Can you impeach a former president? Can you retroactively impeach a president such that they would not have been president when they attempted to pardon themselves?
Or one or more of the hand picked Republican stoogies should die, unexpectedly from natural causes.
My pet theory is that Kavanaugh has CTE from his high school football days and it will force him to retire early.
The whole idea of laws is flawed. We would like them to be absolute and to apply equally to all. But they are written by people, and are flawed. The original concept of the Presidential Pardon was that there ought to be some safety valve whereby people could have superuser access to the law to write clear wrongs. This is not given to everyone, but to one person who in the day came under much scrutiny, so it should not be misused. It was also restricted to relaxing the law, so there was no Presidential Antipardon that meant someone the President didn’t like could be shot.
The sort of hi-jinks we are seeing now is evidence that the law cannot be allowed to run entirely without some sort of safety valve. There a need for a safety valve if people should game the laws that exist in ways that clearly violate their intent. The problem here is with the particular human trusted with the job.
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AFAICT, yes to his children and his allies, but no to himself.
This is the problem lately isn’t it… that we can’t get anything done because the Republicans have no agenda of their own other than dismantle as much government as possible and obstruct the party that actually wants to get something done (even if lots of their proposals are pretty tepid and centrist).
Meanwhile, real Americans are struggling, were struggling, even before this horrible year, to do the basics of sustaining their lives - pay their bills, put food on the table, educate their children, etc. People can’t thrive and improve the world around them if they can’t do the basics because they are constantly being undermined at every turn. Treading water isn’t living a life, it’s just keeping your head up.
Something has to give, things have to change, or they will be made to change, and then it’s anyone’s guess how that will turn out.
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Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Once you’re no longer in public office, you have to go through the courts.
I hope Biden appoints an AG with enough spine to take Trump to the cleaners for his many federal crimes he’s committed while in office. Trump may be able to pardon his family and friends, but if he can’t pardon himself then those people that he pardoned can be forced to testify against him in court. It’s one hell of a gamble.
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That doesn’t seem to me to preclude impeaching a former president. Obviously only a sitting president can be removed from office but I don’t see why that would prevent the house from voting on articles of impeachment for a former president.
It would accomplish nothing as Congress is not a judicial body. Impeachment is a step toward a trial in the Senate to decide removal from office. When the president becomes a private citizen, what’s the point of impeachment? It’s just a huge waste of Congressional time and taxpayer money.
Only the courts can do anything meaningful once Trump is out of office.
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It didn’t accomplish anything meaningful while he was in office either. It might make me feel better.
It’s 2020. That stuff is precious.
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While that ultimately true that it accomplished nothing in the way of holding Trump accountable for committing several crimes, it was the only path available since the DOJ refuses to indict a sitting president. I blame a corrupt Senate for their fealty to Trump over the “law and order” they claim to uphold. Trump will still forever be the first one term president to be impeached and lose the popular vote.
Once he’s gone, impeachment would truly accomplish nothing - in fact it would have negative value as it would prevent normal business from taking place in the House. Republicans would scream out about partisan fuckery, and in this case it would actually be defensible.
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You’ve convinced me. I really only brought it up as a theoretical question. The question of whether a president can pardon himself should also only be a theoretical question.
I hear that firing squads are making a come back.
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When Kurt Gödel went for his citizenship exam, he wanted to explain how to legally set up a dictatorship, through loopholes he had found in the Constitution. Luckily the examinor didn’t want to hear about it and Gödel passed.
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It’s difficult being a Trump-whisperer, however: A self-pardon is inevitable.
The only thing that would prevent it is himself, and he is a sociopath.
He doesn’t have to admit guilt per se. He will justify it by blathering that his enemies were so numerous and so thoroughly unfair, that he’s doing this to level the playing field.
There is something sublime about how terribly he is abusing his office. Can there possibly ever be a worst president? (I’m surprised he hasn’t started a war or found an excuse to use nuclear weapons; but he probably reasons that that would be bad for his brand and/or future commercial endeavors.)
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Imagine if Cheney had been his veep.
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They’re not political prosecutions, they’re for breaking federal law. There’s a difference.
Don’t like an executive order that changed policy, too bad. Assuming it didn’t break any laws, it’s not something can be prosecuted. Disagreeing with a policy doesn’t make something illegal.
Took an action that violated a federal law meant to constrain the actions of the president or executive branch, prosecute away.
Otherwise, those laws that constrain the president are useless. What’s the point of even having them if they mean nothing? At that point we’re just arguing about price. What makes the transition of power and end of term any more important than the other laws that constrain the president?
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Let’s see if I grok this.
Donny Boy can pardon anybody, maybe even himself, for any federal crimes they may have committed in the past, but he can’t proactively pardon crimes that may be committed in the future, right? Unless a stacked SCOTUS says so.
Federal pardons don’t cover state or local crimes so those prosecutors can proceed apace.
Accepting a pardon, even a self-pardon, removes one’s 5th amendment no-self-incrimination protection, so any who accept pardons can be compelled to testify about crimes they and/or their associates and families have committed before or after their pardons.
Thus, pardons aren’t much to brag about. Have I got this about right?
