As I just wrote in the clusterfuck thread (but don’t know how to link):
“Trump acted now because Stone was scheduled to report to prison next week. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence instead of pardoning him to minimize the political impact to his own re-election chances.
After the election, all bets are off. I have absolutely no doubt that he will pardon Stone before he leaves office.
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that this is ludicrously corrupt. The only reason that Trump is doing this is because Stone is his long-time associate and (much more importantly) because Stone has dirt on Trump.”
In that other thread I linked to this good David Frum article. He clearly explains what happened in 2016, and how astoundingly (indeed, entertainingly) brazen Stone is about his Tony Soprano-esque reasoning:
Aside from the fact that that makes no sense whatsoever, any defense of the orange buffoon’s egregious corruption and stupidity at this point in history shows the intellectual ineptitude equivalent to smearing youself with your own shit and jumping around proudly – i.e.- not something a sane person would ever do. But you did. Congratulations, I guess. (The comparison with the Obama pardons was particularly hilarious.)
This was Bricker’s annoying and immoral retort for years in this board. Tim_Mortiss has taken up the slack in Bricker’s absence, but at least Bricker would have also (I’m pretty sure) condemned this brazen use of the (yes, legal, we know!) pardon/commutation power.
When a person is accused of abuse of power, it’s no defense at all to point out that he had the power. We already know that. It’s right there in the charge: Abuse of power implies having the power.
The real question, which I’m sure Tim R. Mortiss will avoid, is whether Trump should have used that power.
In all seriousness, I have an upcoming jury duty. And I am considering whether I can reasonably vote to convict a suspect in a trial considering all Americans are not subject to the same jeopardy as the one that I’m likely to be asked to judge.
Yes, I know this has always been an issue, but in this case, we have here a subset of Americans who were in absolutely no jeopardy regardless of what the trial revealed.
There’s a lot of not very exciting history behind it, but the context is basically that examples of modern liberal democracies didn’t exist when the US came around in the late 18th century. The other major example in the same timeframe was the French Revolution and that still several years in the future. They were largely flying blind when it came to how to structure a liberal democracy.
This is one of those cases where the intentions were good - there should be a check on excesses of judicial power in egregious cases - but the end result could easily be abused. It’s not the only such case of a power that was well-intentioned but ultimately poorly executed, but it is, at the moment, rather glaring.
Unfortunately, another intention was that the Constitution could be more easily changed than it ended up being. The idea was that anything that wasn’t working could be changed because educated, well-intentioned men from every state would work in common cause to improve matters. It was more idealistic than realistic even at the time and has only become less realistic since then.
That’s a good point, but even if Stone is pardoned for this offense, I don’t doubt that he would still invoke the 5th Amendment. I’m sure there are plenty of other offenses he has committed for which he would not want to incriminate himself.
With that said, I have no expectation of Stone even responding to a subpoena so long as Trump and Barr are in power.
Getting back to the commutation, let’s see this for what the behavior represents. It’s the continuation of a pattern, which is to replace the rule of law with a rule of man. Trump is behaving like an autocrat: he, and he alone, will decide what ‘justice’ is, not the law. He doesn’t have time for pesky little prosecutors, judges, and citizen juries.
More than that, it’s the continuation of another pattern: “I’ll do whatever I want, and I dare any of you to try and stop me. I doubt people - my people - give a shit about the Constitution and any of its goddamn laws.”
p.s. “If I want to cancel an election, stop voting by mail, or let Russia hack into databases in this upcoming election in which I might lose, who the fuck is gonna stop me?”
I am not a Constitutional scholar, so a serious question, if anyone can answer: does the Constitution provide any mechanism for the power of the pardon for the President to be reigned in by Congress? Or would it be necessary to amend the Constitution, for example?
Trump also commuted Rod Blagojevich’s sentence. I believe that there may have been some small arguments that the sentence Blago was given was a bit excessive (on the other hand, he was trying to auction a U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, for crying out loud!). But the commutation appears to have been given out solely because Blago’s wife went on Fox News and asked Trump.
One doesn’t need to be “Constitutional scholar” (however that gets determined) to realize that the Constitution is not necessarily some divine, pristine, pure, holier than God, more perfect than God, absolutely unquestionable, never to be doubted, heavenly housed document. That’s just a myth we tell ourselves, so we can be complacent.
Frankly, the “founding fathers” fucked up in several ways.
Yeah, that certainly appeared to be the case in the Blago example. Of course, Trump might also been hoping to get a rise out of Obama, given that it was Obama’s seat that Blago was trying to sell.
Well, I would generally agree with that assertion, but just the same, I was wondering if the pardon power of the President, as stipulated within the Constitution, can be changed by a simple act of Congress, or if more extraordinary action (such as an amendment) might be necessary.
Jimmy Carter pardoned Paul Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, after he was convicted of indecent behaviour with a 14 year old.
Reagan pardoned George Steinbrenner after he was convicted on 14 counts of illegal financial contribution to the Nixon campaign.
Bill Clinton pardoned Patty Hearst. He also pardoned his brother Roger, who was convicted of dealing cocaine. And most controversially, he pardoned Marc Rich, a long time major donor to the Democratic Party, who was convicted of Wire fraud, mail fraud, racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, criminal forfeiture, income tax evasion (the largest tax fraud in history) and trading with Iran in violation of trade embargo, and who fled the country and was a fugitive from justice. Upon request from Jesse Jackson, he also pardoned a friend of Jackson’s who had committed fraud and statutory rape.
There are sketchy and downright obvious crap pardons on pretty much every President’s list, but I think Clinton has the record right now for the largest list of questionable pardons. He pardoned 140 people on his last day in office, including Rich, his brother, and a bunch of other coke dealers, probably to cover for pardoning his coke dealing brother. He even pardoned a terrorist who was caught with 740 lbs of explosives.
Roger Stone’s pardon for process crimes is weak tea compared to many others in history, by presidents of both parties.
But eliminating the pardon power is not a good idea. The vast majority of pardons actually repair injustices, like a black man getting sentenced to 10 years for kiting a check, or a guy who did years for turning back an odometer. Crazy sentences happen, corrupt jurisdictions exist, and it’s good to have a way to undo them.
