Witnesses, not just defendants, can plead the fifth and remain silent on questions that might lead them to give self-incriminating testimony. My understanding is that Flynn would no longer have that right so could be compelled to answer.
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The theory is that he could be compelled to testify against others, but that assumes
1) that others are prosecuted (note that he has only been accused of federal crimes, unlike his former boss);
2) that he is compelled to testify via a subpoena or other mandatory process;
3) that he then either refuses to answer or gives such evasive answers that he is charged with criminal contempt (assuming that the pardon is not so broad as to cover such a charge).Comment
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How difficult would it be for the right of presidents being able to dole out pardons to be abolished? It's anachronistic and more than arbitrary and I was asking myself if the idea had ever been mooted.Comment
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It is in the constitution. assign probability of zero.Originally posted by Sporting View PostComment
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639 pages, and he is STILL a cunt.
We showed them!
*edit Is there such a thing, on here, where you can just hashtag something and it will unravel itself without me replying?
Such as #unroll Twitter
and it just unfolds itself and envelops you in all your own satisfaction. That's a 'no' then? Snake? Get on that one xLast edited by Gerontophile; 27-11-2020, 07:59.Comment
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The reports I've read suggest that the Trump administration's plans to treat undocumented immigrants as "not really people" in the census may have been a step too far even for the "originalists" on the supreme court. It feels like they would much rather this case vanished rather than them having to rule one way or the other. There were a lot of "why can't this wait" questions, which seems to be code for "Thank god Biden's coming in so we don't actually have to rule against Trump."Comment
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Alito appears to be the only one willing to give it the time of dayComment
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I'm not sure why Biden would want to prosecute Trump or any of his cronies. It only seems to help fire up "their base" and use up a lot of media oxygen, not to mention DOJ resources.
Perhaps Trump will bank on that rather than pardoning them, which is pretty much an admission of guilt.Comment
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I wouldn't be surprised if they were using Rudy to test out the response for a self-pardon of no determined crimes.Comment
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He's going to leave it with his Attorney General.
Personally, I believe that some form of reckoning needs to happen, though it doesn't necessarily need to be in the form of federal prosecutions.
At least on the basis of what we know, Rudy is more in need of a pardon, given that all of his obvious exposure relates to federal crimes (primarily involving Ukraine and other foreign states). He doesn't have the obvious state level exposure that the family has.
I'm also not sure that riling up the base is intrinsically bad, as the Georgia runoff chaos indicates.Comment
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I wouldOriginally posted by caja-dglh View Post
There is no real question that an incredibly broad pardon of unspecified crimes is valid and only a pardon of Trump himself gives rise to the self-pardon issue.
I'm virtually certain that this was Rudy's ask, because he is still sufficiently aware to know that he has real exposure.Comment
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He deserved to be thrown out of office for the Ukraine thing too, but that actually helped his poll numbers and didn't accomplish anything. It never had a chance of succeeding.Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
This would be different, perhaps, because it would be in the real courts, rather than the Senate. And if a state could pull it off, that would be great. It would be nice for the so-called Federalists to be bit in the ass by "state sovereignty."
It is the attorney general's job and the AG is supposed to be somewhat independent of the president, but Barr acts as Trump's personal lawyer and a lot of Americans assume that's what he is supposed to be, so I'm afraid it would be portrayed that way if Biden's AG went after Trump. I'm afraid it would just set a precedent where every new administration tries to prosecute the one before it, justified or not. I don't trust the courts to curtail purely political prosecution, but I'm hardly an expert. It's just my general pessimism and cynicism.
It would also make it harder for Biden to sell is "unity" schtick. Ford justified pardoning Nixon on the basis that it was using up so many DOJ resources. Of course, he had political reasons, but pardoning him was like an admission of guilt and, I suppose, damaged Ford's reelection campaign. I've never given much thought to how much of a chance there ever was of actually convicting Nixon of anything.
It would be nice to get rid of the presidential pardon. I'm not sure what purpose it serves.
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Oh, there are tons of realpolitik reasons that mean the Biden administration is very likely to hand off most of the prosecutorial work to the states.
I'm just saying that they might want to prosecute these criminals because they are criminals who deserve prosecution. Even if it won't happen in actuality.Comment
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There is also the fact that the New York AG and Manhattan DA have been putting cases together for years (and aren't saddled with a New York FBI Office that is still full of Rudy acolytes).Comment
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It seems odd that Rudy didn't seek some guarantee of a pardon from Trump before doing the Ukraine stuff. OTOH this was pre-COVID, when a Trump re-election seemed odds on.Comment
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The problem that any Trump Guarantee is even more worthless than a degree from Trump University.
In other news,
https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1333909947042701316
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Presumably the intent is the same as with executive pardons elsewhere in the world. It's a power that many Heads of State have, especially in monarchies. It is generally used where a conviction or sentence might be as defined by the law, but is not what public opinion would regard as fair or reasonable.Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
For example, if I remember right, prior to the abolition of the death penalty in the UK the only sentence a judge could pass on a conviction for murder was execution. But the vast majority of these in the 20th century were commuted to life imprisonment. In practice this was a decision taken by the home secretary, but officially the commutation was issued on behalf of and in the name of the monrach as part of her (or his) overall authority over the courts.
What is unusual in the US is it has become de rigeur for Presidents to pardon people just prior to leaving office. But not just that (various kings and queens around the world issue birthday pardons and the like), it is to pardon them for criminal offences they have often committed in the service of the President. The elephant in the room is not so much that pardons are issued, it is that it has somehow become normalised that governing America sometimes involves committing crimes! Exactly how that came to be, and came to be moreorless accepted (or at least glossed over), is the bemusing one.
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An example of pardons in action would be the Liverpool fan, Michael Shields, who was convicted of attempted murder after a violent incident whilst in Bulgaria for a Football match. Appeals to the Bulgarian President to pardon Shields were rejected, but when he was transferred to Britain to serve the tail end of his sentence, he got a Royal Pardon arranged by then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Rather to the consternation of officials in Bulgaria.Comment
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That was the original intent and the extant examples were all monarchies (the power has been in the Constitution from the very beginning).
There had been a long-standing norm that the power wouldn't be used as a way of rewarding henchmen*, but Trump obviously thinks that applies to him as much as dozens of other norms do.
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Is Trump the first to do this? I thought Clinton pardoned a bunch of such people on his last day in office, particularly some Whitewater associates of his (and his drug-dealing brother!).
Oh, and re: the power being there from the beginning, you have so much to thank us for, don’t you?Comment
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Clinton's most problematic pardon was of Marc Rich, whose wife was a major Democratic donor, but whose serious financial crimes weren't connected to the party.Comment
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