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Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

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Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#481
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because he was prosecuted for doing drugs and owning a gun? There's literal video of Joe Rogan smoking pot and he talks about his concealed weapons permit. It would be a slam dump case, some how i don't think he's getting prosecuted because its selective law open to abuse. Seems perfectly good use of pardon.

The Hunter Biden issue was not about smoking marijuana... that would have been the very least of his multitude of legal problems. Biden's own DoJ was prosecuting the cases - which is important context to consider here.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#482
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is satire. Only a moron would think this.

It answers the question posed. Unless you think only morons have opinions that differ from yours.

Moronic opinions are still moronic and should be called out as such. Making America more crypto friendly by pardoning fraudsters is an objectively stupid take.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#483
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…

> 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. No, we have one destructive/harmful party (R) and one status quo party (D). They are not the same level of bad and that's immediately obvious from this last year.

The problem with that is the status quo wasn't that good.

To compare the two parties with a house on fire, absolutely the sadistic pyromaniac arsonist burning down the neighborhood one house at a time is a bad guy and needs to be stopped. But when person trying to rally everyone to go after him is the abusive slumlord, it doesn't always resonate as effectively as it might.

A healthy society wouldn't tolerate either one. I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.

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…

Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.

But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#485

Well, considering the incredible service Zhao has brought to the American people, this is totally understandable. /$

He was convicted for allowing US citizens to sign up and place trades that could theoretically be matched by people from sanctioned countries. Technically an incredibly bad service for American people who must be protected from such liberties.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#486

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.

At the time that did reek of corruption and misuse of power, but given current state of things, it was the right move.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#487

Of course he did. Republicans can’t complain about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich any more.

I mean, that was one pardon 25 years ago and widely criticized across the political spectrum.

It's hard to count how many purely political and money-based pardons Trump has done this term, and there is essentially no pushback on his side.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#488

shameless corruption

I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon. Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.

> I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.

Because of the impossibility of law written in advance perfectly covering all cases and to provide a mechanism for correction of overpunishment that cannot be effectively anticipated in crafting general law. (That's more the reason why the traditional power of chief executives seen in state governments and the British government they were all more or less modeled on was retained when a federal executive was created; the US Constitution was very much not create ex nihilo in a historical vaccuum.)

> Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.

Every viewpoint is "bias" relative to every other viewpoint, so that piece is a nullity, but it is certain;y not the case that corruption and self-interest are the only impacts or motivations for applying the pardon power.

Which isn't to say that there aren't arguments for putting more guardrails around the application of the power by the executive (or perhaps just radically changing the nature of the federal executive, to improve the application of its powers generally and not just the pardon power).

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It seems to have (never had?) any positive benefit.

IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power. The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.

> The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case.

The solution is to fix that and make it retroactive. Remove the unjust law and release anyone who was convicted for violating it.

A pardon is just a bad, unfair bandaid fix.

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