Pretty much what it says in the title, and posted because of very recent events.
Not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar but I can’t imagine you can just invalidate a pardon. If so the next Dem pres can invalidate the Jan 6th pardons and send those folks back to jail. A very slippery slope.
IANAL. My understanding is there is no legal way to revoke a Presidential pardon, its a constitutional right of the POTUS to grant them, there is no un-grant privilege in the constitution. Also, to do so would also be against the Constitutional right agaisnt being subject to Ex-Post Facto laws.
The only scenario I can imagine where a presidential pardon could be legally revoked would be if a future president was able to make a legally convincing argument that the pardoning president had not legally been president at the time the pardon was issued.
For example, the Confederate Constitution gave the Confederate President the power to issue pardons. So Jefferson Davis may have pardoned some people based on this and released them from prison. But once the United States reasserted its authority over the southern states, it did not have to recognize those pardons and could have re-imprisoned the people in question.
Some scenario could occur in the future (and is not as unthinkable as it might have once been) in which there is a contested election and two different people claim to be the President of the United States. If the situation goes on for some time, pardons might be issued by both men. When the dispute is resolved and we once again have a single President, that President would not have to recognize the legality of the other President’s pardons.
I thought I heard on the news that Trump claimed there was a problem with Biden’s signature, or with the timing of the pardons. I hope it goes to court and Trump loses, although you never know what tricks he has up his sleeve.
Trump is saying Biden used an Autopen (a machine that writes signatures) to sign the pardons. Since Biden did not sign them personally they do not count (according to Trump).
I wonder if Trump personally signed all his Jan. 6 pardons? Trump doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be bothered to do that.
President Donald Trump claimed that former President Joe Biden’s pardons of lawmakers who served on the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and others, are “VOID,” alleging that they had been signed via an autopen and that Biden did not even know about them.
Obama used an autopen to sign the extension of the Bush tax cuts in 2013 and I don’t recall any Republicans complaining about that. According to Snopes, the DOJ opined under Bush II that it was fully legal to sign legislation with one, and most presidents since Truman have used them for signing things like officers’ commissions.
This is gonna be a huge nothingberder.
Pretty rich for a guy who didn’t put his hand in the bible while being sworn in…to the presidency!
To be fair, that is not a requirement when taking the oath of office.
But Trump argued that the POTUS could declassify docments just by thinking about them. Didn’t Biden also verbally pardon his son by discussing his reason why?
[Moderating]
The factual answer to this question is simple, and was given in the first reply, and is widely known (including, I suspect, by the OP).
Anything beyond that is for P&E.
Moving.
Very straightforward. The President has the legal right to invalidate a previous President’s pardon when five out of nine Supreme Court Justices decide that he can.
He’s just so dumb.
Most of Biden’s pardons were preemptive, largely for the convenience of those receiving them, whose charges were likely to be dismissed and whose cases, for those few that went to trial, would overwhelmingly be won by the defendants. Trump’s pardons, on the other hand, were for people who had overwhelmingly lost their casses and were serving long prison terms.
Never. Is never good for you?
Everyone Trump tells the DOJ to indict will have the right to take their case all the way to the SC. Which they will have to do since apparently his admin will not follow court orders from anyone else. They will get to spend tens of thousands of dollars and be harassed and threatened for as long as that takes. That might be enough for Trump if the SC tells him to knock it off. Or he could just tell them to pound sand. I guess we will see.
Trump-101. It is what he has done for decades. Just live in the courts forever (appeal after appeal and if one runs out find a different argument and start again) and keep doing your thing in the mean-time.
And the SC pretty much gave him carte blanche already so Trump is more than happy to do this dance (especially since he does not have to pay for it).
According to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has no authority to review pardons.
But they would not be reviewing the pardons. They would be reviewing if the pardons actually happened as they were supposed to. Given this SC…I wouldn’t trust them to refuse this.
As an aside, that person probably had a really hard time in school with a name like that.
More specifically, Trump is claiming they were signed by autopen, AND that Biden was not even aware of the pardons. His claim is a bit unclear, but seemingly he’s saying there’s possibly nothing wrong with the autopen signature concept per-se, but combined with Biden not even being aware of the pardons they are invalid.
I would agree that the autopen claim is unlikely to be prominently featured in Trump administration legal filings, if that is what you mean.
This may be the most significant sentence in Trump’s Truth Social post:
I think this is a message for Patel and Bondi. They still have time before the big guy gets totally annoyed, but Trump wants to see his enemies arrested.