This would be a misstep because it sets Trump up for the Gerald Ford gambit of getting an insta-pardon
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
If Trump were thinking ahead, he would already have pre-emptively resigned as President for this reason by now
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Had Nixon been yet to be charged when Ford pardoned him?
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @arthur_affect
Nope it was a blanket pardon for anything & everything he may or may not have done
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Replying to @FroyoBaggins @arthur_affect
I actually didn't know this. Would Jimmy Carter have had to abide by that if he'd had an appetite for retribution?
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @FroyoBaggins
The usual take is that a presidential pardon is this ultimate expression of the sovereignty of the state itself over the legal system that serves it It's descended from the idea of the sovereignty of the monarch, the King can just say anything he wants is an exception to the law
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So, yes, it's established that a pardon can occur at any point after a crime has been committed, and completely stops the state from going through the legal process of reacting to the crime at all -- it's as though the crime didn't happen/was always legal
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If you think about it, it's kind of fucked up that this exists at all It's usually defended as a "sanity check" or "compassion check" against actions of the judiciary by keeping the judiciary (like the military) subordinate to a human being who's an elected leader
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But, obviously, if the President just didn't care and went ham with it, as Trump went dangerously down far the path of doing, it just makes him a tyrant -- anything is legal if he says it is, he can just make it Purge Night for murdering Democrats
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Anyway Gerald Ford's general pardon of Richard Nixon was a wildly unpopular act at the time but everyone agreed it was constitutional and the Democrats were too tired and determined to restore normalcy to make an issue of it
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It's the most negative example of the President using this power but there's positive ones too, like how Carter used this power to grant general amnesty to all Vietnam draft dodgers as soon as he took office
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(Well, correction -- murder is a state crime, not a federal law, so Trump couldn't make it Purge Night for murder -- he could make it Purge Night for associated charges of terrorism and assassination though He'd have to loop in Republican state governors to cover all the bases)
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