I WON'T GO INTO THE HISTORY of presidential pardons to compare many of those given by other presidents going back but will stick to fairly recent history because those, alone, prove that the brevity of the Constitutional granting of the power to do that by presidents is too dangerous to leave it unaddressed.
Pretending that we're still living under the previous status quo is a delusional and dangerous and cowardly waste of time. Everything changed with Trump v USA. It is the Dred Scott decision of our time, one which we either destroy or it will destroy us.
Trump's pardoning of his insurrectionists is of an entirely different character than the pardons issued by the first three presidents to insurrectionists AGAINST THEIR OWN ADMINISTRATIONS and not to keep them in power illegally and unconstitutionally. I am unaware of anything like it in the history of the presidency, except the blanket pardon issued to those who mounted the Confederacy and instigated the Civil War. And even that one was arguably issued to those who fought against the administration of the president who issued it.
Trump's pardons, the ones we have every reason to believe he was paid for - and which is remarkably little discussed in the press considering how much they made of Clinton's pardoning of only one, Marc Rich - and those who have committed crimes especially against minority groups, those who promote his own fascist rule, the ones I would bet he has or will soon issue to his own family members donors, campaign, make the previously controversial and corrupt pardons issued under the Constitution's maddeningly stupid and dangerous blanket pardon powers by previous presidents look penny ante.
Compared to those issued by Trump's fellow criminal president, Nixon, Nixon's look fairly normal. The pardons of presidents after him have gone from controversial to blatantly corrupt and dangerous. George H. W. Bush pardoning himself out of an investigation for his role in Iran Contra and other crimes he was up to his neck in should have forced the question of Constitutional amendments to prevent presidents from pardoning as part of a criminal conspiracy. But typically, when it's a matter of protecting us from inadequate and dangerous passages in the Constitution, that was not done. As mentioned before this morning, it is taboo. The media and Republicans made much more about the alleged corruption of William Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich - after his wife gave a large contribution to his campaign - and the controversial though, I say, understandable and reluctant pardons issued by Joe Biden for his son and a myriad of others he knew would be subjected to the corrupt investigation and prosecution by Trump II's "justice" department and the Republican-fascists in Congress. And I would certainly include at least extremely strict rules and the ability to challenge such pardons, certainly of those with a financial relationship with a president who issues a pardon.
Though I agree with and approve of the pardoning of Hunter Biden by his father, of those members of the Justice Department and others who were certain to be the targets for persecution by the Trump II regime - they said they intended to imprison and destroy them - I think we need to revise the constitutional power of the pardon drastically as a matter of our own protection from the combination of corruption the Roberts Court cemented into place. They have made it a tool of autocracy, of fascist rule as much as any rule in any country which fell to fascism in the past.
How far it should go, I don't know. As I said, I fully support Joe Biden granting a pardon to his son because of the use the Republican-fascists made of Hunter Biden. I support him giving one to those who were the known targets of Republican-fascist intentions.
But since the administrators of the law will overlook such distinctions in favor of putting unlike under the same category, the pardons Trump will give his crime family and his gang of criminals has to be prevented from becoming typical of America whenever a fascist AND I DO MEAN A REPUBLICAN is president and the Roberts unitary executive distortion of the Constitution remains in place.
The corruption we have been brought to has been through the corruption of The People by lies in the media and appeals made to the worst in us by the same. Though I would never overlook the character of The People at the time the Constitution was written and adopted, favoring or largely not opposed to the enslavement of Black People, the slaughter of Indians and stealing their land, the subjugation of Women, various and sundry other bigotries and corruptions common enough to become the law in the various states, I don't think they'd have tolerated the level of corruption that this just concluded election was a rebellion against. And the worst of that was by design, from corrupt law faculties such as members of those at Harvard and the other Ivys, that cooked up in stink tanks like The Heritage Foundation and corrupt lobbying efforts like The Federalist Society and Leonard Leo's other shell outfits. Pretty much anything that billionaires and millionaires fund. And the media, never, ever underestimate the role the free press has played in it. And their appeal to the worst in us.
We cannot avoid drastic Constitutional reform and the removal of the Supreme Court 's self-created power to nullify the reform to it. Changing the pardon power is certainly one of the most obvious of the things that have to be changed largely on the basis of what corrupt presidents like Bush I and Trump have done with it. It is as sure a means of corruption as the unitary executive and the fact that presidential impeachment and conviction of even the most blatantly criminal presidents will never happen.
We can't go on like this. We can't'. No matter how nervous it makes some magazine scribblers when you talk about Constitutional change.
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