I think if the last four years have shown us anything, it’s that trying to predict what Trump will do is essentially impossible and that the constraints and political calculus to which previous Presidents have always voluntarily submitted simply do not apply to Trump.
That said, I lean toward him believing he can pardon himself, and giving the whole gang as broad a pardon as imaginable going out the door.
I expect the boxes of material would be on a truck from the SDNY to the NY AG’s office by the end of that business day.
Kinda sorta but that’s still a subject of debate among legal minds.
One legal consequence would be that he could no longer invoke the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed to testify about anything that happened under his administration, but it’s not like anyone is likely to throw him in jail if he refuses to anyway.
Here’s something no one is really talking about: If you take a pardon, you can no longer claim 5th amendment . So, although you might be pardoned for a crime, you are not excused from having to testify about it. Something Trump should consider.
I’d be extremely surprised if Biden hold anyone in this administration responsible for anything they’ve done. Obama & Biden had an opportunity (and responsibility, I’d argue) to hold the Bush administration responsible for lying us into the Iraq war and to hold the responsible parties to account for the financial crisis, and they deliberately chose NOT to do so, framing it as a virtue to not dwell in the past.
Everything I’ve seen from high-level veterans of the Obama administration the last four years is geared entirely toward justifying every decision they made and convincing history that they did everything they possibly could have done at every opportunity, so this would be a pretty big break from that in my opinion. And my opinion is worth about a nickel, so you know it’s good!
I really, really hope I’m wrong on this.
Given that he’s still be subject to state prosecution, it would be a difficult argument to make that he couldn’t still invoke the 5th for pre-Presidential actions. And he’d still have pretty broad executive privilege for anything over the last four years, and courts are loathe to intrude on that.
A Trump resignation/Pence pardoning would be a clever gambit. The big problems I see with this are:
Trump is not clever. Every clever thing coming out of the Trump White House has originated from someone on his team and probably had to be pushed through against his wishes.
Trump is little more than a raw, swollen Ego. He can’t tolerate the idea of anyone being in charge except for him, even for a few minutes. For the next four years he’s almost certainly going to spend his time screaming that he is the “real” president and try to undermine the Biden Administration at every turn. I suspect he’s decided that Pence is his inferior, and he would never allow an inferior to have the upper hand.
Even if Trump manages to pardon himself, and all his criminal spawn and boot-lickers, I hope it all gets investigated anyway, so that there is the possibility that when loopholes that trump took to evade the law and over-site (things like not letting his people testify to congress and not supplying records, and documents like the un-edited Mueller report) can be examined, and laws passed to prevent such things in the future. As well as all the “norms” which we were all so surprised to discover were either unofficial, or at the least, unenforceable, so that laws can be enacted to either make such bad behavior illegal (if it’s not already), or to enable actual reporting and enforcement mechanisms.
Not to mention things like conflict of interest laws, people who are clear security risks getting security clearances, giving family members government roles, self-dealing, etc. All of those things are in clear need of some serious legislation, or at the least, legislation to beef up actual enforcement of the existing laws.
I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing quite a bit more from the New York State Attorney General on T****'s crimes in the coming months. Hey, Al Capone can go down for tax fraud; there’s no shortage of NY state crimes that the orange asshole has committed.
I think Biden is trying to not participate in this circus as much as necessary, other than to let the DOJ do their work independent of Biden’s efforts beyond the regular funding.
This is so that Biden can avoid claims that it was political persecution.
Amen to that! If we have to settle for an establishment stooge instead of a progressive, he should at least do us plebes a favor and help Trump find his new suite in the penitentiary.
If this scenario transpires, then a court challenge is required, methinks. Either that, or Pence actually grows a pair and a backbone, extracts himself from Trump’s rear end and does what’s right - otherwise known as “the decent thing”.
Pence is not going to ‘grow a pair’. He is the one single person who could not be fired in the Trump Administration, and could have bolstered his 2024 chances by taking a stand on the election outcome. Doing that would have at least superficially taken back the party for the GOP to have a competitive 2024 race. Instead he and the other wannabees (Cruz, Rubio, etc.) have ensured that they will be left behind for Trump to run again, or Don Jr. to run in his place. Pence’s political career is essentially over now, whether he recognizes it or not.
That, and he has to get his Attorney General confirmed by the Senate regardless of the outcome of the Georgia race. Unless he nails down a blue Senate, it’s to Biden’s advantage to downplay prosecution of Trump.
