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The US founders made a grave error in granting presidents pardon power (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 6 hours ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
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From betraying Ukraine and dispatching masked agents who killed Americans to deporting US citizens and pulling out of accords controlling climate change and Iranian nuclear weapons, the list of Donald Trump’s abuses is long and growing still longer, seemingly by the day.

Looking back decades from now, historians will see that at the top of this shameful list is Trump’s utter abuse of his pardon power. It started on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists who, on 6 January 2021, had stormed the US Capitol.

More recently, as documented in astonishing accounts by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes, Trump has overseen a robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency.

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[–] 4 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

I think we need something like this for someone on death row or something, maybe. But only if it's someone that wasn't doing crimes in the service of that President.

But what donnie dumbass has done with it is far beyond the pale and truly disgusting.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

    You only need it for valid political prisoners, like the people in Texas that got 50 years for lighting fireworks at a protest.

    Not for actual traitors like the people that rioted and broke into the Capitol on j6 so they could murder police officers, loot, and try and stop elected officials from carrying out their sworn duties.

    That's where Congress comes in. After the j6 pardon, they should have immediately removed him from office and had him placed in a military prison until he could face a military tribunal for high crimes and treason against the people of the United States and for violating his constitutional oath.

    And as for the j6 defendants they should have just retcon'd the pardon, and if they didn't feel comfortable doing that from a legal standpoint they should have charged them with higher crimes. Most of them were just charged with vandalism, rioting, breaking and entering etc. the good news is that they could still easily be charged with charges of insurrection treason and several other higher level Federal offenses.

    In other words those j6 traitors aren't safe yet. They got a pardon off of one of the several charges they are guilty of. The doj hasn't brought a lot of the charges they could bring against those people, but there is no statute of limitations for treason.

    I say take every single person that accepted the pardon and execute them out right.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    I think we need something like this for someone on death row or something, maybe.

    Why, though? What makes the person occupying the position of president uniquely qualified to make a decision in cases like this? If you have a judicial system that has been found to apply the law fairly, yet can still have its rulings overturned on a whim, doesn't that make a mockery of the system?

    It feels like an equivalent of a boss saying, "I know you and your team did months of research to come to the decision that you did, but I'm going to go in a different direction anyway. Not because I did more research than you, just because I feel like I know better than all of you".

    Unless theres' some kind of reason that I've overlooked.

    Beyond the scope of this thread, I know, but the concept of president seems absurd to me. Especially the way it's implemented in the USA.

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