Agreed, and I think it’s pretty much nonsense that PP is going to declare martial law or postpone next year’s election. He’s not smart enough, doesn’t know what that is, has never heard of it.
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I don’t know about @chetmurthy but what caught my eye was “The dossier contains lots of quid but no quo; it was also commissioned by the Clinton campaign…”
As you and @chetmurthy note it was initially commissioned by someone other than HFA and then picked up by HFA. The wording implies it was only commissioned by HFA.
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Agreed, You cannot be pardoned unless convicted. However, the cognitive dissonance the republicans have would allow them to see the prosecutions as nothing other than a political, deep state hit job that is not credible.
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I feel that way as well. I realize things can take a turn, but it will be theater and not reality. That is the part that concerns me. As a party, they are willing follow this (p)resident down a rabbit hole and drag us down in the process. They are and will fail, but will create a lot of unnecessary damage in the process. At this point, having lacked any coherent and mature policy, their motivation has become singular and visible. Then we can talk about this (p)resident and his own motivations and compromises. There is a lot of year to go through till November, it will be interesting.
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OT but seriously.
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/946404736189763586
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Well, people (i.e. Republicans) always talk about how they want to “run government like a business.” I’d say that we’re getting a real dose of reality in terms of what that is actually like. Also, I think that Trump must think that being POTUS is like being a CEO (hint: It’s not).
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The power of the president to issue pardons needs to be reconsidered once sanity is restored to the government, as do any previously accepted “norms” that required good faith on the part of the president. If new amendments are required, so be it, dare the republicans to oppose.
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There are actually a LOT of previously accepted Presidential norms and traditions that are going to need to be looked at and possibly codified into law post-Trump. :-/
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The pardon is a vestige of the divine right of monarchs. It is not intended to be absolute. The Constitution’s pardon provision says so with the limiting clause “except in Cases of Impeachment”.
What that means (to me anyway) is that a President cannot issue a self-interested/CYA pardon in a matter that would be deemed impeachable. Well, we already have impeachment filings in the House, so I think that should (IMHO) preclude the use of the pardon in anything that is related to #trumprussia.
The point is that a self-interested pardon could be challenged in court. Whether a court would uphold the challenge is another matter. The recent lower court decision on emoluments was not encouraging in terms of expecting a court to step into an area where there is little case history even though the Constitution and precedent ostensibly authorize the Courts to conduct judicial review of constitutionally impacting matters.
The other point is the legal impact of a pardon in the case itself. Any self-interested pardon, even if upheld, presents evidence of obstruction of justice. Acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt. That defendant would now be compelled to testify or face charges. The fact of a pardon would then be used by Mueller to demonstrate the corrupt intent needed to indict on obstruction of justice.
I believe that Trump has personally concluded that he cannot politically survive a firing of Mueller, and his attorneys have concluded that Trump’s biggest risk is obstruction of justice. His best strategy is to let others take the fall and he uses the constitutional protections of his office to avoid prosecution. If Mueller indicts Trump, Trump will challenge it and if he fails he will negotiate his resignation in exchange for some form of immunity. If Mueller makes a criminal referral to the House for impeachment, such a move will likely result in Trump not being impeached, or impeached but not being convicted. It’s clear that the GOP is so thoroughly corrupted and caught up in #trumprussia that there’s little chance that we’d find the votes in the Senate from the GOP to remove him from office.
The best way to get rid of Trump is for Mueller to spend 2018 investigating, indicting and convicting lower level Trump/GOP officials and have them testify under oath exposing the whole plot and the leadership role of Trump, Pence, Paul Ryan and others. That will give Mueller the tools to request Grand Juries to issue multiple indictments against Trump himself. Democrats would ride that wave to victory in November. At that point, Trump will attempt to negotiate his way out, throw people under the bus, and leave office early, or face trial as soon as he leaves office.
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Well, we already know that’s exactly what Mueller is doing. We know, according to the plea deal, that Flynn is not only cooperating with Mueller but also state and local governments. And you don’t get a plea deal or a light sentencing recommendation if you’re not cooperating.
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Lock them all up!
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There’s no way in hell Mueller agreed to a plea bargain and recommended a light sentence before finding out everything Flynn knows. Flynn was likely made “queen for a day” where he spilled all he knows so that Mueller could determine how valuable the information is. The fact that the sentencing recommendation was 0-6 months is all anyone needs to know about what Mueller gleaned from Flynn. It’s gotta be devastating.
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Thank you. So many intelligent TPMers seem pretty determined to ignore those two points in favor of some fantastical doomsday scenario in which PP just pardons everyone and that’s that. That’s not how this works.
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The power to pardon, like everything in Trump’s life, is something he will use for personal profit if possible. Read “Trump: The Art of the Deal” for details.
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Awesome. Thanks as always. Think we could build a Castle on an Island, call it TrumpMAGAdonia, put in a gold bathroom with Fox news election day on a loop, and tell Trump he’s now king of an even better place than the USA.
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If a pardoned witness fails to testify truthfully, and he his indicted for perjury or charged with contempt, could he then be pardoned for his perjury or contempt?
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Yep. It is either an A or B situation. Either Flynn did not do anything worthy beyond what he plead to, or yeah, Hulk Smash!
I will go with the latter.
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Yep. At which point, we really have a first class constitutional crisis. Whether impeachment, putting the question of whether a sitting president can be indicted for obstruction of justice to the test or both.
Tangential, but it’s worth noting that back of all of this is the fact that there’s a document given to federal authorities in which Flynn lays out in writing what he is prepared to testify to under oath in exchange for leniency. A pardon of the breadth Ford gave Nixon might well immunize him from liability for lying to federal investigators in that statement, but he still ends up having to testify as to whether he was lying when he said that and the only jeopardy-free answer is “no, that was the truth then and it is now.” Meaning that the time when Trump could have tried to pardon his way out of trouble with Flynn has come and gone.
Still there for Manafort, of course. Or is it?
And just going super off-topic, has anyone noticed how we’ve heard nothing about Hope Hicks and her chat with Mueller’s team lately?
Also, anyone noticed that we’ve heard absolutely nothing out of Giuliani since, what, February? March? To call it an uncharacteristic silence is putting it mildly.
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initially commissioned by a Marco Rubio campaign donor
There, changed the name, leave out Clinton entirely, now it’s better.
Every time. Started by a stinking Republican running against vote loser Trump. Say it!
Started by a Republican running against Trump. Rinse and repeat.
Please.
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Well the pardon makes it easier for them to rat him out. He’s cutting off his nose to spite his face if he does it.
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