IM2
Diamond Member
- Mar 11, 2015
- 114,350
- 146,147
- 3,645
These guys talk about law and order. We have seen all kinds of posts and threads blaming illegals for all kinds of crime. The president race baits his base by using anecdotes, and they fall for it. We see thread after thread talking about deporting immigrants because, to the MAGA base, only illegal immigrants are committing fraud. While Trump race hustles his base, this is what Trump is doing.
The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.
President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.
He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.
Worst of all, Mr. Trump granted clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He did not distinguish between rioters who were relatively peaceful and those who attacked police officers, as Vice President JD Vance said should be the case. About 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters received a clean slate, regardless of their actions.
The results have been disastrous. At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack.
The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree
The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.
President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.
He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.
Worst of all, Mr. Trump granted clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He did not distinguish between rioters who were relatively peaceful and those who attacked police officers, as Vice President JD Vance said should be the case. About 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters received a clean slate, regardless of their actions.
The results have been disastrous. At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack.
