“What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours…” — Dinah Washington
You’ve heard the expression, “lies grow wings before the truth has put its boots on.” Maybe we should change that to “crazy ideas grow wings before sanity has put its boots on.” This is a case of going from the first page of a script to the sequel, without having read the thing first. The appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s possession of documents at Mar-a-Lago and involvement in January 6 is quite the lightning rod.
As you saw yesterday, even Bill Barr came out to publicly announce that he believed a Trump indictment is imminent. And now we’re wayyyyy beyond indictment. No, Sir, we passed indictment, we passed going to jail, collecting $200, and now we’re at presidential pardon time. And you’re going to love who the architect of this scheme was, too. Mr. Al Capone’s vault himself.
Geraldo thinks Biden should pardon Trump. So he’s admitting there was a crime? pic.twitter.com/Yeb41Zf4Dz
— Jerry James Stone (@jerryjamesstone) November 19, 2022
Completely ridiculous. First of all, yes, it is interesting how suddenly the dialogue has jumped from innocence to pardon. That’s intriguing. But it’s a terrible idea.
Arguably, Gerald Ford should never have pardoned Nixon. It set a bad precedent, that of presidential crimes automatically getting swept under the rug. Nothing came of Iran-Contra and that was horrific presidential malfeasance. Nothing came of the invasion of Iraq, same thing. And in so many ways, Trump’s situation is so much worse. He’s not just involved in one mind boggling scandal, he’s got a portfolio of them.
Plus, parse through this: 1) Trump tried to overthrow the government; 2) He’s forgotten all about that and now is running for president again; 3) So Joe Biden is supposed to encourage this kind of behavior by pardoning Trump? This is way too nutty.
It is interesting that this has even entered the national conversation, however. This tag of #PardonTrump is trending on Twitter right now and so that indicates that it’s hitting a nerve. The nerve it has hit, is that people know that Trump is guilty as hell for a great many things, but they always assumed he would just get away with it.
Now, the worm has turned. His announcement to run for president was poorly timed, and it was a disaster, to use one of his favorite words. It was boring. Even his new applause line about trying and executing drug dealers the same day didn’t get the same kind of heat that his crazy comments used to.
The announcement of the Special Counsel was made, as Merrick Garland pointed out, because the facts at hand warrant the appointment. These are the kinds of facts for which the mechanism of Special Counsel was designed.
But #PardonTrump has leapfrogged beyond all that. Want to know why? Because everybody is sick of Trump and they just want to cut to the chase and get this movie over. The Republicans are sick of him. There aren’t enough MAGAs to sustain any kind of a viable campaign. GOP megadonors are sick of him. Three of them dropped him just this past week, Ken Griffin, Steven Schwarzman and Ronald Lauder — and Lauder is an old buddy of Trump’s from school, but he dumped him nonetheless.
He’s got no funding, he’s got a shrunken base, he’s got no support from other GOPers except hard core crazies, he’s got nothing. And the only one who doesn’t see this is him. Incredible, but true.
Well, it means he’ll have to admit guilt, but no, you’re right. Accountability and punishment for crimes committed is essential, as the Rs keep telling us, we must crack down on crime.
Traitor Tot has to admit to committing a crime to be pardoned…not gonna happen. Traitor Tot can only be pardoned for federal crimes by Biden. Can someone be pardoned for TREASON!?
When I was Googling the subject, there was a mention that the Constitution prohibits it BUT when I actually checked the Constitution’s text, it’s a bit vague on the subject.
Article II, Section 2 states “[the President] shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The problem there is that it’s not really clear if that means being impeached (via the House) AND convicted (via the Senate) or impeached (via the House) and acquitted (via the Senate). But, “impeachment” is not “treason.”
Section 4 discusses a President’s removal from office because of “Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” So, impeachment that results from a conviction based on treason would obviously be an unpardonable situation. But since Trump wasn’t convicted in either impeachment proceeding, this doesn’t seem like it would apply.
Article III, Section 3 deals exclusively with the issue of treason, defining it and how conviction is determined. It also states that only Congress can determine the actual punishment for treason.
The only other mentions of treason are in Article I, Section 6 (providing members of Congress are exempt from being arrested EXCEPT on a charge on treason) and Article IV, Section 2 which provides that someone charged with treason (“in any state”–presumably, this is a holdover from the idea that each state enjoys a certain amount of sovereignty) must be returned if they fled that state (basically, this holds that treason is considered on par with other crimes as treason is listed along with “Felony or other Crime”). But that’s it.
Ya’ll know Geraldo’s had one too many hits in the head…..it’s all those hits talking.
I was lost when I saw…” Geraldo thinks”. Oh yeah. No worries.
Did any of Trump’s pardonees admit to crimes? I think not. That’s old school thinking.
It doesn’t matter whether they admit to the crimes for which they were pardoned. LEGALLY they have, by accepting the pardon admitted to guilt and that admission of guilt can be used against them in future court proceedings, including in such things as establishing a pattern of behavior of certain criminal actions AND also taken into account during sentencing. For example. Steve Bannon has accepted a pardon and will eventually be sentenced for contempt of Congress. When the time comes he/his lawyers can’t claim he’s a first time offender as LEGALLY he has a federal conviction on his record! There are two SCOTUS precedents on this subject. They’ve been on the books since back in the 1800s and while not widely known (yet) it’s a fact of law any decent lawyer knows. I might add that one of those precedent setting cases involved a guy who refused his pardon in a fit of I guess not wanting to admit to anything – and I won’t bore you with the details but that refusal wound up when his case was said and done ending in his execution! But the bottom line is that unless/until SCOTUS overrules precedent on this it doesn’t fucking matter if some Trump asshat admits to their crime(s). If they accepted the pardon they are guilty legally and it CAN be used against them later.
Geraldo’s mustache must have creeped up his nose and taken root in his brain because that’s the only way he could have come up with a harebrained idea like that!