As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2018
Who would have thought Donald Trump, not even half-way through his term, would claim he can pardon himself for crimes committed while running for and serving as president? (Not that he would do anything wrong, of course.)
I asked my friend Swamp Rabbit and he said, “Anyone who knows Trump’s history and isn’t a total dumb-ass would have thought it.”
Trump’s tweet was a wake-up call to all the peeps who think our much-lauded system of checks and balances is a guarantee that a dictator type like Trump will never defy the law in order to hold onto power.
And it was a warning to special counsel Robert Mueller and his posse as they strengthen their case regarding the Trump team’s possible collusion with Russian hackers who helped him win the 2016 presidential election. (Actually, he lost by about 2.9 million votes, but that’s another story.)
We’re likely to hear the word “self-pardon” fairly often as Mueller gets closer to nailing Trump.
Just the other day constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley wrote that Trump can indeed pardon himself, even though “a self-pardon would be [an] ignoble and self-defeating act.”
Some scholars disagree with Turley, but the fact that Trump has made the idea of self-pardon a point of debate is evidence of flaws in the laws governing the executive branch.
The flaws were always there. How ironic that it took a third-rate Mussolini to bring them to light.
Perhaps it would be a good thing to have this issue settled once and for all?
Maybe then we could ask the most relevant question of all, who actually is in charge of running this train?
Yesterdays ‘jungle’ primary in California worked out very well for the Democrats, although less well for the Left.
Rightest Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly expressed her fears about a primary system that she calls “a mess.”
Well, the system can’t be that bad because the Democrats didn’t get shut out of any race, and Democratic voters didn’t nominate any “crazies.”
It’s always a good idea to keep the Establishment (the oligarchs and their plutocrats who don’t trust the judgement of the people) nervous and on their toes. Always.
In the end, and just before his assassination, Bobby Kennedy had a change of heart about the morality of the war in Vietnam, and about the corrosive impact that concentrated wealth had on democracy.
Kennedy was assassinated and Hubert Humphrey took on the Left, allowing Nixon to win.
And here we are today with the authoritarian Trump very close to declaring his status as Supreme Being.
Clearly something has gone badly wrong with our current political system.
The drafters of the Constitution were keenly aware of regal authority. “Pardon” as they used it is a third party action. The federal judiciary threatens or imposes a penalty on a private party. The pardon power is available to the President to prevent or re-visit the sanction. A self pardon is impunity. Even Nixon understood that. He could have pardoned himself and saved Ford a lot of political grief.
you cannot be pardoned except after adjudication. (innocent until proven guilty as the common-law saying is). It is simple logic and the meaning of words. In order to be resurrected you have to die first. In order to get sobered up you have to have been drunk. In order to wake up you have to have been asleep.