The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.
There is exactly one party in the US that does this, and it's because they have dedicated themselves to blocking the other party from accomplishing much of anything when they get power.
And he’s doing much worse now so that’s two.
Your definition of political ("not happening if he wasn't a politician") is not what that definition is.
Because I can get you would want to shield some people from persecutions (just or unjust) from your successor, but I see no reason why you would be able to pardon someone charged but waiting for trial. This makes a mockery of justice, the public can't discover the facts but more importantly: why pardon someone that is still considered innocent ?
If they’ll be pardoned anyway, why?
Was it, though? It struck me as more empty political theater around an event largely defined by political theater.
IANACL but surely there are other ways to protect people from politically motivated prosecutions? E.g. jail anybody attempting to direct the DOJ for personal or political reasons?
Congress created the DOJ, It is their job to police it. They can defund or even eliminate it. That's the check on it.
There's no reason to say that unless you know they're actively committing federal crimes in the present day.
There are reasons. For example, you feel the justice system is going to be misused against them. Protection against future witch hunts basically.
I don't think this is what's happening here, and trump is on record talking very explicitly about weaponising the state against his enemies himself, but it's probably an excuse that will be used.
Did you miss the pardoning of the Jan 6 people who hunted people down, set up a gallows, and those who tried to murder police?
Did you miss Trump sending USA troops into democrat cities to try and intimidate USA citizens, using his militia to murder people in cold blood?
Did you miss all the tariffs used to move the markets so Trump and his cronies could drain money from ordinary folks investments in the markets - he even boasted how rich he'd made his friends. From tariff front-running.
Hunter Biden broke the law, but his crimes look like schoolkid's high-jinks compared to Trump.
How about Trump's alt-coin to take overseas bribes?
Or using the instigation of war to win bets?
There're thousands more such crimes of corruption the Trump regime have done.
You can't be serious.
They're not serious. They're a partisan actor who knows exactly how absurd it is to say something like that. They're just here to spread chaos.
He shouldn't have been pardoned, sure, but you cannot possibly believe that's more corrupt than what Trump, his family, and his cronies do on a regular Tuesday afternoon.
Donald Trump started a war with Iran to distract from the Epstein files, where he is mentioned thousands of times and credibly accused of raping a minor. But yeah, hunter biden. Most corrupt in US history. Sure.
I am so fucking sick of Americans I got aroused when Iran threatened to attack Americans in America.
That we don't have Medicare for all gets me excited and happy to be off the hook for my neighbors who are not protesting for me to have Medicare for all just the same. Right back at you, neighbors! Zero fucks if you all go broke and end up dead in a gutter!
Big picture; my fellow Muricans are just as unimportant to human future as Iranian students we ignore being bombed. So I am happy to ignore my fellow Mercians getting got.
We're sort of already there. A lot of the Jan 6 rioters were openly trying to murder congressmen. The fact they weren't successful isn't super reassuring.
This single ruling will haunt the United States for the rest of its existence.
That ruling is very broad and vague! I don't think killing Congress is part of POTUS's official job description.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-isnt-immune-from...
Will it be the same a-lot-of-empty-talk-from-democrats like after first trump's term, or actually some concrete action? Clearly if next president would be democrat he can do some nice revenge and rebalance, maybe petty but maybe necessary. I would expect republicans do the usual crappy move of sticking with theirs regardless of crimes committed, any actual morals are an afterthought.
Its so weird to watch from outside, illogical, deeply flawed, unfair, and pretty weak system when it comes to handling unscrupulous sociopaths.
All bad is good for some things in hindsight, world desperately needs more decoupling from US. Petrodollars, swift and so on. Compared to this, judging by pure actions, chinese may seem saint in comparison
This is genuinely hilarious. I guess you haven't been paying attention but "sitting idle during injustice" is all that Trump supporters do.
No, his base is already collapsing. He overextended with Iran, sent gas prices up, and as a direct result has finally started to bleed support from the know-nothings. I doubt Trump himself will ever face justice for his many crimes - he is likely to die of old age first - but the rest of the administration? Knives are out. They'll be back in prison just like happened in 2020 and 2021, and all those "dedicated supporters" will do nothing because the people who form this administration are petty, uninteresting people who were specifically chosen because they are not popular.
A pardon is only a protection against a 'vengeful administration' if that administration is not your party.
Pardons are only a miscarriage of justice if those pardoned don't share your ideology.
If that means a ton of literal insurrectionists go free, that's fine with me. We elected someone precisely to do that. It's on the voters if we elected someone who was literally treasonous himself.
I hope the insurrectionists take the opportunity to get on with their lives. I gather that quite a few have already been banned for other crimes, and that's too bad.
I don't want prison to be vengeance. I want prison to make us all safer. I'd like the President to take a lot of leeway in finding people who are going to be productive citizens if they were given that gift.
If there are other methods short of prison that can render law-breakers harmless - such as restrictions on certain activities and occupations - then those should be pursued first.
The ghost of this philosophy, however attenuated, can be seen in systems of pardon and parole.
I acknowledge that a desire for retribution - to punish the evil-doer; make them suffer for what they've done - is a strong impulse (I feel it myself!), deeply imbedded in our tribal psyches, but it should be fought, not indulged.
This seems to me to be the only moral basis for a system of justice and incarceration, though I have no idea how to nudge a society towards this model. Some northern European countries approach it.
Not everyone making a political argument is engaging in cynical tribalism. Believe it or not, some people do actually believe in things.
I certainly don't.
What big differences do you see?
So to answer your question, seems like Yes, pardons for all!
So child sacrifice and cannibalism are only technically "in the Epstein files;" there's very little evidence that anyone did those things. For other readers, if you hadn't heard about this, that's probably why.
If there is no evidence of a crime, you cannot prosecute someone in a constitutional democracy.
If you could you could just make up any claims and get rid of people you simply despise.
Which happens in various regimes...
So although it's certainly a possibility that such cases happened, as long as there is no evidence that they happened, they didn't for all legal matters.
I'm thinking of Carter fulfilling a campaign pledge to pardon draft dodgers. Whether you support that or not, he did what he said he was going to do and I'm sure only some of them had actually been charged in any way. I think that's a perfectly fine use for the pardon power.
Some will point to the Hunter Biden pardon. So two things can be true at once here: it was absolutely political prosecution AND Joe Biden was completely selfish with his action. At least do something for the people by, say, pardoning a whole bunch of low level drug offenders and decriminalize cannabis at the Federal level. But no, it was completely self-serving but his brain was pretty much gone by this point.
Here's the problem: Federal prosecutors have a ton of power. Conviction rates are 98-99%. But it goes beyond that. Federal prosecutors will intentionally bankrupt you to force you to take a plea. They might charge you with 15 felonies, 12 of which are basically bogus. You still have to defend those bogus felonies and that costs you money. And as soon as you run out of money, they'll offer you a plea where you're looking at 25 years on the 3 remaining felonies or you can just take 10.
The power imbalance is insane and the wealthy are essentially immune. If a US attorney decides to make an example of you, you're going to have a bad time, regardless of the facts.
Millions were spent dredging up some crimes for Hunter Biden and pretty much all they could come up with was doing crack and filling out a form incorrectly. Do you think anyone else would get that level of attention?
A very recent example of this is the Karen Read trial or, as I call it, the most expensive DUI prosecution in history. If you didn't follow the case, don't worry, there'll be any number of true crime documentaries. Millions were spent prosecuting Karen Read for killing JOhn O'Keefe with a completely ridiculous theory of the case and all sorts of evidence that went missing (including police officers disposing of their cell phones on a military base the day before an electronics preservation order was issued).
I don't know what we do about this power imbalance and selective prosecution.
This always gets thrown around, but the fact is they should be that high. Prosecutors shouldn't bring cases unless they have evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and DOJ prosectors don't (normally) screw around.
When you see lower rates of conviction, as in the current ethically bankrupt administration, it's often malicious prosecution, aka "You'll beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."
This high cost and power imbalance is used to force people into plea deals for crimes they didn't commit.
Let me give you an example: 924C enhancements [1]. This is where certain drug or violent crimes being committed with a firearm can add years or even decades to a sentence automatically.
Let's just say you live in a concealed carry state and you have a weapon on you. You're walking home and the police pick you up. You match the description of one of two people who were smoking drugs in an alley as per a 911 call. The other person was already picked up by police. He was unarmed. His story was that you sold him the drugs. He also claims you brandished a pistol.
Was there a drug transaction? Or was this simply two people smoking together? The other person had a small quantity of drugs on him when apprehended.
A 911 call mentioned seeing a weapon drawn. It was dark. You can go through versions of this scenario where you were the other person or it was a case of mistaken identity. Eitehr is bad for you.
What if the other person sold you the drugs and made up this story to avoid a distribution charge? What if as a teenager you had a minor possession charge? What if prosecutors believe the other person and make a deal for a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony?
You have a gun and now 2 witnesses who say you "brandished" the gun. So whatever charge you end up with the "brandishing a firearm" part (under 924(c)) adds 7 years to your sentence to be served consecutively. And they've stopped you with a firearm.
So what was a "he said, she said" situation has now turned into a situation where you could be facing 10 years in jail and defending against that could well cost you $200,000+, which you don't have. Or you can take this plea for 2 years in jail. What do you do?
[1]: https://www.nyccriminalattorneys.com/18-u-s-c-%C2%A7-924c-th...
There is a huge amount of hand-waving following this assertion without any evidence to back up the claim.
I'm not saying abuse of process doesn't happen, but this is just saying it can and then spelling out a big hypothetical without any proof that this practice is rampant.
> Among the many insights drawn from these wrongful convictions is the realization that a guilty plea is not an uncommon outcome for innocent people who have been charged with a crime: 11 percent of the DNA exonerees recorded by the Innocence Project pleaded guilty
There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea. If all 100% went to trial the system would collapse. As such, prosecutors coerce plea deals [3]. But the Trial Penalty works pretty much like the example described: if you go to trial, you will be overcharged and face, say, 10-30+ years in jail. Or you can take a plea for 2 years.
This Trial Penalty is made worse with mandatory minimums and add-on charges like I mentioned (ie 924(c)).
This effect has been modeled with maths and game theory to show hoow extreme outcomes cause people to plead guilty more often [4].
This is a well-known problem in criminal justice. You're showing either a complete lack of imagination or simply don't think this will ever be used against you.
[1]: https://www.innocenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/...
[2]: https://www.tisonlawgroup.com/is-your-sixth-amendment-right-...
[3]: https://innocenceproject.org/coerced-pleas/
[4]: http://www.bernardosilveira.net/resources/Plea_bargain_Novem...