601–610 of 1001 posts
> Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice. Did he already pay the $4.3 billion? That's a lot of money, even for the federal government.
From what I can tell, Binance had to pay the $4.3B, while Zhao had to pay $50M. The status of each isn’t something I can readily find.
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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 t…
No. You are making it seem like Biden pardoned his family for petty crimes. He pardoned them in advance for any crime they have committed that is yet unknown. That‘s an unprecedented move and you claiming the other side will „come after your family“ basically confirms that the legal system is corrupt and that there is reasonable ground to do so.
See again:
> 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.
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> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real governmen…
I read this as a reference to the Fourth and Fifth Republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic (I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
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> The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as part of the executive branch with or without the pardon power; if you want something other than "the President overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed conven…
While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance. The President does not have unlimited authority over the DOJ. The DOJ’s powers are exercised pursuant to laws enacted by Congress, and it…
The idea of the republic as opposed to a monarchy is that no part of the government is anyone's personal...well, anything...but that doesn't really negate the degree of control the President exercises, both in theory and in practice barring highly variable personal restraint, over the DoJ.
> The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates.
That doesn't mean the President doesn't override the DoJ, it means the President doesn't override the law.
> The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law.
Yes, that it relies on this but does not actually provide any mechanism by which it can effectively be assured is the fundamental design issue I am referring to being necessary to address if one wants "the President overrides the DoJ" not to be a simple fact independently of whether or not the pardon power exists and is vested in the President's discretion.
> Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ.
I literally said that the pardon power is irrelevant to that, which is the exact opposite of describing it as the lynchpin.
> Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences.
To the extent that is true, that is only a negative constraint on prosecution applied by the courts, it can never compel a prosecution that the executive has declined. (Congress, of course, could punish the President for preventing prosecutions, via the impeachment power, but that’s hardly a substitute for real independence from the President of all or part of the prosecutorial power if that is what is desired. Or, for that matter, much of a remedy at all if more than 1/3 of the Senate is on board with the President's conduct.
The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.
> these past few administrations I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack". But it leads to…
Amen. Preach it, brother!
>No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
I don't know what the poster was referring to, but I AM mad at Biden for pardoning his family. It's a molehill of an issue compared to the current administration though.
Of course he did. Republicans can’t complain about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich any more.
Per wikipedia, Clinton's defense was that it was actually a favor to Israel, given Rich helping to finance their intel services. Maybe everybody else knew this, I didn't.
"President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company." You Americans elected a mobster as President.
Well, half us Americans did:) The other half is still in total disbelief
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Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything. To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting f…
It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the menu but people get to see only the two on the front page. Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you? So even they pretend t…
I can't really align myself to either party, and I am diametrically opposed to the Democrats on some issues, like gun control, and think that there are a lot of real issues that they push far to the extreme to the point that it is problematic, but... there's also only one party that attempted insurrection and overturning the election, campaigned on all sorts of insane shit, pushes a narrative of needing the military to deal with protestors, etc.
It's not two shit sandwiches, it's a pot of live pit vipers vs a pot of boiled unseasoned kale and spinach. I'm not going to enjoy the latter, but it's probably not going to harm anything more than my taste buds. The other might kill me.
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Rule of law? Anymore? No president has ever been punished in any meaningful capacity in our entire history. Washington used loopholes to avoid setting his slaves free[1] for christ sake. [1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-washington-...
What about Nixon’s impeachment and resignation? What about Trump being a convicted felon 5 ways to Sunday (yes they overturned this since he won again, but I doubt it would have gone this direction if he’d lost.)