From betraying Ukraine and dispatching masked agents who killed Americans to deporting US citizens and pulling out of accords controlling climate change and Iranian nuclear weapons, the list of Donald Trump’s abuses is long and growing still longer, seemingly by the day.
Looking back decades from now, historians will see that at the top of this shameful list is Trump’s utter abuse of his pardon power. It started on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists who, on 6 January 2021, had stormed the US Capitol.
More recently, as documented in astonishing accounts by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes, Trump has overseen a robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency.
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agreed, President also should have nothing to do with DOJ / appointing the AG. Big mistake.
They made a lot of grave errors. Y’all should scrap the constitution and write a new one
One of my greatest personal fears is that a Constitutional Convention will be used to shove Christianity down our throats. That said, failure to regulate churches has resulted in a group of conservative churches that preach pretty much the opposite of what Jesus said. The document was a series of compromises, far from perfect. The compromise over keeping the government out of religion was to keep the peace and avoid sectarian warfare. We’re seeing some hints of that as a result of the Talarico vs Paxton race in Texas.
They expected people to conduct themselves as adults and not vote in a piece of shit.
The issue is not the pardon power. The issue is the other branches of government failing to act to restrain the President.
The whole balance of powers works best when all parties act with integrity. If one of the beaches act in bad faith, the other branches must intervene to constrain the party and mitigate the damage.
What has happened is that both Congress and the Judiciary are acquiescing to claims of executive power and we can all see the results.
Balance of powers has never really worked. Congress will seldom impeach a president from their own party. Two party system has completely effed the US.
The founders never would have imagined something like Unitary Executive Theory would ever take off, as they assumed that each branch would be too selfish to willingly diminish their own power by handing it over to another branch.
I agree. The pardon is a powerful tool with very real and valid uses, but it only works if the rest of the government is working
This is it exactly. Our friendly local Lemmy user is sharper than a Guardian columnist.
Which does not surprise me.
To expect all parties to act with integrity is naive, expect all parties to act maliciously and with incompetence and design the system to cope that way.
To be able to override judges and juries, that’s a true horror that compromises the legal system, or if you must, at least have it that pardons are only able to be recommended by the President and 75% of Congress must also agree.
The constitution worked pretty well for some time, but that time is over.
We’ve been overdue for a constitutional convention for a rewrite suitable today (not 1776) for decades, but now that “dollars are free speech” and “corporations are people”, that won’t be a legal option.
- Corporations don’t want a constitutional convention.
- Our politicians require “donations” to get reelected.
- To get those “donations” they do what their “donors” want.
- Their “donors” want them to cut taxes and wages.
- The voters by and large therefore have low wages, and can’t “donate” enough to influence.
- So the “donors” control all policy, and will until it collapses in on itself
- Pardons are the least of our worries
- Good luck getting them to throw out their “get out of jail free” card
I’d love to be wrong, please let me be wrong
The solution is to make America decline in power enough that its politicians aren’t worth buying.
Narrator: He wasn’t wrong.
No it was a fine part of the Constitution and Presidential power when our government was held together by gentlemen’s agreements, like the one to not openly be a peice of shit and try to maintain some dignity.
Shockingly, when the men who gain power are not gentlemen or are not at least trying to maintain the façade of being gentlemen, they don’t abide by gentlemen’s agreements.
Americans: is there anything stopping the next president from abolishing the pardon and retroactively nullifying any existing pardons?
The pardon power is directly in the Constitution. It would take an amendment to modify it. Amendments are hard to do, they need 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of States on board.
And if you want Conservatives to get on board, you get a Liberal to start abusing it. But most Liberals have too much integrity to do that…
… So, maybe Gavin really is the man for the moment!
Biden pardoned his son and a bunch of other people and the Republicans didn’t start going after the pardon power. So I don’t think they care even if a democrat misuses it.
Well, when the cons are questioning things like donnie having a third term, I think some Democrats should step into the WH and test it out. Arrest donnie and pals, and make them fight it out in the courts. Maybe deport them to CECOT in the interim and let them fight to have them brought back here.
Nobody is going to give up their super powers
I think we need something like this for someone on death row or something, maybe. But only if it’s someone that wasn’t doing crimes in the service of that President.
But what donnie dumbass has done with it is far beyond the pale and truly disgusting.
You only need it for valid political prisoners, like the people in Texas that got 50 years for lighting fireworks at a protest.
Not for actual traitors like the people that rioted and broke into the Capitol on j6 so they could murder police officers, loot, and try and stop elected officials from carrying out their sworn duties.
That’s where Congress comes in. After the j6 pardon, they should have immediately removed him from office and had him placed in a military prison until he could face a military tribunal for high crimes and treason against the people of the United States and for violating his constitutional oath.
And as for the j6 defendants they should have just retcon’d the pardon, and if they didn’t feel comfortable doing that from a legal standpoint they should have charged them with higher crimes. Most of them were just charged with vandalism, rioting, breaking and entering etc. the good news is that they could still easily be charged with charges of insurrection treason and several other higher level Federal offenses.
In other words those j6 traitors aren’t safe yet. They got a pardon off of one of the several charges they are guilty of. The doj hasn’t brought a lot of the charges they could bring against those people, but there is no statute of limitations for treason.
I say take every single person that accepted the pardon and execute them out right.
I think we need something like this for someone on death row or something, maybe.
Why, though? What makes the person occupying the position of president uniquely qualified to make a decision in cases like this? If you have a judicial system that has been found to apply the law fairly, yet can still have its rulings overturned on a whim, doesn’t that make a mockery of the system?
It feels like an equivalent of a boss saying, “I know you and your team did months of research to come to the decision that you did, but I’m going to go in a different direction anyway. Not because I did more research than you, just because I feel like I know better than all of you”.
Unless theres’ some kind of reason that I’ve overlooked.
Beyond the scope of this thread, I know, but the concept of president seems absurd to me. Especially the way it’s implemented in the USA.
I just don’t like the death penalty in general and I’m for just about any off-ramp.
Obviously.
