. Instead, it removes the punishment for the crime. You’re still unequivocally guilty after a pardon.
It shouldn’t be some sort of “I pardon you for waves arms in air vaguely” power, because that turns the whole “needing to admit guilt” part into a sly wink wink elbow nudge situation. It puts the person’s crimes in a quantum Schrödinger state. The person accepting a vague pardon is inarguably guilty of something, because they admitted guilt when they accepted the pardon. But the court doesn’t know what they’ve admitted to until a prosecutor tries to indict them, and they go “oh no you can’t prosecute me, I was pardoned.”
It reminds me a little of popes selling indulgences. "Donate money and/or go on crusade, and I'll absolve you of any sins you've already commited or will commit in the future." That sort of thing eventually resulted in a rather significant schism.
Doesn't accepting a pardon, especially a blanket pardon, also mean that you lose your Fifth Amendment protection to not incriminate yourself? You can not be punished for what you did, that means you have nothing to fear and can be made to confess everything and incriminate accomplices. Wouldn't that be some way to have a go at Trump?
Effect of a Pardon
The Fifth Amendment privilege exists to protect the witness from providing self-incriminating testimony so long as, and only so long as, the danger of prosecution persists. As a result, according to at least one Supreme Court case, when a "witness has already received a pardon, he cannot longer set up his [Fifth Amendment] privilege, since he stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed."
congress.gov
They aren't a thing. You can only pardon a crime that's already been commited, not for future crimes.
Also Trump violated his oath of office within 72 hours of this term beginning, so technically none of his pardons mean anything from this term and can just be reversed.
He wasn't legitimately serving in capacity of the president since he abdicated his office by violating his oath.
Pardoned for what?
They haven’t been convicted of any crimes (yet)?
How is a pre-emptive pardon even a thing? The notion alone seems like a perversion of the original intent.
Unfortunately, there is precedent as Ford's pardon of Nixon included future crimes. It's fucking stupid.
You can't call it a "precedent" if it was not contested in a legal environment.
That said, the constitution allows too much bullshit. It needs to be culled.
Pardon for what? Election manipulation? Theft? Treason? Overstaying his education visa?
Yes
Let's just take all of his money instead.
he's used his money to commit crimes, he'll do it again. the fact he has so fucking much of it is too great a temptation.
civil forfeiture of all of it should definitely be on-the-table.
if a redneck sheriff can take a black guy's cash (it might have come from drugs) that he was takin' to pay ma's rent... muskrat's money.. hell, all those fukfaces' money.. should be fair game for the taking.
How fucked up of a country is it that, in America, if Hitler was around living in Texas and putting Jews in concentration camps and murdering them, the president could pardon him?
This isn't a left or right. Abolish pardons. No one should be above the law. Yes I understand shitty governments would weaponize this fast. I don't care.
Trump. Elon. The whole lot of them need to be on trial for policies that have murdered millions worldwide.
He's unwittingly telegraphing that they should only pursue state-level prosecutions while he's still in office. Not that they didn't know that already.
oh, I think that even if he premptively pardons the entire gang, Congress should investigate anyway. Just so that the record of what they did is made public and Trump doesn't get to revise the historical record.
Fuck all that, I'm sick of pageantry and fucking reports, these fuckers need to go to PRISON they've committed an insane number of crimes and there needed to be consequences!!!
Aren't pardons only for convictions. Have them plead and specify the deads so they have immunity
Then charge them elsewhere. Tax them. Civil suits.
I think we need an amendment to rescind the pardon. Reduce it to a stay of execution only. Why is it even a thing? Did they really think giving this power to a sitting president would ONLY be used to right injustices? It's a friggin unlimited commit crimes and get out of jail free card.
They were crying when Biden did it.
Look at that. The neo-Nazi scumbag is guilty before the prosecution opens a case.
"Trump floats" means nothing. Stop reporting on his idiocy as if it's news. It's been ten years of this doofus, and this is Lemmy, there's nobody here left to convince that he'll do anything but whatever he can, while his word means nothing.
Report on what he does, not what he says.
Let me know when he floats face down in the reflecting pool
Let me know when he floats face down in the reflecting pool
You’re gonna be really sad when you miss that headline…
In the near future American school children will respond to being told about Nixon with "wait, that's it?!"
Assuming they aren't too busy sheltering in place, of course.
Next president better reverse all these dollarstore pardons.
…for a price, I’m sure.
I feel like we’re getting dangerously close to the point where we start making our own justice
Democrats’ next move: round up the pardoned traitors and execute them. Then pardon the executioner. Problem solved?
They invented “Presidential immunity”. Time for Dems to invent “void corrupt pardons”. Found in the same section of the Constitution.
Elon needs to spend the rest of his pathetic loser life in prison
Only the guilty need pardons before the crimes are listed.
trump doesn't care about helping anyone but he loves being thanked. He's a pretty simple guy underneath all the simplicity.
Great. If pardoned, they can't take the Fifth for anything they were pardoned for, and they can be nailed for contempt if they don't testify or if they lie.
So he knows Elon and his staffers have committed crimes then. How is this legal??
Won’t stop the hangings after Nuremberg 2.0
Pardon away. It won't stop state charges.......
I'm at the point where fuck it... Play the game by their rules. Put them in prison even though they're pardoned. Oh it's illegal? You don't say...