Summary
In his final hours as president, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and members of the Jan. 6 Committee, aiming to shield them from potential retaliation by the incoming Trump administration.
Trump has hinted at targeting those who opposed him or investigated his actions.
Biden stressed that the pardons do not imply wrongdoing but protect reputations and finances from politically motivated investigations.
This unprecedented move reflects concerns about threats to democracy under Trump’s return to power.
I still don’t know what Fauci did to have so much anger for him for this long lol.
Uh he acknowledged facts and science above feeelings, duh.
Trump’s political game works by creating enemies. A virus is too abstract of an enemy, so instead he creates enemies of those adjacent. Fauci, China, WHO, governors of Democratic Party states etc.
I still don’t know what Fauci did to have so much anger for him for this long lol.
Conservatives hate science and scientists. Think about how much anger conservatives had towards Galileo and Darwin.
The current right wing wave we are experiencing in the world is decidedly and aggressively anti-intellectual and anti-establishment. Fauci represents both of these.
What a world we live in where we have to preemptively issue presidential pardons to people who have not only not committed any crimes but have served the public’s interest for their entire lives
Literally made their lives 1000x harder just because they were honest, dedicated, and tried to do the right thing. Going after them is despicable.
It’s un-be-lievable, quite honestly.
Welcome to donvict’s Merica.
Pardon won’t protect them from legal harassment
That was the entire point of the pardon. To spare them the cost of wasting their money on lawyers. None of them were in danger of going to jail because none of them did anything illegal.
I hope on his way out, Biden takes an old man taco shit in the private Oval Office washroom and doesn’t flush.
I’m sure idiots taking revenge on Fauci for, uh, following the science is going to really lower the costs of housing and groceries!
That’s just admitting he committed crimes lol
None of those people committed any crimes. None of them could have been convicted of any crimes and probably couldn’t have been charged with any crimes that wouldn’t have resulted in the lawyers getting disbarred for misconduct. But they likely all would have had to waste their money on their own lawyers. Biden spared them from the nonsense.
Then you can’t pardon them
Citation needed
The fact that this is necessary is just mind blowing.
The fact that they recognize this is necessary, yet still just willingly handed over power…
That’s how democracy works. You accept the results even if you don’t like them. Otherwise, they’d be no better than the Jan 6 trash from this time 4 years ago.
I agree. Unless those results are fascism.
We have learned why it’s important to have an exception for fascism.
Looks like South Korea understands that better than we do.
Paradox of Democracy:
If people democratically elected fascism. Is it anti-democratic to overthrow/coup against the democratically elected fascist?
🤔
South Korea acted swiftly. The US has been sitting on its ass for four whole years. They should have acted before the fascist was re-elected.
The fascist wasn’t re-elected though, was he
He was not re- elected for consecutive terms.
It was clearly rigged, so he was not re-elected by any definition.
No, no we shouldn’t.
- The word “Fascism” gets thrown around for goddamned everything (same as Nazi) just like how “terrorism” has a sliding definition.
- There was no evidence of fraud in the election; the people spoke and this is the turd we got. I’m not going to finger-point and blame (though I could), but suffice it to say we failed our civic duties.
This is just a case of you not liking the results (I don’t like them either). Again, the people spoke, and this is what we got. It sucks, but it’s on the up and up.
This is literal fascism. Read a history book to figure out how fascism always turns out and why it’s vital for any “free” society to do literally anything it can to prevent it from taking root.
Elections aren’t the be-all, end-all. People made the objectively wrong decision.
They made the decision. Either to vote for the insurrectionist rapist, or to sit it out because of ONE issue happening across the world. Yet none of them own up to it, choosing instead to blame the politicians for not giving them an ideal choice.
Imagine if you heard this from a republican. He only raped ONE girl, he only gave ONE box of highly sensitive documents to the Saudis, he only tried to overthrow ONE election.
That issue is fucking genocide and it was being enabled by our goverment. I understood the importance of holding the line leading up to the election and supporting the dems but now that it is over? They are corrupt and decided to placate their patrons because they thought they had an easy win and could ignore voters. They ran on apathy. They caused this directly.
The democrats need to change. We can’t normalize genocide, even if it’s only ONE genocide. Stop blaming voters, it’s the dems job to listen to them and they alienated half their base instead.
Be that as it may, that’s what the country voted for and got. There was a free and fair election, and we fucked up royally.
Funny how the other side just reverts to threats and intimidation when they don’t get what they want.
Most of the military voted trump, what was he supposed to do, attempt a coup that would have zero people would follow his orders?
Well according to the supreme court he could just order Seal Team Six to kill Trump as long as he called it an “official act”.
But Dark Brandon never came…
Supreme court said if Biden tried to give such orders, he cannot be prosecuted for it.
But Supreme court never gave the president the authority to do it.
Basically it favors republicans because the military and law enforcement leans right wing.
Biden: “Kill donald trump for his treason against the United States”
Military: “Sorry Mr.President, we’re unable to do that”
Biden cannot be prosecuted for the attempt, but the attempt won’t suceed either
trump: “Kill these dEMs, they very bigly bad for 'murica”
Military, after trump’s purges: “Yes sir”
I think he should have started jailing congressmen until they agreed to make a law overturning the immunity decision.
But that can “make things worse” in the same way these pardons did. And they were extremely aware of that.
There’s no winning in this scenario. The people voted against the rule of law. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize, but what are they supposed to do about it? Perform a coup against the will of the people? It’s doing the same damn thing we were just trying to stop.
No they didn’t, only the low level rubes
I don’t fucking know what he was supposed to do, I’m not a lawyer, general or constitutional scholar.
Here’s the thing. All things considered, I believe it was the right thing to do and probably the best option available given the circumstances, but a part of me still thinks that this just might end up making things worse.
I’m not even convinced that these things will hold. We have already learned that just because it says so in the Constitution doesn’t mean this Supreme Court will abide by it, as they’ve already hand-waived away several Constitutional protections already and have essentially turned the Constitution into a very old piece of paper with guidelines that can be ignored when inconvenient.
Given this President and this Supreme Court, I could easily see the Supreme Court either spinning all new powers of “judicial review” when it comes to pardons all for itself out of thin air, or just saying that pre-emptive pardons aren’t a thing and are therefore invalid. And when the precedent of Nixon’s pardon is brought up, they could just say that it would have been struck down too had it been challenged. Or at least, they would have struck it down. Easy to say because Nixon’s dead and it’s moot one way or the other, so it’s easy to twist it to their advantage.
And since accepting a pardon comes with the implication of guilt, the right wing conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day showing how this “proves” that Fauci, Milley, etc. are all guilty and should be prosecuted anyway. (“Even though the Biden pardons were all ruled invalid, the fact that these defendants had accepted them comes with the implication of guilt. That implication is not Constitutionally protected and therefore can be used against them in future prosecutions.” – This Supreme Court, probably, in the near future.) This will also lead to a groundswell of support from the rubes who will continue the march to dictatorship with thunderous applause as they start demanding that these people be prosecuted anyway, using their acceptance of the pardons in the first place as “proof” that they were right all along, these people were committing crimes, and they knew it.
Of course, if and when Trump writes his own pardon, the courts will gladly carve out an exception that applies only to Trump. His cronies may go to jail, but we all know what Trump thinks of his cronies once they stop being of use to him.
Watch him try and do it anyway, challenging the pardons in court saying pe-emptive pardons shouldn’t count, only to backtrack when he realizes it means it will make the blanket pardon he wrote for himself invalid too.
Watch him try and do it anyway, challenging the pardons in court saying pe-emptive pardons shouldn’t count, only to backtrack when he realizes it means it will make the blanket pardon he wrote for himself invalid too.
That’s not how this works if you’ve been paying attention to our legal system.
Don’t get me wrong…Trump absolutely will try to have these pardons challenged. But it’s not like the courts are just going to remind him that it won’t work for him either when he tries it. They’ll just wait until he does, then carve out a special exemption that applies only to Trump. That’s how the law works.
He’s likely trying to throw down as many speed bumps as possible. Individually, they won’t do much. Each will act as a distraction, a slight delay. Against most people in his position, they would be useless. Trump isn’t most people however. He will bite and get distracted by the chew toy. It’s likely about all Biden can do to limit the damage a little.
Shhhh don’t remind him about the last part. Have him challenge blanket pardons and then let us enjoy it being used against him.
Not sure what good that will do. Trump patently doesn’t give an F about law, only about how he thinks he’s being perceived. So if he can find a way to prosecute anyone, even of it’s just in the court of public opinion, in such a way that he thinks it makes him stronger and wrecks their lives he will do it.
Jfc
I’m not looking forward to the next week, let alone 4 years.
Did you forget Jack Smith? Hello?
🤨
It’s my opinion that Jack Smith is a conservative who did what he did intentionally.
You’re mixing up him and Merrick Garland
Did the prosecutor wait to build an airtight case for 4 years before arresting Luigi?
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Luigi did a direct act of homicide, whether you agree with it or not, its easier to prosecute when the act is obvious as firing a gun and having the entire act caught on camera, along with leaving a trail of evidence (assuming Luigi is the perpetrator, he could very well be a scapegoat)
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Legal proceedings take a long time, and you need conduct an investigation and to collect evidence before the charges are filed in the first place, since trump did not shoot someone on CCTV that would be a clear cut act to charge, and that investigation in itself take a long time.
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Merrick Garland in in charge of the DoJ, Jack Smith hasn’t been appointed as Special Council until November 18, 2022, nearly 1 year and 10 months after Jan 6th. That’s almost 2 years wasted and its only Merrick Garland’s fault. It took until June 8, 2023 before there was enough evidence found to convince a Grand Jury to indict trump for the classified document mishandling case. And until August 1, 2023 before a Grand Jury indicted trump on the election interference case.
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The judge presiding over the classified document mishandling case, Judge Aileen Cannon, a trump apppintee, keep delaying the case for ovee a year, until July 15, 2024, when she dismissed the case over BS reasons
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For the election interference case, the matter of presidential immunity got to the supreme court and as you know, they ruled that presidents have broad immunity for “official acts”, so the case now has to go to a circuit court to determine whether or not the election interference is considered an “official act”
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Before the the circuit court made a decision, the election happened, and the rest is history.
TLDR: It was Merrick Garland’s fault for wasting almost 2 years.
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I think he’s talking about Jack Smith in the show American Dad, Stan Smith’s father. He was a jewel thief and ran out on Stan and his mother.
Unfortunately, this move will give anti-vax conspiracy theorists massive amounts of fuel.
They have unlimited fuel because they are free to just make shit up.
Pretty scary that he thought this was necessary.
Wtf, a pardon allows you to commit crimes for the rest of your life?!?
Nope
So then how would this help someone who hasn’t been charged with any crimes?
