Thinking more on the pardon's talk floating around (the Covid news is something I can't take just now) and the idiotic permission by the Court of blanket pardons, even for crimes uncharged and of yet unknown, why wouldn't that keep President Biden from issuing such preemptive pardons to every member of his family, himself, every member of his administration in carrying out his policies? If you can issue pardons for crimes undiscovered, why not for those uncommitted? It makes about as much sense.
A pardon is an exemption from the legal system over actions taken, if the idiot Court is going to allow them for crimes against The People, against democracy, against equality, for the most corrupt of purposes (what we know by way of Trump crime family crime is less than the tip of a giant heap of crime). The "originalist" dodge would have to find language prohibiting that kind of preemptive pardon being granted at the beginning of a presidency in the language of the pardon section, just one of the very badly written passages in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Of course, they could just choose to do so on the partisan basis that the Alito-Kavanaugh-Barrett wing of the court will make ever clearer is the basis of their decisions. Who's to stop them? You're never going to impeach them unless Democrats get a super-majority on the Senate and that's not likely. Though it's more likely than the Republican-fascist party returning even to the corruption that it embodied in the Nixon years.
The corruption on the Court is a product of the corruption through the anti-democratic Senate. Just one of the corruptions put into the Constitution at the start of it.
My expertise on pardons is nil. But "Preemptive Pardon" is not, as the media probably thinks, the same things as a "Get out of Jail Free Card" that you can play whenever you find yourself, well...in jail.
ReplyDeleteThis ain't Monopoly, in other words.
I say that because of this:
“I don’t know what impact that would have, what decision he would make, if he makes that determination that the pardon of Mr. Flynn is for a period that the law does not permit. I don’t know if that’s correct or not,” Walton continued. “Theoretically, the decision could be reached because the wording in the pardon seems to be very, very broad. It could be construed, I think, as extending protections against criminal prosecutions after the date the pardon was issued.”
That's a federal judge commenting on Flynn's pardon, and suggesting Judge Sullivan might find it overly broad on the very grounds that it pardons crimes that may happen after the date of the pardon. "Pre-emptive" is something of a misnomer, because it implies crimes after the pardon are also excused. Ford didn't pardon Nixon for what he was going to do, but for what he might have done (and Nixon implicitly accepted he'd done it by accepting the pardon). No pardon gives the recipient blanket immunity to commit other crimes (like obstruct justice in an investigation; that's why Trump can't pardon his aides and family and escape criminal investigation himself).
Now, will Flynn's pardon be scrutinized? Maybe not by Sullivan (unless pardons are unitary and not severable; i.e., the overly broad language can be severed to allow Flynn to be pardoned for what he's already pled guilty to), but maybe by another judge in the future. Even if Sullivan considers the issue of whether the pardon is fatally flawed, he won't take it up until late January, at the earliest. Of that, I'm quite sure.
I'd feel more confident if I had more confidence in the good faith of the Supreme Court. I still like the relevant house committees forcing him to testify where he can't plead the fifth and when he lies nailing him for that, though forcing him to reveal the extent of his guilt would be satisfying too, just not as satisfying as seeing him sentenced for betraying the People and the country. His son, too. I'd like to know more about his activities.
ReplyDelete