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Pardons

Also "President" is a big enough position that other things are likely to overshadow it.

Sure we could argue the pros and cons of this or that pardon or the pardon concept itself, but I think we all know that no President's legacy is going to wind up being based their pardons, they will always be a footnote.
 
Sherman Bay said:
According to this TeamJustice lawyer, presidential pardons are not absolute, and may be subject to review or cancellation by the courts. He makes a case that this is what could happen if Trump pardoned a member of his family. Ref: Burdick vs. US.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States (1915)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baWkPCQzgoQ
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Good thing we don't have a 6-3 conservative SCOTUS that takes a sweeping view of executive power.

Oh wait.
 
Oh to be a fly on the wall of Q Shaman's cell when he found out he didn't make the cut. All those morons Trump had storm the Capitol, thinking there was a pardon coming. Heh...heh...heh. Some of them threw their lives away for nothing. I am darkly amused.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Also "President" is a big enough position that other things are likely to overshadow it.

Sure we could argue the pros and cons of this or that pardon or the pardon concept itself, but I think we all know that no President's legacy is going to wind up being based their pardons, they will always be a footnote.
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This is true, except maybe for the case of Ford with the Nixon blanket pardon.

What I would worry about if I was Bannon is that accepting the pardon is "essentially" an admission of guilt (no I don't want to get into the legal nuances of that here).

An admission of guilt would probably not be to the pardonees' advantage when the lawsuits start flying.
 
Craig4 said:
Oh to be a fly on the wall of Q Shaman's cell when he found out he didn't make the cut. All those morons Trump had storm the Capitol, thinking there was a pardon coming. Heh...heh...heh. Some of them threw their lives away for nothing. I am darkly amused.
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I was thinking the same thing.

The writing is already on the wall, but when 1201 hits, all these Jan6 CHUDs will know, for certain, that they have been abandoned.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The lame-duck pardon is a known monster. Presidents and governors that have pardon power and no accountability to the public in the lame duck period have no reason not to wield this power capriciously.

It's especially a problem for presidents, because it's usually a career ending position. There's no other elections to worry about if you're leaving the Presidency, so it's no problem at all to tarnish your reputation by handing out personal favors.
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JoeMorgue said:
Also "President" is a big enough position that other things are likely to overshadow it.

Sure we could argue the pros and cons of this or that pardon or the pardon concept itself, but I think we all know that no President's legacy is going to wind up being based their pardons, they will always be a footnote.
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I agree with both of those statements.
SuburbanTurkey said:
Good thing we don't have a 6-3 conservative SCOTUS that takes a sweeping view of executive power.

Oh wait.
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As a rule, conservative judges/justices don't actually have a sweeping view of executive power. At least not based on their stated philosophies, mostly because with a few exceptions, like pardons, the constitution doesn't take a sweeping view of executive power. They typically have a fairly dim view of Chevron Deference for instance. People being who we are, I'm sure they can find a work around.
 
slyjoe said:
This is true, except maybe for the case of Ford with the Nixon blanket pardon.
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Fair point. That certainly is a valid exception. Ford is certainly the only President that comes to mind where if you going to do like a bullet-point level, quick snapshot of the major events, both highlights and lowlights, of their Presidency the word "pardon" would even show up at all. Maybe Carter's mass pardon of draft avoiders is a borderline case, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that pops into people's heads when you mention Jimmy Carter the same way the pardon of Nixon does if you mention Gerald Ford.

But pardoning a President (to say nothing of your immediate predecessor) after the biggest scandal in American political history as pretty much your first act and then having a, let's be fair, rather short, boring and milquetoast placeholder Presidency after that makes for a rather extreme example. Not helped by Gerald Ford not exactly being a ball of fiery charisma so he doesn't really have any place in America's pop-culture psyche. Which to his credit is what American needed after Nixon. In way him pardoning Nixon being the most dramatic thing he did speaks well of the man. I actually think I had a good finger on the pulse of country, for better or worse.

There's plenty of things that could have happened during Ford's Presidency that would have overshadowed his pardoning of Nixon but just didn't. Ford's more a case of just nothing else about his Presidency being interesting then the pardon itself being all that interesting, although again I will admit it is by far the most interesting pardon from a political perspective.
 
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ahhell said:
I agree with both of those statements.
As a rule, conservative judges/justices don't actually have a sweeping view of executive power. At least not based on their stated philosophies, mostly because with a few exceptions, like pardons, the constitution doesn't take a sweeping view of executive power. They typically have a fairly dim view of Chevron Deference for instance. People being who we are, I'm sure they can find a work around.
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And for as lockstep as the conservative justices are perceived, they told the President to go pound sand in the recent electoral challenges. They do adhere to principles of law when the mood strikes.
 
I get the President pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving. Otherwise, it is corruption in plain site.
 
Nessie said:
I get the President pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving. Otherwise, it is corruption in plain site.
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I'd like to see the power modified so it could only be used if someone had been found guilty. If the intent is to right a miscarriage of justice, we should give justice a chance to be miscarried.
 
That's why I proposed earlier the idea of replacing pardon power in its current from with the ability of the President to just order a "do over" if he thinks justice wasn't served.

Person A is found guilty of a crime and the President thinks this is a miscarriage of justice. For a second backburner the discussion of whether or not the President should be able to act on this (not to say it's not a valid question, we'll just shelve it for now) the President could have the ability to just null and void that trial and make it have to be done again; perhaps with some (well within legal framework) modifications like change of venue. The trial would then just happen again, the legal system would still make the final say. The President would just be limited to, basically, going "Are sure that's your final answer?"

Purely symbolic pardons done after the person has died and many years have passed I could still see being retained.
 
Craig4 said:
I'd like to see the power modified so it could only be used if someone had been found guilty. If the intent is to right a miscarriage of justice, we should give justice a chance to be miscarried.
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So, in the case of something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers... you would want to see them live the rest of their lives with the threat of prosecution over their heads, just because "We can only pardon you if you are found guilty"?
 
Segnosaur said:
So, in the case of something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers... you would want to see them live the rest of their lives with the threat of prosecution over their heads, just because "We can only pardon you if you are found guilty"?
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Yes. They should have all been prosecuted.
 
Segnosaur said:
So, in the case of something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers... you would want to see them live the rest of their lives with the threat of prosecution over their heads, just because "We can only pardon you if you are found guilty"?
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Implying blanket pardon is only way to deal with draft dodgers. I think it is wrong.

You always could make law/bill/whatever that decriminalizes draft dodging from that period. I guess blanket pardon was simply easiest solution with least amount of hassle.
 
Mader Levap said:
So, in the case of something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers... you would want to see them live the rest of their lives with the threat of prosecution over their heads, just because "We can only pardon you if you are found guilty"?
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Implying blanket pardon is only way to deal with draft dodgers. I think it is wrong.

You always could make law/bill/whatever that decriminalizes draft dodging from that period.
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And if the senate or house is currently under the control of a party that opposes those actions?

I guess blanket pardon was simply easiest solution with least amount of hassle.
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In general, I think pardons are an imperfect solution to a problem, for which all alternatives are even more imperfect.

(Not that I wouldn't be opposed to seeing them modify the rules...)
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
No. See my post above about court rulings on whether a pardon can be revoked before it is delivered. That is all we have.

The rest would be up to the courts. A secret pardon would almost certainly be considered not valid. A self pardon would almost certainly be considered not valid whether secret or not.
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I think if Trump had pardoned himself or his kids we'd have heard by now. And now it's too late.

I suspect Trump either took it seriously that pardoning himself would be evidence for state charges, it would show knowledge of guilt.

Or, he such a sick narcissist he simply doesn't believe they can convict him. He's always gotten away with things before.

Giuliani made a point of saying no pardon because he hadn't broken any laws. That might be true and might have also influenced Dump's decision.


As for Bannon, I copied this from a search rather than bothering to read the article:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-pardon-steve-bannon-state-charges-1562984
Despite Donald Trump Pardon, Steve Bannon Could Still Face State ...
5 hours ago ... "What Bannon did likely violated state financial crime laws so he may still face criminal charges in multiple states as well as civil lawsuits for his ...
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He's still toast.
 
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Segnosaur said:
So, in the case of something like the Vietnam War draft dodgers... you would want to see them live the rest of their lives with the threat of prosecution over their heads, just because "We can only pardon you if you are found guilty"?
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It's the statute of limitations. You can also modify prosecution guidelines to not pursue such charges.
 
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