A criminal President issuing blanket pardons for co-conspirators

[MindlessPieces]

I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

Trump promised mass pardons for his top aides before he leaves office: report

The White House has characterized his remarks as having been made in jest

www.independent.co.uk

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has repeatedly promised pardons to administration officials on multiple occasions, including during one recent meeting at which he reportedly said he’d “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval” before he leaves office in January 2029.

The Journal also reported that he’d had a separate conversation with aides in his private dining room during which he’d mused about holding a news conference to announce the mass pardons in the waning days of his administration.

So the Supreme Court has said the President is immune from the law for presidential duties.
They have explicity said that the president can command the armed forces to kill his political opponents.

Presidential pardons are a duty of the President, so it seems to me (not a legal scholar) that the president is free to take personal bribes/payment for pardons, he can also pardon people for committing crimes for himself. He has already done this with the pardoning of the Jan 6ers and of Michael Flynn, Robert Stone, Steve Bannon etc. He could hire a hitman to kill his wife and then he could pardon the hitman, as long as he was hiring the hitman as part of his presidential duties, (let's say he argued that his wife was distracting him from doing his presidential duties).

But now it seems Trump has declared to people under him that he WILL hand out pardons in his waning days of his presidency.

Why would he do this?
Is he worried that the Dems will fabricate some charges against his people, or his is he getting push back from people in his office when he is damanding they do illegal things?
Shouldn't this blanked pardon offer be enough to remove him from office (impeachment) if his intent is to get people to carry out high crimes and misdameanors on his behalf? Is he dong this now, before the mid terms because he wants his people to carry out illegal activity in order to keep control of the House and the Senate?


Now let's say Trump is a "good" and ethical guy, loves democracy and is straight and above board. So all this worry is for nothing.
Well, what if, in the future a crooked person is voted into office and gets his administration to do crimes to keep power and to corruptly use the office for personal enrichment. What legal or structural recourse does the USA experiment offer to stop a corrupt President, administration, party?

 

[Grinkle]

But now it seems Trump has declared to people under him that he WILL hand out pardons in his waning days of his presidency.

Absolutely he is going to do this.

Biden pardoned some folks pro-actively on his way out of office to protect them from politically motivated prosecution, Trump will do the same with expanded scope and also with having communicated his intent before the fact so that his team will have more confidence in carrying out his policies.

I am surprised, truly, that Trump hasn't issued pro-active day 1 pardons for his cabinet. Perhaps he doesn't want a pro-active pardon challenged and possibly over-turned by the SCOTUS - certainly a last-day pardon would do the job anyway.

Is he worried that the Dems will fabricate some charges against his people, or his is he getting push back from people in his office when he is damanding they do illegal things?

Both, I expect.

So all this worry is for nothing.

I don't know if worry is the right word - he is absolutely going to do this - 100%.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I think we expected this from the beginning. Hopefully there are some state crimes in there.

 

[MindlessPieces]

Biden pardoned some folks pro-actively on his way out of office to protect them from politically motivated prosecution, Trump will do the same with expanded scope and also with having communicated his intent before the fact so that his team will have more confidence in carrying out his policies.

It isn't good for society that Biden handed out blanket pardons as he left office. It was certainly corrupt that he pardoned his son for a crime that he clearly committed.

But the difference is that Biden didn't promise to pardon people. So he didn't give them the go ahead to commit crimes knowing they would subsequently be pardoned.

I understand why Biden pardoned Fauci, there were already partisan attacks on him, with many lies. Even if Fauci is innocent and even if their is no evidence against him, it is apparent that the Trump administration were going to make an example of him in order to score political points.

However, lets say later it was found that Fauci was guilty, that he had somehow significantly contributed to the development and release of SARS-CoV-2 and thus was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, but had this pardon say it's all ok, don't worry, I got your back. In that case Biden would have looked really bad. But it seems very unlikely that Fauci would have done such a thing.

So while I'm no fan of these blanket pardons, I do think Biden was forced into a situation that he needed to do them because Trump and his team are highly vindictive, and unethical and would gladly stuff people up in order to win political points.

Trump on the other hand has a track record of demanding people to do illegal and unethical things for him, he pardoned the Jan 6ers. he pardoned Banon from stealing from the Build a Wall fund. So while there is some superficial similarities to these pardons, the context and the causality and intent is very different.

I am surprised, truly, that Trump hasn't issued pro-active day 1 pardons for his cabinet. Perhaps he doesn't want a pro-active pardon challenged and possibly over-turned by the SCOTUS - certainly a last-day pardon would do the job anyway.

I suspect that Trump would like to offer pre-emptive blanket pardons, but that many in his party have pushed back as they don't want the party to seem like a criminal organisation. I suspect that if Trump had issued out these pardons, he would find many in his own party willing to impeach and remove him.

 

[Grinkle]

Shouldn't this blanked pardon offer be enough to remove him from office (impeachment) if his intent is to get people to carry out high crimes and misdameanors on his behalf?

In my opinion pre-committing pardons to entice subordinates to be unconcerned with legal consequences from their future actions is corrupt on its face and impeachable conduct.

The US Congress is a broken institution.