Trump said he would consider pre-emptive pardons to protect Elon Musk and other close aides should Democrats take control of Congress
Donald Trump said he would be willing to protect Elon Musk and his staff if Democrats take control of Congress after the midterm elections this week.
In an interview for the “Pod Force One” podcast published Monday, Trump said he would move to “protect” the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO if Congressional investigators targeted him.
Trump also indicated that he was weighing pre-emptive pardons for his close aides and others around him should the Democrats pursue investigations, according to Axios. It is a notion that the president has floated before to keep his team from facing prosecution for actions during the first two years of his term.
“Pre-emptive pardon” is just another way of saying you are giving someone an exemption from having to follow the law.
…for a price, I’m sure.
Maybe it’s time to float rewriting the pardon powers so there’s checks and balances that can’t be abused, because you know if one did it more will do the same otherwise. Invalidate his pardon power, invalidate his pardons, crimes committed by those in office should not be pardonable, etc.
We need to make it so that the president can only pardon people who they don’t personally know, and who didn’t commit crimes that directly benefit them.
The J6ers shouldn’t have been pardonable, members of his administration should not be pardonable. Only private citizens whose crimes had no benefit to the president.
And there should be a limit to how many they get. Like 36 a year or something. Thats 3 per month; more than enough!
They were crying when Biden did it.
Tell me you’re guilty as fuck without telling me you’re guilty as fuck.
Everything out of that loser’s mouth for the last decade has been screaming that he’s guilty.
He’s unwittingly telegraphing that they should only pursue state-level prosecutions while he’s still in office. Not that they didn’t know that already.
How fucked up of a country is it that, in America, if Hitler was around living in Texas and putting Jews in concentration camps and murdering them, the president could pardon him?
This isn’t a left or right. Abolish pardons. No one should be above the law. Yes I understand shitty governments would weaponize this fast. I don’t care.
Trump. Elon. The whole lot of them need to be on trial for policies that have murdered millions worldwide.
Pardon for what? Election manipulation? Theft? Treason? Overstaying his education visa?
Yes
Pardoned for what?
They haven’t been convicted of any crimes (yet)?
How is a pre-emptive pardon even a thing? The notion alone seems like a perversion of the original intent.
It’s because WE have to follow rules and THEY dont
Unfortunately, there is precedent as Ford’s pardon of Nixon included future crimes. It’s fucking stupid.
You can’t call it a “precedent” if it was not contested in a legal environment.
That said, the constitution allows too much bullshit. It needs to be culled.
Next president better reverse all these dollarstore pardons.
If pardons were easily reversed, surely many would’ve been this year if not last year.
Won’t stop the hangings after Nuremberg 2.0
Pardon away. It won’t stop state charges…
Preemptive pardon should not even be a thing.
And if it is, the executive should list explicitly what crimes, on what days, against which individuals, cannot be brought to trial.
This is the real crux of the issue. Blanket pardons shouldn’t be a thing. If you want to pardon someone, it should be specific. Which crimes? Where? When? Who was victimized? Who else was involved? What was the outcome of the crime?
The SCOTUS has already ruled in
Burdick v. USthat accepting a pardon requires admitting guilt of the crime you’re being pardoned of. The wording of the ruling was that a pardon carries “an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.” The SCOTUS has consistently held that a pardon does not overturn a guilty conviction. Instead, it removes the punishment for the crime. You’re still unequivocally guilty after a pardon.It shouldn’t be some sort of “I pardon you for waves arms in air vaguely” power, because that turns the whole “needing to admit guilt” part into a sly wink wink elbow nudge situation. It puts the person’s crimes in a quantum Schrödinger state. The person accepting a vague pardon is inarguably guilty of something, because they admitted guilt when they accepted the pardon. But the court doesn’t know what they’ve admitted to until a prosecutor tries to indict them, and they go “oh no you can’t prosecute me, I was pardoned.”
It reminds me a little of popes selling indulgences. “Donate money and/or go on crusade, and I’ll absolve you of any sins you’ve already commited or will commit in the future.” That sort of thing eventually resulted in a rather significant schism.
Doesn’t accepting a pardon, especially a blanket pardon, also mean that you lose your Fifth Amendment protection to not incriminate yourself? You can not be punished for what you did, that means you have nothing to fear and can be made to confess everything and incriminate accomplices. Wouldn’t that be some way to have a go at Trump?
Effect of a Pardon
The Fifth Amendment privilege exists to protect the witness from providing self-incriminating testimony so long as, and only so long as, the danger of prosecution persists. As a result, according to at least one Supreme Court case, when a “witness has already received a pardon, he cannot longer set up his [Fifth Amendment] privilege, since he stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.”
That’s true, in that way it works like an immunity deal.
The problem is that, if the pardonee refuses to testify and is found in contempt, Trump (or some later asshole) can then pardon the contempt as well.
Maybe, but if you have a blanket pardon then what are they going to charge you if you just refuse to comply? You’ve already been pardoned for the hypothetical contempt.
At present pardons can be blanket, but they can’t be prospective. So it can be “I pardon you for all (federal) crimes ever up to now”, but it can’t be I pardon you for X you’re going to do tomorrow.
Accepting a pardon means you’re guilty.
No, it doesn’t.
It does, however, void your 5th Amendment rights to refuse to testify against yourself.
Accepting a pardon is generally seen as an admission of guilt.
Stupid people think all kinds of things. Do you let them decide everything else you believe too?
They aren’t a thing. You can only pardon a crime that’s already been commited, not for future crimes.
Also Trump violated his oath of office within 72 hours of this term beginning, so technically none of his pardons mean anything from this term and can just be reversed.
He wasn’t legitimately serving in capacity of the president since he abdicated his office by violating his oath.
Oh I looked it up and you’re right that future crimes can’t be pardoned. It doesn’t help that the media talks about preemptive pardons like they are for future crimes, when it really only means crimes that have been committed but no charges have been filed yet. https://northernkentuckylawreview.com/blog/preemptive-pardons-explained-understanding-president-bidens-family-pardons
The crimes have already been committed, they just haven’t been charged for it yet.
That would be interesting - if he could pardon the crimes but he’d first have to specifically detail them.
Exactly, and there’s always like dozens of not hundreds of possible charges you could bring. If they pardon the few obvious big ones, they can still be charged on all the other ones, and have a judge sentence them to serve consecutively.
They also aren’t immune to civil suits for monetary damages and other things
I don’t think he would need to specifcy them?
I pardon Elon Musk and all DOGE staff for anything and everything they did while working for DOGE.
No, sadly he doesn’t. But it would be good if it was somehow made to work that way.
It doesnt seem unreasonable to need to do that either, but at the same time it can be abused.
Like let’s say Elon committed 20 crimes in DOGE, and they’re all related in one way or another. The 20th one specifically is related to the 19th how he copied data, but its own obscure law, that everyone’s forgot about, so they pardon the 19, and then get him on copying the data to a non authorized USB stick or something because it wasnt on an authorized seller list.
So I do kind of think it needs some ability to blanket things, but also, some specificity also seems important.
he abdicated his office by violating his oath
And the only remedy for that is impeachment, followed by removal, which didn’t happen.
Yes, but it can happen at anytime, then you retroactively invalidate his past actions
"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
scRotus says anything dipshit does is just part of his doing the job and he can’t be prosecuted for it at all.
‘to the best of my ability’ is also doing some heavy work here. he has no qualifications for office and he’s dumb as bricks. he’s doing the ‘best’ he can, doing the only thing he knows how to: lie, cheat, steal.
What I’m saying is the scrotus already set the path for executive overreach. The next president can use that to have them all killed if they wanted to Uber the same reasoning. Or just make up a pretext that isn’t explicitly stated, like that they are sitting justices who will from here forward serve in a non judiciary capacity.
The could and they should but they won’t.
Pardon should only be possible under very narrow circumstances. For example if laws got loosened after conviction or when convoction WAS obviously politically motivated. But neither can logically handed out before a judge read the verdict.
What if trump pardons himself and friends for any sex crimes now, maybe even murder?
Why would any judge honor this? Ooo now i’m thinking dems kept heads low regarding epstein convictions to use that very argumentation and they can’t pardon themselves anymore. A man can have hope right?
I strongly disagree. There has to be a check on judicial overreach and miscarriages of justice. Pardons make sense for that.
The problem with Trump isn’t the use of pardons per se, it’s that he’s issuing them corruptly.
trump doesn’t care about helping anyone but he loves being thanked. He’s a pretty simple guy underneath all the simplicity.
Only the guilty need pardons before the crimes are listed.
