Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#401

Post by vkou »

kbd wrote: post #366
thinkharderdev wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is definitely the most egregious by a very wide margin, but the pardon power has been abused by every President in my lifetime. It's a truly insane feature of our constitution that needs to be changed.

It doesn't really matter who is more egregious, but IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.

It absolutely is, and it's complete ass covering from an administration that utterly failed in its primary duty - putting Trump in prison.

Nice to see the people who fucked it up isolated from the consequences of his second term. (/s)

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#402

Post by tshaddox »

thunky wrote: post #300
ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won. I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or didn't care enough to support anyone else

> around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won. Or, they were not fine with whoever won. We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one. I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and…

> Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.

This is only a remotely viable claim if you think the two evils have extremely similar amounts of evil.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#403

Post by cthalupa »

mightyham wrote: post #330
Alifatisk wrote: post #188

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with corruption as long as it's their team.

Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.

This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.

I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile, Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being pardoned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#404

Post by [deleted] »

Alifatisk wrote: post #188

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

[deleted]

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#405

Post by samdoesnothing »

ryandrake wrote: post #315
thunky wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won. Or, they were not fine with whoever won. We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one. I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and…

By not voting, you are clearly saying you are fine with whoever wins. If you were not fine with whoever wins, you would have voted for someone, anyone else.

There's a double standard that I see a lot here, where people want to vote for a party, denigrate those who chose not to participate as being morally culpable for the results of the election, but won't take moral culpability for what their team does when they're in power.

If you vote for team A and they win and then do something bad (inevitable), shouldn't you be morally responsible for that? After all, you seem fine claiming non-participants have moral culpability for whatever the winning team does.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#406

Post by bananalychee »

returningfory2 wrote: post #279
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nope, Biden pardoning his son was also widely condemned across the political spectrum as an abuse of the pardon power.

He didn't just pardon his family members and issue questionable preemptive pardons, he also issued the most pardons of any president ever, and not by a small margin, but by a factor of 20 compared to Trump up to now, in a single term, including pardons for violent criminals and yes, white-collar fraudsters as well. They didn't get much publicity because most of them were committed at the tail end of his term while the media were focused on the election and on the transition of power, because of double standards, and because the actors were low-profile. It really shouldn't be controversial to point out that the abuse of presidential power didn't start nor end with Trump. He most certainly wouldn't have gotten re-elected if that were the case.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#407

Post by groby_b »

mulmen wrote: post #341
Alifatisk wrote: post #188

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

Half of America isn’t fine with Trump. Only 22.3% of Americans voted for him and his approval rating has gone down significantly since then.

Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll booth, yeah, half of America.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#408

Post by antegamisou »

piva00 wrote: post #394
jpadkins wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family. Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither would Harris).

> Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus This is satire, right?

The grandparent comment shouldn't be wondering about anything now, should they....

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#409

Post by tastyfreeze »

coliveira wrote: post #232
Alifatisk wrote: post #188

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system. They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy democracy" and "open market".

Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#410

Post by drak0n1c »

verdverm wrote: post #11
pulisse wrote: post #6

Sub-headline: "Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump crypto company"

Subtext, a convicted fraudster pardons a convicted fraudster

CZ was not convicted of fraud or even money laundering. There's a reason the sentence was only 4 months. His charge was the first ever prosecution of a platform/bank poorly implementing KYC and not doing enough surveillance of its users to comply with the letter of AML regulations. The case relied on the theoretical possibility of US citizen users placing trades that are matched by people from sanctioned countries - it did not even find cases of such trades. Big banks routinely pay fines for this, and never face imprisonment.

Regardless of what you think of the circumstances of the pardon, the prosecution was not related to fraud and was an unusual case by a DOJ that was recently embarrassed by FTX and was arguably symbolic in intent.

Post reply on HN