I think you really do have to imagine those people. Because for bellicose nationalists committing war crimes is great as long as it’s your people. That’s a fairly consistent trait all around the world. It has a particularly virulent strain in the US where prosecuting war crimes has been made illegal and those investigating them treated like child traffickers.
Using pardons to reward the very worst people is such an evil corruption of the idea of mercy.
Makes better sense to have the handover of power within weeks rather than months. This whole lame duck thing is a nonsense.
I doubt it’d be legal, and have questions if this was morally wrong, as it may be more vengeful than judicial, but If an American war criminal was pardoned, I’d want him extradited to where the crime happened.
When trump refers to “Draining the Swamp”, he is referring to draining actual wetlands, and killing the endangered wildlife there-on so that he can build a golf course on it for his criminal friends to play on while they conspire against the American people and work out schemes on how to rob, steal, and grift.
Trump does not have the ability to understand abstract metaphors. Everything is literal to him.
Now a presidential pardon is a very broad thing. It absolves all federal crimes, past and future. Since it’s trump his pardonees are assholes. Are there crimes which are purely federal in nature? I.e. those that at least one component of which could not be tried by the states?
I’m sure that Trump, who considers literally every interaction and decision made by all people everywhere at all times as transactional, will not attempt to leverage a pardon of mercenaries and border guards to his benefit in his ongoing coup attempt.
It’s an Article II power, so it’s not going to go anywhere in the foreseeable future. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of good reasons for chief executives to have the power to grant merciful and just pardons, it’s just that Trump is showing how much of our system depends on checks and balances functioning, and how much it breaks down when Congress is complicit.
When Clinton pardoned Mark Rich it (rightfully) sparked outrage among both Republicans and Democrats, and led to a Congressional investigation. There was a cost to doing it. Now? it just gets added to the pile of a million things he’s broken.
That’s not correct. You can’t be pardoned for future acts. You can be pardoned for acts which have not yet been prosecuted, but not those which have not been committed.
How interesting that Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Rudy Giuliani aren’t on that list. If they get pardoned, they no longer have a fifth amendment right against self-incrimination and would have to truthfully testify about their crimes or risk prosecution/imprisonment for perjury and/or contempt of Congress. Trump sure wouldn’t like that, now would he?
I am aghast at the idea that pardons are being handed out as political favors, but at the same time I am pleased that he thinks it is a “good idea” to pardon his co-conspirators.
That means that the co-conspirators are not out of reach of the court system for testimony as to their participation in Trumps malfeasance, and cannot plead the 5th, as by virtue of their pardon there is no “incrimination” involved.
