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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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.