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Romney says he would have immediately pardoned Trump

Ranb

Penultimate Amazing
Ranb
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Romney says if he were president he would have immediately pardoned Trump
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/15/politics/mitt-romney-pardon-trump-biden/index.html
Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney said that if he were President Joe Biden he would have “immediately pardoned” former President Donald Trump.

“Had I been President Biden, when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him,” Romney told MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle” in an interview set to air Wednesday. “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.”
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What a bunch of crap. "The big guy" my ass. Claiming he would pardon a person like Trump just makes him in league with the rest of the MAGA fools.

Ranb
 
Ranb said:
Romney says if he were president he would have immediately pardoned Trump
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/15/politics/mitt-romney-pardon-trump-biden/index.html

What a bunch of crap. "The big guy" my ass. Claiming he would pardon a person like Trump just makes him in league with the rest of the MAGA fools.

Ranb
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Agreed. Ford pardoning Nixon was bad, but Trump has much more egregious crimes on his resume.

Romney is saying he would pardon Trump if he killed someone. What the hell.

Wouldn't have gotten Trump off from the Georgia or New York cases anyway.

Seems that these old guys hit a certain age and their thought processes go to hell.
 
Is this a job interview for VP?.

"Hey Trump! Make me VP, step down, and I'll make sure you will get away scott-free."
 
This is one of those "reasonable, prinicpled" Republicans I keep getting told about, right? The ones Democrats should make deals with? The ones who aren't totally on board with the far-right and simply keeping up a "civil" facade?
 
No, this comes off as a Susan Collins type "he learned his lesson" line.
 
Donal said:
No, this comes off as a Susan Collins type "he learned his lesson" line.
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Not at all to me. This is the punchline, which is a clear dig at Donny: “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.”
 
Norman Alexander said:
Not at all to me. This is the punchline, which is a clear dig at Donny: “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.”
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Proof that he doesn't understand MAGA and Trump at all.

All they would have cried about until the next election would have been:
"Biden is too scared for the FACTS to come out in a trial! He is covering up what the Deep State/FBI/AntiFa did!
Trump did nothing wrong, and pardoning him is an insult!"
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Proof that he doesn't understand MAGA and Trump at all.
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On the contrary. Proof he understands them all too well. The [bad attempt at a] joke is that Donny would be put in a position of being beholden to Biden (hey, alliteration!) which he would hate. The joke falls flat because so many people can't see it's a joke. Everyone, and Romney, knows that nothing embarrasses Trump.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Not at all to me. This is the punchline, which is a clear dig at Donny: “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.”
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Looks rather like "the public should recognise that letting me win some dick-measuring contest with that guy is clearly more important than his actually paying for what he did".
 
Or "he'll owe me a favor" which is exactly why impeachment was written into the Constitution. Assuming the Orange Weakling even acknowledges what Biden did for him.
 
If multiverse theory is correct then there is a place out there, somewhere, where Mitt Romney's thoughts matter to anyone.
 
He'd pardon him, but then he'd part him out and sell all his organs for a profit like he was Kay-Bee Toys.
 
He would look like the Big Guy, and Trump the Little Guy, but at way too high a price. Some things are more valuable than image games, Justice and Accountability being big ones.
 
I wouldn't mind Trump being pardoned but it would come with a stipulation much like a plea agreement. He would have to hold a press conference admitting fault, taking responsibility, and apologizing to the victims he affected.

Then, and only then, would he get a pardon. We all know he wouldn't do it.
 
Thermal said:
He would look like the Big Guy, and Trump the Little Guy, but at way too high a price. Some things are more valuable than image games, Justice and Accountability being big ones.
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That's where I land. Justice is not about who's the better person. We're a country of laws, not of people. It's about the rule of law. This sounds so much like "good boy, bad boy" theory that seems to drive conservatives.

Every time Romney seems like he's the only sane voice in the GOP, he reminds us he's just as nuts as most of the rest of them.

plague311 said:
I wouldn't mind Trump being pardoned but it would come with a stipulation much like a plea agreement. He would have to hold a press conference admitting fault, taking responsibility, and apologizing to the victims he affected.
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I may be wrong about this, but I think accepting a pardon is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Not that it matters.
 
plague311 said:
I wouldn't mind Trump being pardoned but it would come with a stipulation much like a plea agreement. He would have to hold a press conference admitting fault, taking responsibility, and apologizing to the victims he affected.

Then, and only then, would he get a pardon. We all know he wouldn't do it.
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Seems lame. If you want to use the presidential pardon, use it. Don't pussyfoot around playing nonsense games with it.
 
JayUtah said:
I may be wrong about this, but I think accepting a pardon is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Not that it matters.
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I seem to remember it being discussed in various threads around here and you're right in that people view it that way, but there's nothing actually stating such. So without it Trump could still say, "I got pardoned cause he knew I did nothing wrong."

theprestige said:
Seems lame. If you want to use the presidential pardon, use it. Don't pussyfoot around playing nonsense games with it.
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Thank you for your feedback. It's appreciated.

There is no nonsense game, it's getting someone who perpetually lies to take responsibility for what they did. I get that to you and the GOP that is pretty lame, it's just weird seeing it said out loud.
 
JayUtah said:
I may be wrong about this, but I think accepting a pardon is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Not that it matters.
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I believe that was part of the reasoning that Ford used when he gave Nixon his pardon.

But, as another poster has said, there is nothing in law that indicates that accepting pardons admits to anything. (And anyways, how would that apply to blanket pardons anyways? "I pardon Trump for all crimes"... "Even the crime of climbing a tree at the supreme court, and transporting dentures across state lines?" (both of which are real crimes)... "Yeah Trump must have done those things since he accepted a pardon for them"
 
plague311 said:
I seem to remember it being discussed in various threads around here and you're right in that people view it that way, but there's nothing actually stating such.
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That's probably the case. Burdick v. U.S. confirms that you are not required to accept a pardon you are offered. In the case dictum it is opined that accepting it may impute guilt, but that's not part of the finding of the court. In most pardon cases, the recipient has already been convicted, so a legal determination of guilt is moot. Nixon's case confirmed that a pardon is effective between the commission of an action and some indictment and possible conviction for it.

So without it Trump could still say, "I got pardoned cause he knew I did nothing wrong."
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And that's likely. Trump has a history of jumping to a finding of "total exoneration" every time someone declines to try to hold him accountable.

theprestige said:
Seems lame. If you want to use the presidential pardon, use it. Don't pussyfoot around playing nonsense games with it.
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Putting conditions on clemency really does violence to its original intent. The idea was that such an act of grace would come with no strings attached, as an expression of sovereign prerogative that can include (but is not limited to) correcting an improvident conviction. Using it as a means of coercing a confession or of baiting a recipient into agreeing to a lesser punishment that has not been adjudicated against him is not really in keeping with the political philosophy of clemency.
 
There is one argument for pardoning Trump that I find worth considering:

Bad Cases make for Bad Precedence.

The Trump Federal Trials were always going to be incredibly messy, and the chance at best 50/50 that the Judges would end up extending Presidential Immunity rather than curtailing it.

Does Trump deserve to get locked up and thrown away the cell?
Absolutely.

Does it create a bad precedent if he gets pardoned?
Yes.

Is that still better than having a Supreme Court ruling that selling nuclear secrets falls squarely within the core duties of a President?

It probably is.

We can't have our cake and eat it, too.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
There is one argument for pardoning Trump that I find worth considering:

Bad Cases make for Bad Precedence.
...
Does Trump deserve to get locked up and thrown away the cell?
Absolutely.
Does it create a bad precedent if he gets pardoned?
Yes.
Is that still better than having a Supreme Court ruling that selling nuclear secrets falls squarely within the core duties of a President?
It probably is.
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True, issuing a pardon would probably mean the supreme court would end all discussion of presidential immunity because it is "moot".

But, I think there is some benefit to knowing what exactly the rules are (even if we don't like the implication), instead of finding years from now we are in another situation with a corrupt president and a bunch more legal proceedings to determine if immunity actually applies.
 
Segnosaur said:
True, issuing a pardon would probably mean the supreme court would end all discussion of presidential immunity because it is "moot".

But, I think there is some benefit to knowing what exactly the rules are (even if we don't like the implication), instead of finding years from now we are in another situation with a corrupt president and a bunch more legal proceedings to determine if immunity actually applies.
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but by definition, such a trial would never stop such a President.
If nothing else Trump has already established the Precedent that only Congress can remove a President, even if he is suspected of, in essence, Treason.

As long as Presidential Immunity is in Limbo, it might deter some of the less sociopathic Presidents from abusing it too much.
 
Romney should have realized that lots of Democrats would have abandoned Biden had he pardoned Trump.
 
JayUtah said:
Putting conditions on clemency really does violence to its original intent. The idea was that such an act of grace would come with no strings attached, as an expression of sovereign prerogative that can include (but is not limited to) correcting an improvident conviction. Using it as a means of coercing a confession or of baiting a recipient into agreeing to a lesser punishment that has not been adjudicated against him is not really in keeping with the political philosophy of clemency.
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Which I find to be hypocritical (the idea of attaching conditions, not your stance) considering it's a cornerstone of the legal process. You can't plead guilty or take a plea agreement without first acknowledging and taking responsibility for the crimes you're accused of and we see people take them all of the time. Even for things they didn't do.

As you said, he can always turn the pardon down if he feels he's truly innocent and committed no crimes. He has the absolute right to go through the trial and be found innocent by a jury of his peers. No one is forcing the pardon on him.
 
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