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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#371

Post by mbreese »

Jabbles wrote: post #334
WalterBright wrote: post #111

It'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…

> It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions. But aren't prosecutions done by the DoJ, as part of the executive branch, i.e. the decision to prosecute someone at all, or whether to offer a plea deal is already under the president's control?

I think it was more intended as a check for "justice". Where someone could technically be guilty of a crime, but the conviction was considered unjust. You wouldn't necessarily want to repeal the law, but instead use the pardon to fix "edge cases".

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#372

Post by mwigdahl »

DevX101 wrote: post #327
WalterBright wrote: post #111

It'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.

It's not intended to address systemic problems in the justice system. That is the province of the legislature.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#374

Post by beervirus »

DevX101 wrote: post #327
WalterBright wrote: post #111

It'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.

The pardon power—for federal crimes only—also comes from a time when there just weren’t very many federal crimes. The framers did not predict the explosion of 18 USC that we’ve seen in the last century.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#375

Post by Supermancho »

astrange wrote: post #202
adventured wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pardon people before they're convicted of anything. Trump pardoned Steve Bannon for example and he has not yet been convicted (he has been charged). Assange has been charged with various things by the Feds, which is what Trump would pardon. The floated theory went that Trump could plausibly pardon himself as well, for any likely future charges.

It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.

> can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for

That's because impeachment is a political process, not a judicial proceeding. Clemency does not affect impeachment.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#376

Post by knuthsat »

dgellow wrote: post #363

No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged that could happen... Instead it’s just more and more corruption.

The fact that all a POTUS does after presidency is enrich oneself, it's quite clear where the motives are.

The moment when POTUS is unable to profit off of his presidency is the moment where these things wouldn't happen.

POTUS becoming a multimillionaire after presidency is just a sad display of moral corruption.

Edit: Not talking about Trump, just in general about POTUS. It's my impression that in the last 50 years all of them benefited from the public, exerting their influence after losing the binds of the POTUS position to enrich themselves. Shows quite a lack of moral character in all of them.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#377

Post by the_reformation »

flowerlad wrote: post #316
orblivion wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What if the president pardoned literally... everybody Or worse, had someone murder his political opponent and then pardoned him? This sort of thing was unthinkable a few years ago, but no longer.

Yeah who knows what Biden could get up to.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#378

Post by BurningFrog »

DevX101 wrote: post #327
WalterBright wrote: post #111

It'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.

It's meant to address individual problems, not systemic ones.

Though I agree calling it a "check & balance" is pretentious.

It's at best an instrument for mercy. Of course it can be abused, but if you have a bad president, that's not on the top 10 list of problems.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#379

Post by ghaff »

vharuck wrote: post #262
astrange wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.

>It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. For a specific example, Jimmy Carter pardoned everyone who dodged the draft for Vietnam[1]. This showed that pardons could both apply to actions which hadn't been charged and categories of people. I think one of the only limits on the pardon power is that it can only apply to past behavior. [1] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/vietn…

If a president were to do something really nutty like "Everyone now has a clean slate with respect to federal crimes" I suspect the Supreme Court would find some way to invalidate it. Carter's pardon, while controversial, fell into the category of these weren't exactly serial killers and a lot of people in the country were ready to move on.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#380

Post by mhh__ »

hehehaha wrote: post #282

I really feel for all the prosecutors who worked so hard to catch these criminals.

If it's any consolation Trump is probably going to be under investigation at the State level for probably the rest of his life unless he leaves the country - New York wants blood not even including the foundation, Georgia is probing along those lines etc.
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