6 ms·

There are two types here: (1) Pardons for crimes not yet committed. (2) Pardons for crimes committed, but not yet convicted. The first type will allow the pardo

There are two types here: (1) Pardons for crimes not yet committed. (2) Pardons for crimes committed, but not yet convicted. The first type will allow the pardoned to commit a crime in the future for free, which obviously should not be allowed. The second should be allowed if we have this pardon system at all. The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration.

elAhmo 6mo ago
The notion itself that someone needs to be protected by a 'vengeful administration', while judicial system should be not politically affiliated is telling how broken the whole separation of powers is. Everyone who is a ruling party puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle.
- foobarchu 6mo ago
  > puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle. There is exactly one party in the US that does this, and it's because they have dedicated themselves to blocking the other party from accomplishing much of anything when they get power.
  - mattmaroon 6mo ago
    No. While I don’t like Trump and never did, several of the prosecutions against him were political. By political, I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician, in fact, they didn’t until he became one and an unpopular one at that. And he’s doing much worse now so that’s two.
    - miltonlost 6mo ago
      Which of the prosecutions were political hit jobs? Enumerate which of the federal and state crimes that Trump was convicted were actually politcal hit jobs. Your definition of political ("not happening if he wasn't a politician") is not what that definition is.
      - wredcoll 6mo ago
        Yeah, the (untrue accusation) is the important part of the political prosecution phrase.
    - lambda 6mo ago
      You may be right that they were political in that sense. But also, they probably should have happened were he not a politician. He's been committing fraud and other white collar crimes for quite a while. Unfortunately, we go far too easy on white collar crime in this country. And he's a master of plausible deniability, where he effectively asks other people to commit crimes on his behalf, but in a plausibly deniable way with no written trail.
    - rootusrootus 6mo ago
      > they would not have happened if he had not become a politician That is a little vague. Some of his crimes only happened because he became a politician, so of course the prosecution would be seen as political in that sense. What I would like to know is which crimes did he commit that were only prosecuted because he was a politician, which would otherwise have been ignored?
      - philipallstar 6mo ago
        The main crime seems to have been leaving the Democrat party as it raced leftwards.
        rootusrootus 6mo ago
        Your comment seems to be a roundabout way of illustrating the concept of relativity.
      - Telemakhos 6mo ago
        One seems to be New York v. Trump, which was a civil lawsuit instead of criminal. The main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans, yet the banks lending the money (mainly Deutsche Bank, if I remember correctly) were sophisticated lenders who were capable of assessing those estimates and the risk of lending. The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals they'd made with Trump. These were all private deals between sophisticated parties who knew what they were doing, and everyone made money. So, no bank suffered harm leading to the charge and no bank lodged any complaint against Trump—the prosecutor went looking for something with which to charge him, and this was the best she could find.
        robot-wrangler 6mo ago
        > main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans > The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals The first part is either a crime, or it is not, regardless of the second? Suppose I falsely say I am worth millions, and then actually win the lottery. It being true later doesn't change whether it was lie originally.
    - tredre3 6mo ago
      > I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician His wife in the 1990s accused him of rape and intended to sue him as part of the divorce proceedings. She changed her words when she obtained a generous divorce settlement, moving from outright rape to "not in the criminal sense, I just felt violated". That was over 20 years before Trump gained political relevance.
    - Spooky23 6mo ago
      Well, yeah. When you turn public office into an ATM for your friends and family, one would expect that.
  - frumplestlatz 6mo ago
    Hilariously (to me, anyway) — I genuinely don’t know which party you’re talking about. It could truly be either, depending entirely on which party you support.
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      Waiting for the day when both the Democrats and Republicans are so very obviously shitty to even the most uninformed voter that we get some new thought in office instead of two sides of the same coin that are both beholden to capital and to foreign interests
      - Onawa 6mo ago
        As long as our voting system is "first past the post", it will be nigh impossible for a third party to make any significant headway. IMO Citizens United and first past the post are the two main issues holding the US back from any kind of significant overhaul or change.
        wredcoll 6mo ago
        First past the post doesn't meaningfull affect primaries and that's where major change could happen. Hell, that's what trump did. He was a third outside party and won the republican primary. Bernie sanders came fairly close to doing the same thing.
        LocalH 6mo ago
        > He was a third outside party and won the republican primary. That's not "third party" quite like you think it is
        RunningDroid 6mo ago
        There's been some progress on killing Citizens United: https://transparentelection.org/ https://transparentelection.org/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-election-initiative/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-elect...
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
Departed7405 6mo ago
(2) Do you mean not yet charged or not yet convicted ? Because I can get you would want to shield some people from persecutions (just or unjust) from your successor, but I see no reason why you would be able to pardon someone charged but waiting for trial. This makes a mockery of justice, the public can't discover the facts but more importantly: why pardon someone that is still considered innocent ?
- prepend 6mo ago
  Because the trial may take 5 years and consume lots of resources. If they’ll be pardoned anyway, why?
dboreham 6mo ago
> a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney IANACL but surely there are other ways to protect people from politically motivated prosecutions? E.g. jail anybody attempting to direct the DOJ for personal or political reasons?
- dlev_pika 6mo ago
  Yeah, but it seems those other protections would/could possibly be a coin toss (eg a successful defense in a trial) and quite costly even if they never get to that stage, and you need a bit more certainty than that. Otherwise help can only come from those willing to become martyrs
- WillPostForFood 6mo ago
  The DOJ is part of the executive - so it is fiction that it was ever apolitical. RFK was JFKs brother, do you think they weren't coordinating DOJ's investigations into political opponents? (e.g. Jimmy Hoffa) Congress created the DOJ, It is their job to police it. They can defund or even eliminate it. That's the check on it.
  - comrh 6mo ago
    It all comes back to needing to check the expanding power of the Executive.
    - EgregiousCube 6mo ago
      Yup. This is why reining in Congress’s authority to delegate is so important.
      - mrguyorama 6mo ago
        You don't need to rein in their authority. Congress should have authority to delegate when needed. What is needed is that voters need to hold congress accountable. People get royally pissed that "Government sucks and doesn't do what it needs to do" and then vote for people who openly say they will make the government suck. The people who voted for Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now spent the past 50 years voting for Congress people who could legally and democratically do exactly what they wanted and just chose not to do it. Clinton's admin cut the budget with a bipartisan congress back in the 90s. Suddenly supposedly that can't happen? Maybe that has something to do with the party that has expressly and openly declared bipartisanship to be verboten. Instead, the voting public seems to be utterly ignorant of how our governments, big and small, work. This is insane, as I know each and every one of these people read the same chapter of a 6th grade Social Studies textbook and other people learned this through childrens songs. There's just no excuse.
frumplestlatz 6mo ago
> The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration. Was it, though? It struck me as more empty political theater around an event largely defined by political theater.
- lateforwork 6mo ago
  You are asking if it was necessary to protect Liz Cheney? Have you not seen the lengths to which Trump is going to punish Comey? Trump even fired Bondi because she was ineffective in targeting his opponents.
rapnie 6mo ago
(3) Morally highly questionable pardons of convicted criminals who committed high crimes. Preferably questioned by a well-functioning ethics commission for things like, well, conflicts of interest, corruption, and the like.

elAhmo 6mo ago

The notion itself that someone needs to be protected by a 'vengeful administration', while judicial system should be not politically affiliated is telling how broken the whole separation of powers is. Everyone who is a ruling party puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle.

foobarchu 6mo ago
> puts candidates they know aligned with their views, resulting in 'just wait until my turn comes and I will do as much as damage as possible' cycle. There is exactly one party in the US that does this, and it's because they have dedicated themselves to blocking the other party from accomplishing much of anything when they get power.
- mattmaroon 6mo ago
  No. While I don’t like Trump and never did, several of the prosecutions against him were political. By political, I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician, in fact, they didn’t until he became one and an unpopular one at that. And he’s doing much worse now so that’s two.
  - miltonlost 6mo ago
    Which of the prosecutions were political hit jobs? Enumerate which of the federal and state crimes that Trump was convicted were actually politcal hit jobs. Your definition of political ("not happening if he wasn't a politician") is not what that definition is.
    - wredcoll 6mo ago
      Yeah, the (untrue accusation) is the important part of the political prosecution phrase.
  - lambda 6mo ago
    You may be right that they were political in that sense. But also, they probably should have happened were he not a politician. He's been committing fraud and other white collar crimes for quite a while. Unfortunately, we go far too easy on white collar crime in this country. And he's a master of plausible deniability, where he effectively asks other people to commit crimes on his behalf, but in a plausibly deniable way with no written trail.
  - rootusrootus 6mo ago
    > they would not have happened if he had not become a politician That is a little vague. Some of his crimes only happened because he became a politician, so of course the prosecution would be seen as political in that sense. What I would like to know is which crimes did he commit that were only prosecuted because he was a politician, which would otherwise have been ignored?
    - philipallstar 6mo ago
      The main crime seems to have been leaving the Democrat party as it raced leftwards.
      - rootusrootus 6mo ago
        Your comment seems to be a roundabout way of illustrating the concept of relativity.
    - Telemakhos 6mo ago
      One seems to be New York v. Trump, which was a civil lawsuit instead of criminal. The main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans, yet the banks lending the money (mainly Deutsche Bank, if I remember correctly) were sophisticated lenders who were capable of assessing those estimates and the risk of lending. The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals they'd made with Trump. These were all private deals between sophisticated parties who knew what they were doing, and everyone made money. So, no bank suffered harm leading to the charge and no bank lodged any complaint against Trump—the prosecutor went looking for something with which to charge him, and this was the best she could find.
      - robot-wrangler 6mo ago
        > main charge in the case was overstatement of real estate values to secure loans > The banks not only did not lose money from the transactions but in fact happily made money, and they had no complaint about the deals The first part is either a crime, or it is not, regardless of the second? Suppose I falsely say I am worth millions, and then actually win the lottery. It being true later doesn't change whether it was lie originally.
  - tredre3 6mo ago
    > I mean they would not have happened if he had not become a politician His wife in the 1990s accused him of rape and intended to sue him as part of the divorce proceedings. She changed her words when she obtained a generous divorce settlement, moving from outright rape to "not in the criminal sense, I just felt violated". That was over 20 years before Trump gained political relevance.
  - Spooky23 6mo ago
    Well, yeah. When you turn public office into an ATM for your friends and family, one would expect that.
- frumplestlatz 6mo ago
  Hilariously (to me, anyway) — I genuinely don’t know which party you’re talking about. It could truly be either, depending entirely on which party you support.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    Waiting for the day when both the Democrats and Republicans are so very obviously shitty to even the most uninformed voter that we get some new thought in office instead of two sides of the same coin that are both beholden to capital and to foreign interests
    - Onawa 6mo ago
      As long as our voting system is "first past the post", it will be nigh impossible for a third party to make any significant headway. IMO Citizens United and first past the post are the two main issues holding the US back from any kind of significant overhaul or change.
      - wredcoll 6mo ago
        First past the post doesn't meaningfull affect primaries and that's where major change could happen. Hell, that's what trump did. He was a third outside party and won the republican primary. Bernie sanders came fairly close to doing the same thing.
        LocalH 6mo ago
        > He was a third outside party and won the republican primary. That's not "third party" quite like you think it is
      - RunningDroid 6mo ago
        There's been some progress on killing Citizens United: https://transparentelection.org/ https://transparentelection.org/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-election-initiative/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/07/transparent-elect...

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

Departed7405 6mo ago

(2) Do you mean not yet charged or not yet convicted ? Because I can get you would want to shield some people from persecutions (just or unjust) from your successor, but I see no reason why you would be able to pardon someone charged but waiting for trial. This makes a mockery of justice, the public can't discover the facts but more importantly: why pardon someone that is still considered innocent ?

prepend 6mo ago
Because the trial may take 5 years and consume lots of resources. If they’ll be pardoned anyway, why?

dboreham 6mo ago

> a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney IANACL but surely there are other ways to protect people from politically motivated prosecutions? E.g. jail anybody attempting to direct the DOJ for personal or political reasons?

dlev_pika 6mo ago
Yeah, but it seems those other protections would/could possibly be a coin toss (eg a successful defense in a trial) and quite costly even if they never get to that stage, and you need a bit more certainty than that. Otherwise help can only come from those willing to become martyrs
WillPostForFood 6mo ago
The DOJ is part of the executive - so it is fiction that it was ever apolitical. RFK was JFKs brother, do you think they weren't coordinating DOJ's investigations into political opponents? (e.g. Jimmy Hoffa) Congress created the DOJ, It is their job to police it. They can defund or even eliminate it. That's the check on it.
- comrh 6mo ago
  It all comes back to needing to check the expanding power of the Executive.
  - EgregiousCube 6mo ago
    Yup. This is why reining in Congress’s authority to delegate is so important.
    - mrguyorama 6mo ago
      You don't need to rein in their authority. Congress should have authority to delegate when needed. What is needed is that voters need to hold congress accountable. People get royally pissed that "Government sucks and doesn't do what it needs to do" and then vote for people who openly say they will make the government suck. The people who voted for Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now spent the past 50 years voting for Congress people who could legally and democratically do exactly what they wanted and just chose not to do it. Clinton's admin cut the budget with a bipartisan congress back in the 90s. Suddenly supposedly that can't happen? Maybe that has something to do with the party that has expressly and openly declared bipartisanship to be verboten. Instead, the voting public seems to be utterly ignorant of how our governments, big and small, work. This is insane, as I know each and every one of these people read the same chapter of a 6th grade Social Studies textbook and other people learned this through childrens songs. There's just no excuse.

frumplestlatz 6mo ago

> The second type became a political necessity, for example to protect Liz Cheney from a vengeful administration. Was it, though? It struck me as more empty political theater around an event largely defined by political theater.

lateforwork 6mo ago
You are asking if it was necessary to protect Liz Cheney? Have you not seen the lengths to which Trump is going to punish Comey? Trump even fired Bondi because she was ineffective in targeting his opponents.

rapnie 6mo ago

(3) Morally highly questionable pardons of convicted criminals who committed high crimes. Preferably questioned by a well-functioning ethics commission for things like, well, conflicts of interest, corruption, and the like.