Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
Back in 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was drafting the part of the Constitution that would soon become the presidential pardon power, Mason unequivocally opposed the provision. The president, he said, “ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?”
Manafort and Flynn were indicted, one was convicted.
Plenty of inquiry was made about them and the charges against them.
But that’s about it. Everything else about these pardons, including the incentive they give the president’s allies to withhold evidence of criminality, is, unfortunately, within the anticipated scope of the pardon power. Indeed, the Constitutional Convention, having heard and rejected Mason’s prediction, can reasonably be said to have accepted the possibility of pardon abuse as the collateral cost of having a pardon power in the first place.
And why exactly would the delegates have done that? Why did they disregard Mason’s prediction? In the end, his concerns were rejected by his fellow convention delegates because, in their judgment, there were adequate remedies for that type of presidential misbehavior. As James Madison put it: “There is one security in this case [of misused pardons] to which the gentlemen [i.e., Mason and his supporters] not have adverted: If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him [with a pardon], the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”
And there you have it. George Mason was prescient. James Madison—tragically, it turns out—was naive. The most insidious damage to American norms from Trump’s pardon extravaganza stems not from the extravaganza itself, though that is bad enough. Rather the damage to our democracy comes, most clearly, from the supine, almost sycophantic nature of Congress’s response to the Trump presidency since the start, both with regard to his abuse of the pardon power and his excesses more generally.
As was done with Presidents before Trump, like Clinton, for instance. Actually Trump was investigated by a not "supine" or "sycophantic" Congress, but by an energetic, determined, and politicized Congress, more than Clinton was, or more than many if not most Presidents.
Madison saw Congress as a powerful guard dog capable of preventing executive misconduct. Instead, in terms of pardon abuse, as with so many other instances of Trump’s overreach, it has proved little more than a lapdog.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-start/617397/
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Here we go with Pete's every now and then nod to the Constitution when he thinks it suits his purpose. What a crock. He advocates censorship of speech, getting rid of the electoral college, prefers federal policies that usurp the constitutional power of the states, prefers centralized government over localized government, is in favor of ideologies such as Progressivism, CRT, various Postmodernist concepts, that are antithetical to the Constitution.
He is not really a friend of the Constitution, unless he thinks he can squeeze something out of it that can put some narrative of his in a favorable light.
Progressivism has been the real and constant force that has gutted much of the Constitution, and has transformed much of the rest by its Progressive notions on how it is to be interpreted. And the Progressives have openly stated that it is not a functioning guide for our modern society, and, indeed, should entirely, or mostly be scrapped.
This all has been going on well before Trump. It may be convenient to vilify and destroy him as the villain that has destroyed the Constitution and the Congress. But that is absurd. The Progressve Congresses, and Presidents, and Judges were responsible for that, not Trump, regardless of what you think of him as a person.
And your response that "hence," the fact that the DOJ
did not find that Mueller's 10 points of possible Trump obstruction were sufficient to violate obstruction statutes, was not the reason why Trump pardoned Manafort and Flynn. There were actually strong cases, especially for Flynn, to be made for the pardons. Not the least of which that they, especially Flynn, were implicated by a wrongful attempt to bring down the President.
And those attempts to bring down the President were as harmful to "our democracy" as what you want to blame Trump for.