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Preemptive Pardons: Biden’s Scarlet Letter
Well, now he’s done it. Biden has finally carried out preemptive pardons for the people he feared would be targeted by Donald Trump. He’s afraid that Trump will seek revenge for the actions that these people took during his presidency. It apparently hasn’t occurred to him that these people have nothing to worry about unless they broke the law.
Oops.
That’s the problem that Biden seems to want to ignore. All the people he has pre-pardoned—retired Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, members and staffers of the Jan. 6 Committee, and the police officers who testified before the committee—all of them are suspected of breaking the law. And if they accept the pardon, they will have given up their 5th Amendment rights.
These preemptive pardons are intriguing because they incriminate all of these people with the crimes they did commit: for one, Gen. Milley betrayed President Trump by offering to alert the Chinese:
Milley made two phone calls in the waning months of the Trump administration to Gen. Li Zuocheng, the commanding general of the Chinese military. The first occurred Oct. 30, four days before the election. Woodward and Costa relate that Milley sought to reassure his counterpart in Beijing that the U.S. would not launch a surprise nuclear attack. Milley is reported to have told Li that he would contact him if an attack by the U.S. was imminent. Milley reached out a second time in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol to reassure the Chinese that the U.S. government remained stable. Milley reportedly told Li that ‘democracy can be sloppy sometimes.’
After the fact, Milley claimed that his actions were appropriate.
The evidence is available on Anthony Fauci’s crime:
Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, told Newsweek these documents show ‘unequivocally’ that NIH grants were used to fund controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China—something U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied.
There are questions about “missing” evidence from the Jan. 6 Committee, as Rep. Barry Loudermilk describes in a letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson:
Nowhere in the letter does Loudermilk say the recordings were destroyed. There are no reputable news reports that he made that claim and no evidence of the destruction of the records.
‘Whether the missing information has been destroyed, was sent to other entities or is still in the possession of members of Congress from the select committee is uncertain at this time,’ Loudermilk said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.
Questions about the Capitol Police’s role in the Jan. 6 riot emerged:
While we found no evidence that officers allowed the mob in willingly, the security breakdown that enabled rioters to breach the building is under intense scrutiny, and officials have said an investigation is imminent.
And there are questions about police testimony:
The whistleblower, who requested anonymity for privacy reasons and left the force months after the attack, sent the 16-page letter late last month to the top members of both parties in the House and Senate. His missive makes scorching allegations against Sean Gallagher, the Capitol Police’s acting chief of uniformed operations, and Yogananda Pittman, its assistant chief of police for protective and intelligence operations — who also served as its former acting chief.
The whistleblower accuses Gallagher and Pittman of deliberately choosing not to help officers under attack on Jan. 6 and alleges that Pittman lied to Congress about an intelligence report Capitol Police received before that day’s riot. After a lengthy career in the department, the whistleblower was a senior official on duty on Jan. 6.
It’s unclear whether those pardoned by Biden would need to apply for the clemency or even accept the offer at all. Any acceptance could be seen as a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, validating years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even though those who have been pardoned have not been formally accused of any crimes.
We’ll have to wait and see whether people accept Biden’s preemptive pardons, ignore them, or reject them. No matter what they decide, they have been branded as likely criminals. Whether they can still be investigated by Congressional committees is unclear.
Published in Domestic Policy
FIFY
Thank you.
I don’t think that this is correct.
One can be wrongly convicted. One can also be severely affected by a prosecution, even if it fails.
If any US military officer had done what Milley essentially bragged about doing, he would have at a minimum been cashiered at once with all security clearances revoked.
Fauci used government funds to support gain-of-function research. It appears that he might have done so after such research had been banned by Congress. He later lied about having done so while testifying under oath to Congress.
Did Liz Cheney’s extracurricular contact with Cassidy Hutchinson before Hutchinson’s testimony constitute witness tampering? Anyway, Adam Kinzinger ought to be investigated for being a mope.
Ever since Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in 2016 did almost every supposedly evil act that they had previously claimed Donald Trump would do, I have found that “projection” explains a lot of what Democrats do.
Democrats assume everyone else is as evil as they (the Democrats) are.
Democrats assume Republicans and others will pursue political persecutions because Democrats know that they do and will pursue political persecutions, and project that certainty about their own behavior onto others.
The Republicans have to stop sitting back and wringing their hands and DO SOMETHING! There has to be a way to hold these people accountable when they act!!!
Also interesting that Biden accused President Trump of planning to do (which he never did), inferring that it would have been a terrible precedent, and Biden turns around and does exactly what he railed against.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised…
From Ex Parte Garland (SCOTUS, 1866):
The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.”
Case closed?
Although I haven’t read anyone suggest this, someone who can show that they have been injured by one of the preemptive pardon recipients (I’m thinking Fauci) could test this given sufficient resources. IMHO, there is an argument to be made the pardons are insufficiently specific or overly broad, and that Biden needs to go to greater lengths to identify the conduct in question.
If one looks at past preemptive pardons (e.g., Ford-Nixon, Iran-Contra), it’s pretty easy to identify the conduct. I do not think that’s true here.
It would work for me! I hope someone elaborates on your thought.
Let’s see. I’m thinking and hoping that some care is being taken to find an appropriate plaintiff who satisfies standing requirements, which may be why there’s been no movement. America First Legal would certainly be a good candidate to look into this, but I’m not sure what’s up there with the head, Stephen Miller, kinda busy at the White House.
So the video of them opening doors to let people in, was all “deep/cheap fakes?”
I wonder though, I can understand a very strong desire to get out of jail, but if the J6 hostages accept the pardons, doesn’t that mean they’re admitting guilt? And possibly closing the door on getting the bogus charges overturned? If so, that seems like a high price to pay.
A lot of the J6 defendants were technically guilty of something — it’s just that the process was abused. And that has been my main issue: the lack of due process and fundamental fairness even if someone was not factually innocent. (Recall Alec Baldwin was let off because of prosecutorial misconduct, not factual innocence.) So accepting a pardon being an admission of guilt is not a problem for them, although many were overcharged.
I guess. But if you’re actually “guilty” of something that should get you a $50 ticket at most, why “admit guilt” to the felony charges that got them locked up possibly for years?
Would pardons be null and void if it’s proven Biden was not fit to serve as President? Just askin’ . . .
A total guess if it ever is reviewed by a court: Since the Constitution has express provisions for determining presidential competency (25th Amendment) a court cannot question the competency to take a presidential act. What a court may review is whether the pardon power can be used preemptively.
Which is one of the main principles of the left’s lawfare-you don’t need a conviction to ruin someone. Just being publicly indicted can be bad for your career-especially in politics. Additionally, the threat of financial ruin often induces people to accept a plea deal even if they could prevail at trial-particularly when corrupt prosecutors threaten to go after your family & friends (the M O of Elliot Spitzer as NY AG when going after CEOs).
Is that a line out of the Progressive Playbook?
Prosecution for non-crimes is a genuine concern. “The process is the punishment.”
Yes Progressives routinely employ it, as we have seen in recent years. Conservatives have rarely if ever employed it, but Progressives assume conservatives will do whatever dastardly deeds Progressives would, so they may genuinely fear political
persecutionprosecution.They may fear it, because that’s what THEY do; but that doesn’t mean Trump or anyone else on “the other side” would do that. There’s plenty of actual criminality on their side, to be investigated and prosecuted. No need to invent anything unreal.
Like the process IS the punishment, eh?
One grandmother has rejected her pardon. Her case is under appeal, and shows promise.
Rather than pardons, maybe Trump should order the AG/DOJ to re-open the cases and dismiss them.
But I suppose that’s still an option, and the pardons do get them out quick. Those pardoned would likely have no “standing” to get the cases re-opened, but Trump does.
I would be interested in learning more about that.