611–620 of 1001 posts
Instead of just commenting about being dismayed with the state of things, how about step back and speculate as to why he did this pardon, and what the implications of it are.
I don't know the answer to either, but I surely didn't learn much from what used to be an insightful, intelligent crowd
Better headline: Convicted criminal Trump pardons convicted criminal Binance founder
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.
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
COLLINS: Today you pardoned the founded of Binance. Can you explain why you did that? TRUMP: Which one was that? COLLINS: The founder of Binance TRUMP: I believe we're talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don't know. He was recommended by a lot of people. https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m3v6mnpkb52i
And I mean, wasn't the last Administration effectively Autopen? Yes, the President receives recommendations and tries to make the best judgement on those.
What would Biden's answer be for pardoning Fauci?
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I heard the intention was that sometimes it's against the public good to prosecute some people even though they have comitted crimes. Good examples of it being used as intended was pardoning the perpetrators of the whiskey rebellion, the confederate army, vietnam draft dodgers and more controversially, Nixon. I guess it's also intended in cases where obvious miscarriages of justice have been committed. It made sense…
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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.
> The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations Past few? How about Ford pardoning Nixon? Or George H.W. Bush pardoning a bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass?
It feels like HN is slowly turning into reddit with the comment section becoming mostly snide remarks Instead of just commenting about being dismayed with the state of things, how about step back and speculate as to why he did this pardon, and what the implications of it are. I don't know the answer to either, but I surely didn't learn much from what used to be an insightful, intelligent crowd
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, Biden pardoning his son was also widely condemned across the political spectrum as an abuse of the pardon power.
Looking at how this administration is now using the DoJ to hunt even people like Comey and Bolton whose crime was being a non-Trump-aligned Republican… It’s probably good that Biden took away this particular show trial option from them.