Which is pretty easily disproven since he talked about them to the press at the time;
I have a funny image of an intern feeding pardon papers he sold on E-Bay into the autopen machine at midnight.
Fake news!
House Republicans criticized President Obama for his use of the autopen in 2011, and asked him to affix his signature personally. (Notably, President Obama was on a different continent than the bill to which his signature was attached.)
~Max
(sigh) I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
We could’ve had nice things.
I guess my question here is what do those who received pardons do when Bondi or Patel send investigators around? Or when a House committee subpoenas them to appear? Can they simply ignore them or will they be forced to retain counsel and fight it out in court? It seems that is what the pardons are meant to prevent.
I got to looking at some of my cash, and I’m worried. I don’t think the Treasury Secretary actually signed my money! I looked at two bills, and the sig was identical!
I think the only answer is when the president no longer burdens themself with worries about the rule of law.
During the Biden administration, Trump instructed the Republicans to use the threat of a government shutdown as a bargaining chip. A reporter noted that Trump had said something quite different when he was president, when he argued that nobody should use the threat of a government shutdown as a bargaining chip. When asked why his position has changed, Trump replied, “I’m not the president right now.” Rules for thee but none for me.
That was enough for Trump in his first term. Here is a page showing a timeline of his efforts to use investigations and threats of prosecution to harass people he didn’t like.
You’ll note that things almost never got past the “investigation” stage to actually prosecute anyone. The investigation and threats themselves were enough. He doesn’t need justice, he doesn’t need people behind bars. He just needs to cause pain for people regardless of the end result.
It’s sort of a win-win for Trump. He doesn’t have to worry about the legality of what he’s doing, he doesn’t have to actually find any evidence of wrongdoing from anyone. He doesn’t have to drag things out for years waiting for the wheels of justice to put someone in jail. He just points his finger, an investigation happens, and anyone he doesn’t like has their life turned into a nightmare, even if they are completely innocent of everything they’re accused of.
He also manages to get impressive head on a spike mileage out of each and every one of these persecutions/investigations: