He has to be convicted of something before being able to be pardoned, and for some reason a sitting president has been declared to be immune from any criminal charges. When he's no longer president is when you'll see NY state start actual criminal proceedings against him, that is if Trump and Barr don't manage to purge every honest judge left
Based on the Nixon pardon you don’t need to be convicted to be Pardoned.
Quote:
Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.
Now this was never tested in the courts but there is precedent for this type of Pardon.
Though as others have stated presidential pardons only cover federal crimes and not state ones. Though there is an interesting case where if a crime was committed and you could be charged with both the state crime and the federal crime the federal crime takes precident and you can’t be convicted of both. So one thing Trump May be able to do with a presidential pardon is to argue that the crimes he is charged with in New York State could actually be federal charges and therefore would be covered under the federal pardon.
So to truly get trump you need to find a crime at the state level that isn’t a crime at the federal level in the event that Teump gets a Nixon style Pardon.
Edit: I think I have the double jeopardy federal state thing wrong. In the Manafort case it appears that the court ruled they were allowed to pursue state level charges.
He started suggesting people wear masks and has even wore one himself. That’s the first thing I’ve seen him contradict Trump on.
Is there a deadline that he has to run by? Maybe they are waiting until the last possible second to pull the plug so Pence doesn’t have time to screw it up.
Is there a deadline that he has to run by? Maybe they are waiting until the last possible second to pull the plug so Pence doesn’t have time to screw it up.
The convention is at the end of August. I have no idea what’s going to happen before then but my bet would be Trump running until the end. His ego wouldn’t let him resign.
For the second time in as many weeks, Vice President Mike Pence refused to utter the words Black lives matter. And this time, as part of his rationale, he used the name of the Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., twisting King’s words and legacy to justify his own inaction.
On Sunday, John Dickerson of CBS News’ Face the Nation asked Pence why he won’t say that Black lives matter.
“One thing protesters would like to hear is leaders say Black lives matter. You won’t say that. Why?” Dickerson asked.
Pence then tried to connect an unproven notion that the movement stands for violence and because the vice president was such a devoted follower of the peace-driven activist, it is impossible for him to utter those words.
“All my life, I’ve been inspired by the example of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When I was in Congress, I traveled to his home church in Montgomery with Congressman John Lewis. I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday,” Pence said. “I cherish the progress that we have made toward a more perfect union for African Americans throughout our history. And I’ve aspired throughout my career to be a part of that ongoing work. It’s really a heart issue for me.”
Quote:
Pence then threw in his anti-abortion beliefs as another excuse to not speak the words “Black lives matter.”
“And as a pro-life American, I also believe that all life matters, born and unborn,” Pence said.
The vice president continued by going after the movement that stands for equality and is advocating for change in order to stop racist police brutality.
“What I see in the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement is a political agenda of the radical left that would defund the police. That would tear down monuments, that would press a radical left agenda, and support calls for the kind of violence that has beset the very communities that they say that they’re advocating for,” Pence said.
Dickerson attempted to interrupt Pence’s filibuster twice and then finally asked again, “So you won’t say Black lives matter?”
To which Pence replied: “John, I really believe that all lives matter.”
The convention is at the end of August. I have no idea what’s going to happen before then but my bet would be Trump running until the end. His ego wouldn’t let him resign.
A pardon is really useless to Trump. The state AGs have built cases against Trump, and those are not covered by a pardon. This is why Trump continues to try and weed out anyone at the state level that could possible bring charges against him. Trump or Pence can pardon him all they want, but he's in legal crosshairs that he's going to struggle to get out of.
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We have the Green candidate, Howie Hawkins. I found this interview pretty interesting as a choice for progressives. And he has a black female running mate!
Excerpt about wasting your vote, that would interest you, and the things that have been discussed in this thread.
Spoiler!
Quote:
Q: So your platform in general I mean is is very impressively radical, it has a lot of stuff which I think you know everybody thinks we should have. But I'm curious in terms of your sense of the, our political consensus machine tends to produce a kind of negotiate from the middle or to start halfway to your opponents position and then negotiate halfway from there. It's led to us a lot of cynicism right around just electoralism in general on the Left. What do you say to people who think electoralism is just a dead end, we shouldn't even bother.
A: Well to have a mass base party of the left, it's got to be driven forward by social movements. But on the other hand, if the social movements don't support a vote for that party, they're gonna be taken for granted. Because in the end, street demonstrations are a more militant form of lobbying Democrats. And if you're not threatening their votes, they gonna take you for granted. We saw that during the Iraq War, we were called the world's second superpower by the New York Times, massive demonstrations. But then the leadership of the peace movement said, in 2004, our slogans gonna be against the Bush Agenda, which meant vote for Kerry, who at the Democratic convention said I'm reporting for duty I'm a veteran I could fight the war better than Bush. He wasn't anti-war, he just said I'm a better warrior. And that really undermined the peace movement. So we got to vote for what we want and make the politicians come to us.
And if you vote for Biden and you're a progressive, say you're supported Bernie Sanders, you wanted Medicare for All, a full-strength Green New deal, College for All, tax the rich, all those things, and you vote for Biden, you get lost in the sauce. You don't know you're a progressive, you voted for Biden, you just silenced yourself. You vote for the Greens, we're for those things and more. Everybody knows what we stand for it, and that's your voice, and you can make it heard and the more votes we get the more leverage we'll have going forward. When I got 5% of vote running against Andrew Cuomo for Governor in 2014, he had wanted to run up the vote to get ready to run for President. He wanted to get more votes than his father Mario Cuomo ever got. He want to get more votes than he got when he was first elected in 2010, and he got less. He couldn't take us for granted, he's looking at our five percent. He had asked, "What were they saying?" Before that he was a fiscal hawk, now he rebranded himself as the pragmatic progresses that gets things done, and he started adopting some of our planks.
A ban on fracking, a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave. Even made gestures toward tuition free college in public institutions. He didn't do that, but to compete he had to act like he was. So that's where our leverage is. If you vote what you don't want, I mean what's the point? You just silenced yourself and you have no leverage. You vote for what you want, we may not win the White House, hey if we get 5%, whoever's in there is gonna like, particularly if it's a Democrat, they're going to say, that could have been the margin of difference, what are they talking about that I got a deal with? And that's you know our leverage in the process going forward.
Q: So I mean, Democrats particularly have have always used this argument, I mean, at least at least going back to Ralph Nader's campaign in 2000 of well the other guy's worse and you're just you're just throwing away your vote and the threat of Trump is being used heavily on this right? We know Biden's not a good candidate, we don't want to vote for that guy. But it's always, "But if you don't vote for him, you're just voting for Trump." You don't you don't buy, I assume.
A: Yeah look, they call us the spoilers. But I say the Democrats are the spoilers. Because since that Ralph Nader election, we've been giving him the proven nonpartisan solution to the spoiler problem. Replace the Electoral College with the rank-choice national popular vote for President, problem solved. If I ever get on the debate stage with Biden, I'm going to say, "Joe will you support us, will you embrace this reform, a rank-choice national popular vote for President, and then we don't have to spoil the problem what do you say Joe?" I'm afraid Joe is gonna look at me like, "What's that?" I'm not even sure he knows. But that's why we got to be in the race to raise issues like that.
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Watching the Oilers defend is like watching fire engines frantically rushing to the wrong fire
He started suggesting people wear masks and has even wore one himself. That’s the first thing I’ve seen him contradict Trump on.
While at the same time crowing about how well they’ve done with the virus and doubling down with Trump that he was never briefed on the bounty thing (they actually haven’t contradicted the intelligence on that just that they supposedly weren’t briefed). Repeatedly saying All Lives Matter. It’s been a really bad few weeks not just for Trump but the entire upper echelon of the GOP.
While at the same time crowing about how well they’ve done with the virus and doubling down with Trump that he was never briefed on the bounty thing (they actually haven’t contradicted the intelligence on that just that they supposedly weren’t briefed). Repeatedly saying All Lives Matter. It’s been a really bad few weeks not just for Trump but the entire upper echelon of the GOP.
Oh yeah, he’s still unimaginably terrible, but seeing him do anything that doesn’t copycat Trump is notable. It’s probably the most rebellious thing he’s ever done.
Oh yeah, he’s still unimaginably terrible, but seeing him do anything that doesn’t copycat Trump is notable. It’s probably the most rebellious thing he’s ever done.
Well he might have had a meeting with a woman without his wife present once...
Anyways, in yet another decision sure to send evangelicals into fits Judge Roberts sides with the liberal judges as the Supreme Court blocks the Louisiana abortion bill. The bill would have essentially eliminated all abortion clinics from the state. This is the admitting privileges law that would have left one doctor in the state to service the 10,000 abortions a year sought in the state. The court had previously blocked a similar Texas law before Kennedy retired.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortion violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.
The 5-4 decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's liberal justices struck down a law passed by Louisiana's legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle.
Judge Kavanaugh has voted on partisan lines every time. Shocking!
Bob Woodward wanted to expose Brett Kavanaugh as a source for 1999 book about Clinton investigation at the height of his SCOTUS nomination furor - but was talked out of it https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ns-affair.html
Quote:
The fact that Kavanaugh had lied on record enraged Woodward, who was prepared to expose the judge using evidence that he had indeed contributed to the 1999 book. However, just as the story was about to run in 2018, the Washington Post decided not to publish.
