He’s joining the Republican herd. Not the time I’d choose to make the big jump. Not sure why he thinks he has a shot over DeSantis or Trump. Brave, but maybe dumb.
He was interviewed on CNN yesterday during the hours they tried to fill in Miami. Nothing other than MAGA bullshit and a dose of “let’s bring the country togelther.”
A cynic might think that these Republicans are crowding the field to create a stacked deck, which is what Trump has always required. Given this green light, Christie is free to criticize Trump, someone has to play that role. A cynic might think that.
I’m wondering how many of the GOP candidates are actually auditioning for the role of Vice-President.
That, or the ambassador to Slovenia.
It is just that so many of them are trying to emulate Trump without actually bad-mouthing him. There is even talk of pardoning him if they get put in office. Unstated (but certainly not very well hidden) is the offer to give him a pardon if he just happens to step down while in office.
A pardon comes with the admission of guilt, right? That may be the best we can hope for.
I’m not sure an admission of guilt is necessary for a pardon to be valid.
And another politician that’s under investigation by the FBI for corruption throws his hat into the ring.
I wonder if he’ll also start accusing the FBI of election interference. Maybe we’ll have a whole lot more folks under investigation decide that the want to be the Republican candidate for POTUS.
My guess is that Trump has demonstrated how with lack of morality and flexible interpretation of campaign finance laws one can make make tidy profit off of gullible patriots by running for president, and they want in on the gravy train.
Here is where I usually insert Burdick vs. United States (1915). It found, amongst other things:
… the pardoned person must accept the pardon. If a pardon is rejected, it cannot be forced upon its subject.
This bit is apparently not as clear-cut as I thought:
Although the Supreme Court’s opinion stated that a pardon carries "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it,"[1] this was part of the Court’s dictum for the case.[3] Whether the acceptance of a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt by the recipient is disputed. In Lorance v. Commandant, USDB (2021) the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “there is no confession and Lorance does not otherwise lose his right to petition for habeas corpus relief for his court-martial conviction and sentence. The case was remanded for further action not inconsistent with the court’s opinion.”[4]
This was the case Gerald Ford carried in his wallet (a portion of it, at least) to justify to people his pardon of Nixon.
I’d like to announce my intention of running for President.
What? Isn’t everybody?
That’s a hard sell for me, given that people that demonstrably DID NOT COMMIT A CRIME they were in prison for have been pardoned, and accepted such pardons. Do they have to essentially lie and confess to a crime they didn’t commit to no longer be in prison for a crime they didn’t commit?
Ford was an ignorant coward that had a small part in our current situation, where certain citizens believe it’s impossible for a former President to have committed any crime.
Neither Trump nor DeSantis could have Mayor Suarez as their running mate, as for Constitutional reasons the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates need to be residents of different states.
I would think that having so many candidates hands the primary election to Trump.
If it were proven that they did not commit the crime, they shouldn’t need to be pardoned, the conviction should be overturned.
Agreed. But certain judges dislike overturning verdicts, even in the face of exculpatory evidence. It’s easier for them just to have the innocent man accept a pardon, which in their mind takes the egg off their face
As Justice Scalia famously said, proven innocence not grounds for reversal of a conviction.
Taking issue with the majority’s mere hypothetical entertainment of an innocence claim, Scalia wrote: “There is no basis, tradition, or even in contemporary practice for finding that in the Constitution the right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after a conviction.” He concluded, “With any luck, we shall avoid ever having to face this embarrassing question again.”
And then there’s this:
In 2013, the Court decided McQuiggin v. Perkins, in which it ruled that an inmate who proved “actual innocence” could petition a court to hear his constitutional claims even if his one-year statute of limitations deadline had run. Justice Scalia dissented, asserting that allowing such an actual innocence petition “piles yet more dead weight onto a post-conviction habeas system already creaking at its rusted joints.”
Ah, that’s why we don’t see eye to eye. That doesn’t happen very often. Idealism is wonderful, but justice is better.
Really? Amazing no one else has thought of this. /s