(Joke)
What, no pardon for Joe Exotic?
How are we going to survive the lockdown without more of his antics on Netflix?
Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
321–330 of 996 posts
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
As much as I disagree with some pardons, I think the negative effects of looping in Congress would outweigh the positive. Sometimes pardons are politically unpopular even when they are right or justly merciful. Pardoning someone who embarrassed the government, for instance -- I can easily imagine a majority of Congress choosing to deny Chelsea Manning's commutation. It's a bit of a parallel to the "better a hundred g…
What if the president pardoned literally... everybody. I wonder what would happen. Maybe he got drunk and wrote something down and handed it to somebody. It's such a simple action, nobody can stop it, he can't take it back when he comes to his senses. Would the system even respond to it? Would they just open all the federal prisons?
Pardons don't work like that. They have to actually be delivered to the recipient to be effective. Pardoning everybody would be a massive printing and mailing operation.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#323This is all so hilariously corrupt. I'm not sure I can even muster anger for this, just laughter. (I'll reserve the anger for the pandemic and this administration's callous, frankly criminal handling of it). (So Levandowski and Jared are going to launch a venture fund soon, right?)
The most interesting pardons are the no name ones. Pardoned restaurant chain fraud for an italian not even charged in NY. Sounds like mafia related crime to me. The other no name money laundering criminals are all related to either his gambling businesses or his place of living in Florida. He's basically pardoning people he's been doing crimes with for a long time and then if course some big names. I'm happy to see s…
There were some deserving pardons here...
"The CAN-DO Foundation thanks President Trump for providing a second chance to numerous deserving individuals through the use of his Executive Clemency powers. Many defendants that receive draconian sentences are individuals who exercised their Sixth Amendment right to a trial and suffered the trial penalty phase by receiving harsh mandatory sentences many times greater than if they had taken a plea. These sentences were often based primarily on the testimony of other co-conspirators who received sentence reductions once they testified and were in many cases far more culpable. Executive clemency represented the last hope for many of these individuals to have a second chance at life since (with limited exceptions) there is no federal parole."
https://www.candoclemency.com/can-do-thanks-president-trump-...
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#324Levandowski but not Snowden or Assange. Sigh.
> Levandowski but not Snowden or Assange. Sigh. Snowden and Assange have no value in the market economy. Lewandowski, on the other side, has some interesting skills
Will investors put money on him again? Or is he relegated to working on trump’s personal Twitter replacement kind of projects now? Have a feeling this is the only thing he can do now, go deep maga and suck up to the cult
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#325I think it's really important for society as a whole that there exists the rule of law and not the rule of law for the poor only. This is just another blatant example of where being rich and having connections puts you above the law. Sadly this isn't an isolated case. Take Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. Both plead guilty and both were somehow granted home detention due to the pandemic What Levandowski did was egreg…
It's not just egregious, it's soley to punish Google, which the president had a well publicized vendetta against.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#326This is all so hilariously corrupt. I'm not sure I can even muster anger for this, just laughter. (I'll reserve the anger for the pandemic and this administration's callous, frankly criminal handling of it). (So Levandowski and Jared are going to launch a venture fund soon, right?)
It was criminal to enable pharma to fast track development of vaccines, in half the most optimistic forecasts of how long that would take? It was criminal to invoke the defense production act to make ventilators -- far more than we needed? Building those field hospitals (that were never needed)... the ships? That's my kind of criminal, if so.
It was deeply irresponsible to play into political divisions rather than promoting mask use. It was deeply irresponsible to undermine states’ efforts to mitigate spread, to the point of encouraging “lock her up” chants about Gretchen Whitmer that encouraged a kidnapping plot.
He did a few things right, but let’s not pretend the last year hasn’t been mostly political theatre rather than leadership and one man could have led with a different tone.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#327It's important to note the reason the President has the power to pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and balances, the Constitution is full of them. It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions. Note that the President does not have the corresponding power to convict anyone. An interesting set of pardons was when Andrew Johnson pardoned all the rebels in the Confederacy, including Jeffer…
Constitution has some excellent checks and balances but the blanket pardon isn't one of them. The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in the justice system and has become a channel for doling out political favors.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#328Good news for his current self driving company, Pronto.ai.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to "both sides" this too much, because I do feel like there's a new, special level of corruption and self-dealing on display with this administration, but it's not uncommon for these guys to use pardons for personal gain or the benefits of their friends. For a little context and flavor, remember that Clinton pardoned some real winners on his last day too, including some guy who paid $200k to Hillary Clinton's bro…
> Not to "both sides" What do you think you just did?
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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#330It's important to note the reason the President has the power to pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and balances, the Constitution is full of them. It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions. Note that the President does not have the corresponding power to convict anyone. An interesting set of pardons was when Andrew Johnson pardoned all the rebels in the Confederacy, including Jeffer…
Thanks for highlighting that, it's important to bear in mind Chesterton's fence. But it's also important to consider whether this particular feature is working as intended.
For what it's worth I don't care much about Lewandowski's pardon and I suspect a large part of the outrage here is because his compensation was public and he is a tech worker. There are other more salient recent examples suggesting the pardon system is being abused.