Tag Archive for: Presidential Pardon

‘Broad New Precedent’: Biden Issuing Preemptive Pardons To Trump Opponents Would Be Big Expansion Of Power

President Joe Biden is reportedly considering issuing preemptive pardons to Trump opponents, which would set new precedent as a vast expansion of presidential pardon power.

While there is not a full list, the president and senior aides are mulling pardons for allies like Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff, former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to several reports.

“It is very rare to issue a pardon for conduct not yet charged,” South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman told the DCNF. “Moreover, it is even rarer to give a blanket pardon for all offenses that a person may have committed during a particular period of time. But the Hunter Biden ‘Get out of jail free’ card has set a broad new precedent.”

Biden pardoned his son last week after repeatedly saying he would let the jury decision stand. The pardon covered any offenses Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” beginning in 2014, not just the gun and tax charges he actually faced.

Biden said he believed politics infected the process and “led to a miscarriage of justice.” The judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax case wrote later that the president has broad authority to grant pardons but not to “rewrite history,” noting two federal judges already rejected the argument that Hunter Biden was prosecuted because of his family ties.

Issuing pardons before charges have been brought is “highly unusual,” though it has been done in a few instances, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Examples include “President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon after Watergate, President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers and President George H.W. Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger,” per the DOJ website. Trump also pardoned some individuals, such as former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joseph Arpaio, after conviction but before sentencing.

“This would be an expansion of the pardon power, beyond even that which Biden granted to his son (who was charged, but was pardoned for all activity​),” Manhattan Institute Director of Constitutional Studies Ilya Shapiro told the DCNF. “It sets the precedent that an outgoing president can just issue blanket pardons for all of his cronies. Not good—and further dulls any criticisms from the left of Trump’s use of the pardon power.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley suggested Saturday that preemptive pardons would allow Biden to portray himself as a “white knight” protecting vulnerable allies — even if Trump doesn’t target any of them.

“Biden wants to remove the stain of his abuse of the pardon power to benefit his own family by turning it into a literal party favor for other Democrats and Trump critics,” Turley wrote in a column for The Hill. “Even though Trump has denied any interest in retribution, saying that ‘my revenge will be a success,’ preemptive pardons leave the impression that they did in fact preempt something that would have occurred.”

In March, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Cheney should “go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”

His comment was in response to a report that Cheney participated in an interview with a Secret Service driver who directly contradicted former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s claim that Trump tried to take the wheel of the presidential SUV to go to the Capitol. The Jan. 6 committee did not fully release the driver’s testimony.

Some Democrats like Schiff, however, have indicated they don’t want a blanket pardon from Biden.

“I don’t want to see a precedent where you have presidents, as they leave office, issuing blanket pardons to members of their party or members of their administration,” Schiff told the LA Times on Monday. “There was talk of Trump doing that when he left office, of members like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan seeking pardons from him. It would be another diminution in our democracy, and I just think it’s completely unnecessary.”

Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar likewise said Sunday on MSNBC she is “not a fan” of preemptive pardons.

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Contributor.

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WATCH: President Trump Posthumously Pardons Boxer Jack Johnson

John Arthur Johnson, nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”, was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion.

According to Biography:

As Johnson became a bigger name in the sport of boxing, he also became a bigger target for a white America that longed to see him ruined. For his part, Johnson loved to brandish his wealth and his disdain for racial rules.

He dated white women, drove lavish cars and spent money freely. But trouble was always lurking. In 1912, he was convicted of violating the Mann Act for bringing his white girlfriend across state lines before their marriage. Sentenced to prison, he fled to Europe, remaining there as a fugitive for seven years. He returned to the United States in 1920 and ultimately served out his sentence.

WATCH:

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The Stone Commute Highlighted Democrats’ Hypocrisy––But Now They’re Waking Up

“Trump Spares Stone from Imprisonment, Sparking Howls of Amnesiac Democrats” was the colorful headline of a recent Wall St. Journal by journalist, author and former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY, Andrew C. McCarthy.

The “Stone” in the headline referred to Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Trump who was sentenced to 40 months in prison two years ago for lying to Congress, among other counts, during the failed fiasco of the Mueller investigation into the non-existent collusion of then-candidate Trump with Russian operatives to rig the 2016 election in his favor.

Stone, now 67, was arrested in a predawn raid on his home by a heavily armed SWAT team, a saga that was “coincidentally” caught by a CNN camera crew who just happened to be parked outside his home at 4 a.m. Imagine that.

According to Jan Wolfe from Reuters, Stone had connections to the WikiLeaks website, which released damaging emails about Trump’s election rival Hillary Clinton. Uh oh…can’t have those damning e-mails released. Hence the sadistically harsh sentence––the original recommendation was seven-to-nine years––and the brouhaha about Stone’s commutation.

Of course, the leftwing media were “outraged,” “shocked,” “appalled” at President Trump’s miscarriage of justice, although interestingly the president didn’t issue a full pardon, so the felony conviction of Mr. Stone still stands, as does his appeal.

GLARING HYPOCRISY

But you would think, as reported by investigative journalist Mark Hyman, that he had just pardoned two-dozen FALN Puerto-Rican terrorists who murdered at least 24 people.

Or commuted the 58-year sentence of far-left terrorist Susan Rosenberg after only 16 years. It is so consistent with her hate-America mindset that today, Rosenberg is a member of the board of directors for the left-wing group that handles the donations made to the Marxist-front organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Or pardoned Marc Rich, who renounced his U.S. citizenship, traded illegally with Cuba, did business with Iran while it held 52 U.S. hostages, and with Libya which was responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing that killed 189 Americans.

Oops, that was Pres. Bill Clinton. Just before good ole boy Bill issued the pardons, Rich gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library and his wife Denise donated over a million dollars to the Democrat Party and the Clinton Foundation. Imagine that.

But there is more. According to Spectator journalist Hyman, “the 56 clemency petitions Clinton approved during his first term were the fewest of any president since Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third commander-in-chief, who issued a mere 45 clemencies. Consider Jefferson’s clemencies were given when the U.S. had a population of only 5 million compared to the 285 million during Clinton’s first term.”

But everything changed when Hillary decided to run for U.S. Senator from New York. After her decision, Hyman says, “Bill doled out 380 pardons and commutations. Clemency was dished-out in return for money, gifts, and influence…Hillary stockpiled financial and political IOUs and cashed-in when she ran for political office, including the presidency.” Imagine that.

Again, not one word of outrage from the craven media.

A FATAL ATTRACTION TO MISCREANTS

Many of Barack Obama’s pardons and commutations were for drug dealers and violent offenders. He pardoned Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the traitor who leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to WikiLeaks and was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He pardoned the convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera, the leader of the FALN, responsible for 130 attacks in the U.S., who was serving a 70-year sentence when Obama set him free, the list is long. That is the very very short list.

Remember the media’s indignation? Me neither.

But Stone’s mortal sin was that he lied to––guess who?––the proven pathological liars in the Obama regime’s FBI, CIA, DOJ, et al, who were trying to frame candidate and then President Trump. Nothing less than the guillotine for him!

MEDIA MALFEASANCE

Well, whaddaya know? The entire uproar is already off the radar as the corrupt media are now back to:

ARE THE TABLES TURNING?

The vast American public out there already knows of the Democrats’ double standards.

They see the breakdown of law and order in Democrat-run cities and its encroachment into the suburbs and don’t want any of that wanton violence in their state, city, or the block they live on.

Even Regressives are horrified by the No-Bail laws enacted by Democrat legislators when they see that the psychopathic criminals who are setting cars on fire and committing violent assaults walk free, as did the thugs who attacked and smashed the faces of high-ranking police officials in NY City the other day.

And they are watching Joe Biden’s rapid and pitiful devolution.

On the positive side, President Trump is opening up America and, happily, the Democrats themselves are now waking up! According to an article in The New York Times, “Two-thirds of battleground state voters who chose Trump in 2016 but selected Democrats in the midterms say they will return to the president” [in 2020].

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