Live data from Hacker News

Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

wsj.com

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#751
Pedophile felon destroys takes a wrecking ball to half of the White House without saving historical materials or objects, furiously pardons all sorts of crooks and fraudsters, and talks about not getting into heaven. Sounds like an admission of 6-8 months left to live.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#752
Wait, this guy was already out of prison? From what I read he was fined $50M and 4 months in prison.

So the pardon only removes the criminal conviction?

It has zero impact on the time he served.

This doesn’t seemed like the outrageous situation from reading comments.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#753
post #233

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.

"boooooth siiiiiiides" screamed the reactionary centrist.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 didn't pardon, the auto pen did.

JFC did an auto pen write this comment. Might as well.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were fed "waste fraud and abuse" in the beginning of the year. and suddenly it happens in broad daylight and people shrug? At this point it's just brainwashing. Some people's principals are clearly less about their own conviction and treating all this like a sports team. Whoever team "wins", even if the stadium burns down around them.

It's privately funded so it doesn't fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the same vein as things that use taxpayer money. Conflict of interest by attempting to curry favor for his vanity project by making donations? That's a fair criticism.

Doesn't matter if a trillion dollars was shat by God himself out of a plane into the Treasury. They failed to get historic district planning permission, they failed to save historic materials and objects, and lied about the plan. The now revealed plan is an gaudy, boorish, tasteless, and tacky abomination because that is the essence Trump.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#756
post #50

Coffeezilla video about this is up already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4

What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji? "CZ deserves his pardon. His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian. Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binan…

He's not making an argument.

With these characters, from Trump on down, discourse is not the point.

He is flexing his power by showing he can make an obviously fatuous point and get away with it. Because there are no consequences, for someone like him.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#757
post #224
post #89

I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office. Trump's net worth before becoming President was under US$1 billion. Now it's over 6 billion. A civil claim for the difference based on the Emoluments Acts. "The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or fo…

I suspect Trump will leave office in a box, not on his feet. Such a civil claim would then have to be against his estate, which probably complicates things.

It would be against whomever is in possession of the stolen wealth, which will not likely be his estate. And yes, this should be a priority of any platform for rebuilding our country. Justice needs to be served. And by the time we're finally rid of these America-last fuckers, people still supporting the Trumps are going to be as rare as people still supporting the Iraq War.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji? "CZ deserves his pardon. His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian. Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binan…

Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc. I don't think it's really necessary to pre…

Is there a place for a logical counter-point in there not having been charges against people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis? It seems like a selective enforcement of rules or consequences in both situations to me.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#760

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

You're being downvoted but I get where you're coming from.

The dismay is from not needing to speculate, wonder or theorize about why he did this pardon. It's a quid pro quo pardon for helping the Trump family make billions of dollars in under a year using the office of the president. The corruption is entirely flagrant and open.

Yeah, it's a forum of smart people, but none of those smarts are oriented to dealing with this kind of problem. There's a system but it's non-functional, laws but they're ignored, the tools are raw political and social power. It's going to take a while to figure out what to say and do about the slide from normal, functioning democracy into semi-theocratic banana republic.

Post reply on HN