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 Constitution assumed that the Congress wouldn’t abdicate all of its power. A unitary executive wouldn’t be possible if Congress stood their ground and said “Nope”.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him but GOP Senators are playing team sports instead of common sense.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him
The House Impeaches.
The Senate convicts.
But you need a supermajority in the Senate, which even the Radical Republicans of the 1870s failed to muster, despite having the half the country under Marshall Law at the time.
The unilateral presidential pardon and veto are both huge mistakes.
That puts far too much power in the hands of one person. Especially in a country that wanted to eliminate a king-like position ruling over them.
That wasn’t a mistake. It was absolutely intentional.
It is vital to understand the early American state as a patronage system and the president as the ultimate patrician through which power flows. If you look at early Plantation society, and the subsequent networks of power that flow from landholders to merchant brokers and from yeomen to their wealthy oligarch neighbors, all of this fits neatly together.
The problem the American Founders saw was with the upstart plebians and landless workers. Pardons and vetos check the power of popular judges and legislators, as intended.
Yep, it all flows together because the thinkers behind the Constitution and the plantation model were post-Enlightenment classicists literally basing their perfect model of society on the Roman Republic.
That is propaganda, they wanted a king, just their kind of king. His name was Washington and he would have been a billionaire adjusted for inflation if he had not died in his sixties. The US was always corrupt from the very start.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen. This ended a long time ago, but Trump goes the extra mile to prove he is anything but.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen.
https://www.americanheritage.com/verdicts-history-iv-scandalous-malicious-and-seditious-libel
In 1803 the infant American Republic was running a high political fever. The ferocity of the verbal warfare raging between the Federalists, the party created by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by President Jefferson, has rarely been matched in American politics, even by the diatribes of today’s New Left and Ultra Right.
The first fusillades had been fired during Washington’s Presidency. The Jeffersonians, with not a little help from the Sage of Monticello himself, had set up journalists such as Philip Freneau and Benjamin Franklin Bache with one mission, to deflate and discredit an administration that was, in Jefferson’s view, “galloping fast into monarchy.” They soon had the Father of His Country in a state of near apoplexy. “That rascal Freneau,” as Washington called him, insisted on sending his scurrilous National Gazette, published in Philadelphia, to the President’s house even after he had cancelled his subscription. Freneau spent most of his abuse on Hamilton. Baclic preferred Washington as a target, calling him “treacherous,” “mischievous,” “inefficient,” and sneering at his “farce of disinterestedness” and his “stately joumeyings through the American continent in search of personal incense.”
These verbal guerrillas soon had imitators. Among the more savage was William Duane, Bache’s successor as editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. Washington, he wrote, had “discharged the loathings of a sick mind.” Even this was topped by an English newcomer, James T. Callender. In the Richmond Examiner he declared that “Mr. Washington has been twice a traitor.”
Well yes, but also the concept of honour back then was dictated largely by rich slave owners. So…
I’d trust the honor of a slaveowner over the proud cruelty we have now. It’s not like the fascists are less racist.
I’d trust the honor of a slaveowner
The whole context is 22 words bud, I know you can read that much. I like Community but even as a joke reference it’s a reach.
That may be, but it’s dangerous to guess at a distance. And time is a distance all its own
Fascist is bad enough, but even Hitler would cringe at the idea of a goddamn pedophile being in charge (assuming he wasn’t one himself).
The Nazi Party was flush with pedophiles
I don’t doubt it, it’s just more depressing.
“assuming he wasn’t one himself” look up Geli Raubal and the allegiations of abusive sexual relationship between her (as a minor) and Hitler. Moreover, they were relatives. Just like Ivanka and Donnie Daughterfucker.
I did not know, but it’s not fucking surprising.
Considering the US founders owned slaves, I reckon they were short sighted in many other aspects of what they “founded”.
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.
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.
edit: On second thought, seeing as half of them didn’t know if they wanted an elected representative or a king to rule their new nation, maybe the outcome was all too predictable even back then. Apparently some people, even wise and intelligent people, tend to gravitate towards the mindset that the powerful deserve to rule and the meek deserve to be ruled over as a sort of natural order.
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.
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
The founders couldn’t imagine a president making literally everyone in their party’s congress a scared little bitch.
Or they couldn’t imagine a populace that would elect Trump.
The founders actually didn’t trust the populace with electing the President. That’s the original reason why the Electoral College exists. Back then, State Legislatures would choose electors, and they would all meet to choose the President.
So I would argue the opposite, they did imagine a populace that would elect someone like Trump, and deliberately designed a system that would ignore them.
Are you fucking kidding me?
In many ways they were far, far worse than Trump. And proud of it.
How many Mulatto bastards did Jefferson sire, again?
I agree it’s you generally. Do they have a specific mechanism for controlling the pardon? Or would they just have to fall back on unpacking and removing the president? Because if that’s the only solution, sure it exists, but yeah the pardon power itself could probably use some work.
His pardons are as legitimate as his election fraud claims. The rest of the government should be treating it with similar disdain
There are not really any legal limits on Trump’s pardon power, so what Trump is doing there is technically within the law. In that sense it is quite different from Trump’s fraudulent election fraud claims.
14A3 disqualifies him. He wasn’t legally appointed.
The problem is enforcing it and getting it legally recognized that nothing he did in the second term had legal force, and nothing had immunity.
Which is objectively true. But also kinda besides the point.
If the presidency gets nullified due to always having been disqualified, the pardon power nullifies. So it’s to the point.
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.
I really have no idea why they did they, I agree we should get rid of presidential pardoning power. We should have gotten rid of it after Nixon.
Should have gotten rid of it after the civil war
Should have gotten rid of the traitors after the civil war.
They just kept fighting politically for a century and more and here we are. I think almost all ails we experience today can be tracked to that shit, they never went away.
And you can’t have a democratic society where some people just super want to own slaves and never ever shut the fuck up about it.
These are just fundamentally incompatible “moralities”. Red vs Blue. Slave owners against abolitionists.
I think that’s the nature of the fight we’re fighting here.
agreed, President also should have nothing to do with DOJ / appointing the AG. Big mistake.
Perhaps the pardon should be a 2/3 vote of congress instead, just to preserve the check on the judiciary
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
Yeah, the “new Constitution” would be a feeding frenzy and we may as well get called “Free Corporations of America” or something, which is what we really revolted from England: the oligarchs in mainland England had sway over the King and it ignored the colonies until we were overtaxed and hardly represented.
You had rich white dudes who didn’t want to pay taxes. Oh…
The solution is to make America decline in power enough that its politicians aren’t worth buying.
Narrator: He wasn’t wrong.
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’re allowed “tax free” status as a result of separation of church and state. They’re not adhering to their part of the bargin, so tax them
I mean itnisnt a holy document like Americans think it is. Itnis old and at least needs to be updatedeted.
It needs clarified in some places, yes. But I do not want to give Republicans a blank check to rewrite the Constitution. I guarantee they will establish a religion and criminalize abortion at the very, very least.
Thomas Jefferson proposed exactly that, but other founders did not heed his advice.
I don’t want these fuckers anywhere near the Constitution. I guarantee they will establish a religion and probably eliminate presidential term limits.
The Orange Shitstain has proven there are a shit ton of loopholes in the US government.
I hope they will tighten up and amend any loopholes that got them into this mess in the first place.
Citizens united, first past the post, the two party state are the most important ones I think to fix.
That will need the constitution to be rewritten, or amended.
A two party democracy is like a society with bipolar disorder. It’s just a one party state with an extra flavor. That’s why the oligarchs and AIPAC et al pay off both sides.
When you have that kind of money it doesn’t matter, you’ll get your way because there’s only two parties to bribe anyway.
They’ll have to if they expect the rest of us to trust them going forward.
I think part of the problem with pardon power is that it can be freely done.
I think a president should nominate someone for pardoning, then congress critters have to give a 51% vote in favor of pardoning for it to ultimately take effect. 30 days have to pass during the nomination period for them to review the pardon, the pardon to be public knowledge, and congress critters having their name attached to their vote. Particular crimes should be noted for the pardoning, and a pardon doesn’t void new infractions of the same kind of crime.
A second 30 day direct voting period then takes place to confirm the pardon. The general public sends in a vote, based on all voters who send in a ballot. By default in this stage, the pardon passes unless 51% of the ballots reject the pardon.
To sum up:
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1a: A president nominates a person for pardon for specific crimes at the time of the pardon.
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1b: The nominated for pardoning must be considered a flight risk, and prevented from free international travel during the review stages.
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2: After 30 days of review, 51% of congress must decide whether to approve of the pardon, attaching their name to the vote.
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3a: Following approval by the congressional voting period, direct voters from the public can send in ballots to cancel the pardon. 51% of voters who submit a ballot must agree to cancel the pardon. This window lasts 30 days.
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3b: Direct voters can choose to automatically prevent the leader from nominating pardons. 51% of the voters have to agree to remove the pardoning power. This state lasts for the current term of the leader. If this leader is elected again, a ballot is sent out to ask whether their pardoning privilege is restored for their new term.
IMO, the important part of a pardon is for national security purposes - but right now, it is too easy to pardon bad actors in the name of factional forgiveness or bribes.
Chelsea Manning wouldn’t have gotten a pardon if you all had implemented that. A lot of terrible people would still have gotten pardons. Your congress is an applause machine right now
your “to sum up” section is longer than the rest of your comment
This sounds like the Kamala Harris pardon plan. Does it include means testing and tax rebates?
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No, no, you see there’s a system of checks and balances.
Presidential Pardons are balanced by the 2nd amendment.
They expected people to conduct themselves as adults and not vote in a piece of shit.
They should’ve listened to Alexander Hamilton who also factored in “human nature.” So, they should’ve imagined Idiocracy and how to navigate it amicably?
Watching US coverage of their politics, it’s really amazing seeing people being interviewed in their 40’s that act like teenagers still.
America has a real maturity problem it seems to me.
