There are still two parties in our system (I wish there were more). It is not a given that the Republicans will win. They certainly stumbled out of the gates in the mid terms and they still have not settled on a Speaker of the House. Plus, they are now the minority party in the Senate.
Moreover, even if DeSantas would win the presidency, he can only direct his DOJ to investigate Fauci, It would be up to the DOJ to charge Fauci. And then there are the courts
We are a long way off from DeSantas being able to do anything.
Even if Desantas can pardon Trump it would only be at the federal level. Various states will have indicted Trump based on their laws. A federal pardon means nothing to them.
Along with that stupid evil libertarian bastard Musk, DeSantis can make Fauci's life absolute hell regardless of the DoJ. And how can states indict Trump for federal crimes?
We are a long way off from DeSantas being able to do anything.
Even if Desantas can pardon Trump it would only be at the federal level. Various states will have indicted Trump based on their laws. A federal pardon means nothing to them.
I appreciate that being from the UK, you have limited experience of living and working in a Federal system, but how can De Santis, as a State Governor, pardon anyone convicted of a Federal crime? (I assume that be Desantas you are intending to refer to De Santis.)
It maybe wholly unnecessary, but for the prevention of confusion... where Trump or anybody has committed state crimes, he'll end up in state courts; where federal, in federal courts; pardons are only possible from the appropriate system's executive (president or governor and generally under certain legal constraints--we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed); and no executive can summarily jail somebody (that's what we have a court system for).
And I rejoice to hear that 1/3 the summary is footnotes. The committee has done its homework, and each of those notes is going to be an individual nail in Trump's legal coffin.
It maybe wholly unnecessary, but for the prevention of confusion... where Trump or anybody has committed state crimes, he'll end up in state courts; where federal, in federal courts; pardons are only possible from the appropriate system's executive (president or governor and generally under certain legal constraints--we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed); and no executive can summarily jail somebody (that's what we have a court system for).
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Exactly and thanks for setting it out as clearly as you have. The same applies here and similar procedures would apply in Canada.
And thank God for it. If we can just get some accountability and norms back in place, maybe the whole nation (US, I mean!) won't implode. The courts may be our salvation yet.
We are a long way off from DeSantas being able to do anything.
Even if Desantas can pardon Trump it would only be at the federal level. Various states will have indicted Trump based on their laws. A federal pardon means nothing to them.
I appreciate that being from the UK, you have limited experience of living and working in a Federal system, but how can De Santis, as a State Governor, pardon anyone convicted of a Federal crime? (I assume that be Desantas you are intending to refer to De Santis.)
That's not me you're quoting. And am I the one here who gets his name right?
. . . we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed . . .
Blanket pardons by the president have been issued in the past. For example, Proclamation 4311:
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.
As far as I know the only restrictions on the scope of a presidential pardon are that it only covers federal crimes and that it can only apply to past actions (i.e. no pardon can be granted for acts not yet committed).
Right. Though I was thinking of a pardon that was all you mention, and not time limited either. As in, "I pardon you for everything ever." A few of the would-be pardonees appeared to be hoping for just that at the end of Trump's time in office...
Right. Though I was thinking of a pardon that was all you mention, and not time limited either. As in, "I pardon you for everything ever." A few of the would-be pardonees appeared to be hoping for just that at the end of Trump's time in office...
Rep. Matt Gaetz allegedly requested a pardon from Trump covering the period from the beginning of time to the present day for any and all offenses committed. While Gaetz has been implicated in the January 6 conspiracy a pardon so broadly worded would also cover the investigation into his alleged sex trafficking of a minor.
If DeSantis becomes president, he could pardon Trump for any federal crime, but this will have little impact on state prosecutions under their state laws. For instance, DeSantis as President might pardon Trump for insurrection, should he be found guilty. But DeSanta's pardon will not impact Georgia's prosecution of DJT for vote tampering which is tied to Georgia's laws.
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
It maybe wholly unnecessary, but for the prevention of confusion... where Trump or anybody has committed state crimes, he'll end up in state courts; where federal, in federal courts; pardons are only possible from the appropriate system's executive (president or governor and generally under certain legal constraints--we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed); and no executive can summarily jail somebody (that's what we have a court system for).
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Exactly and thanks for setting it out as clearly as you have. The same applies here and similar procedures would apply in Canada.
No it wouldn't. Canada and Australia are not identical and the nature and administration of criminal law is one of our most significant divergences. All criminal law in Canada is Federal, there is but one criminal law in Canada as contained in the Criminal Code. The provinces however administer criminal justice, prosecute most criminal offences and most crimes are tried in provincial (inferior) courts before provincially appointed judges. Serious crimes are heard in before federally-appointed justices in superior courts.
Provinces may create statutory offences with imprisonment for less than two years, but most of the time six months in the rule for so-called 'regulatory offences'. These are not considered criminal.
There is only one pardoning authority in Canada and that is the Governor General.
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
This is the one who scares me most, as he seems to me to be Trump cloned but with more intelligence. Probably able to do even more evil because of it.
It maybe wholly unnecessary, but for the prevention of confusion... where Trump or anybody has committed state crimes, he'll end up in state courts; where federal, in federal courts; pardons are only possible from the appropriate system's executive (president or governor and generally under certain legal constraints--we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed); and no executive can summarily jail somebody (that's what we have a court system for).
And I rejoice to hear that 1/3 the summary is footnotes. The committee has done its homework, and each of those notes is going to be an individual nail in Trump's legal coffin.
Why are pardons in the gift of politicians anyway? The only reason I can see to desire or justify them is to counter the risk of politically-motivated charges being brought. This casts doubt on the impartiality of the justice system. If an elected person can overrule the justice system it makes the latter pointless. If judges were impartial (apolitical), there would be no need for politically-driven pardons. Get politics out of 'justice'!
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
This is the one who scares me most, as he seems to me to be Trump cloned but with more intelligence. Probably able to do even more evil because of it.
Eh, any Republican presidential nominee is going to be an ideological clone of Donald Trump for at least the next few presidential cycles and there are a lot of them out there already, not just DeSantis. It's not so much that Trump has changed the Republican party, it's that he's given them permission to let their freak flags fly.
So yeah, DeSantis might be the next Republican presidential nominee, but it's more likely that nominee will either be Trump or some other Trump clone without national name recognition yet.
Why are pardons in the gift of politicians anyway?
The American answer is that it's part of the system of check and balances. Pardons are one of the ways the executive branch can check over-reach by the judiciary.
The only reason I can see to desire or justify them is to counter the risk of politically-motivated charges being brought. This casts doubt on the impartiality of the justice system. If an elected person can overrule the justice system it makes the latter pointless. If judges were impartial (apolitical), there would be no need for politically-driven pardons. Get politics out of 'justice'!
How would that work anyway? Laws are themselves products of politics. For example, the American "War on Drugs" was/is hugely political and distorted the criminal justice system in numerous ways. Should an "apolitical" judiciary refuse to prosecute anyone for breaking laws passed by politicians (a.k.a. all laws)?
I think it's a common bit of blindness to regard the law as some kind of organic entity which just popped into existence one day without the influence of politics.
This gets even more complicated when discussing inherently political crimes, like trying to steal an election or committing insurrection (as non-random examples). These kinds of crimes are inherently "political" so any approach to punishing them will be too.
Why are pardons in the gift of politicians anyway?
The American answer is that it's part of the system of check and balances. Pardons are one of the ways the executive branch can check over-reach by the judiciary.
The only reason I can see to desire or justify them is to counter the risk of politically-motivated charges being brought. This casts doubt on the impartiality of the justice system. If an elected person can overrule the justice system it makes the latter pointless. If judges were impartial (apolitical), there would be no need for politically-driven pardons. Get politics out of 'justice'!
How would that work anyway? Laws are themselves products of politics. For example, the American "War on Drugs" was/is hugely political and distorted the criminal justice system in numerous ways. Should an "apolitical" judiciary refuse to prosecute anyone for breaking laws passed by politicians (a.k.a. all laws)?
I think it's a common bit of blindness to regard the law as some kind of organic entity which just popped into existence one day without the influence of politics.
Obviously you know about this than I (a Brit) do and I accept what you say.
Laws are indeed set by politicians but (as a suggestion) maybe the bar should be set high for new laws or repealing or substantially modifying existing ones, so they'd need a supermajority requiring a governing party to have cross-party support.
Obviously you know about this than I (a Brit) do and I accept what you say.
Laws are indeed set by politicians but (as a suggestion) maybe the bar should be set high for new laws or repealing or substantially modifying existing ones, so they'd need a supermajority requiring a governing party to have cross-party support.
Doesn't this imply that change is bad, which in turn implies that the existing (politician-derived) legal code is already close to perfect? Assuming the superior wisdom of past politicians seems like a bad idea, and supermajority requirements have historically let minority factions prevent competent governance or needed reforms.
Take Jim Crow laws for example. This legal regime enabled white minority rule in the southern United States for decades, largely by disenfranchising black Americans. I'm not sure it's pragamatic to say that black Americans could elect a "supermajority" with the votes they weren't allowed to cast or that Segregation could only legitimately be ended when enough white supremacists favored doing so as a form of "cross-party support".
There are a couple supermajority requirements in the U.S. Constitutional structure, but they mostly apply to making agreements with other countries (treaty ratification), removing corrupt officials (trying an impeachment), or changing the Constitution itself.
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
Might be worth noting that the proper use of pardons is NOT what Trump & Co. were doing. That was an abuse. What you want/need pardon power for, is when a (rare) situation arises where there has been a clear miscarriage of justice that can be corrected no other way; or when (as in Ford's opinion, with Nixon) the welfare of the country demands a quick end to a judicial process that ought otherwise go forward. (And I can't see any American president taking on the hot potato that would be pardoning Trump at this point, even a Republican. His ship appears to be sinking at last.)
It maybe wholly unnecessary, but for the prevention of confusion... where Trump or anybody has committed state crimes, he'll end up in state courts; where federal, in federal courts; pardons are only possible from the appropriate system's executive (president or governor and generally under certain legal constraints--we don't, for instance, have blanket pardons four any crime you've ever committed); and no executive can summarily jail somebody (that's what we have a court system for).
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Exactly and thanks for setting it out as clearly as you have. The same applies here and similar procedures would apply in Canada.
No it wouldn't. Canada and Australia are not identical and the nature and administration of criminal law is one of our most significant divergences. All criminal law in Canada is Federal, there is but one criminal law in Canada as contained in the Criminal Code.
There is only one pardoning authority in Canada and that is the Governor General.
Thank you for that detail. I'd fallen into the trap of assuming that the Provinces were responsible for most criminal law.
The final January 6th Select Committee's final report has been released. Several people have said just reading the Table of Contents is pretty revealing. It is 845 pages long.
De Santos is currently at odds with Disney, don’t switch off it is interesting. Walt Disney World has its own semi governance, called the Reedy Creek Development Agency. It takes a lot of jobs from the two counties WDW is in. It has its own fire brigade for instance. De Santos is at odds with Disney over teaching on being gay and recognising being gay in schools. He has threatened to cancel Reedy Creek. That would of course mean that all the things that WDW do in house will have to be covered by the two counties. Fire fighting, medical emergency, and others. It is unsure if they can stretch that far.
Had an embarrassing situation this morning. We stopped at a small restaurant in Blaine, WA, where we used to eat until about 12 years ago. We had stopped going there because our daughter no longer worked in Blaine and we would stay in another community 20 miles to the south. This last week we decided to stay in Blaine, and went to the old restaurant for old times sake. The previous owner had retired. A new woman owned it but the previous owner was helping out over the holidays. As we came into the restaurant, the new owner handed me an extremely right wing paper, I told Nancy I would have walked out, but I did not want to embarrass the previous owner. Things were light so the old owner came to our table to catch up on old times. After a while he asked my wife if we were Trump people. He was so pro-Trump it almost made us gag on our remaining food. Sad an old friendship had to end this way.
A House committee on Friday [ ed - 30 December 2022 ] made public six years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns, which showed he paid relatively little in federal taxes in the years before and during his presidency.
The House Ways and Means Committee had voted to make the thousands of pages of federal returns public in a party-line vote last week, but their release was delayed while staffers redacted sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents. Friday's release, the culmination of years of legal wrangling and speculation, included both personal and business records.
Out of curiosity, given the likelihood Trump will have multiple charges against him, which one do you think the prosecutors will go after first? What is the low hanging fruit, as it were?
When the stakes are as high as they are here, and the risks of an unsuccessful prosecution are very real, I don’t think there is any low hanging fruit. I’m not at all convinced Trump will be charged with anything, much less that there will be multiple charges.
When the stakes are as high as they are here, and the risks of an unsuccessful prosecution are very real, I don’t think there is any low hanging fruit. I’m not at all convinced Trump will be charged with anything, much less that there will be multiple charges.
Absolutely. Useless grandstanding by the Dems like the congressional enquiry. Have they got a candidate for 2024?
Out of curiosity, given the likelihood Trump will have multiple charges against him, which one do you think the prosecutors will go after first? What is the low hanging fruit, as it were?
From my perspective the lowest hanging fruit is probably the classified documents case. That's because it's relatively easy to explain and it's one of the accusations against Trump that doesn't depend on proving intent. Whether this means it's the case that goes first (or whether charges are brought at all) is a different question, but from an ease-of-prosecution standpoint that's my take.
I think they are. A conviction is not guaranteed, but to fail even to file charges is to announce that law and order are no more and any idiot who wants to take over will face no consequences.
I think they are. A conviction is not guaranteed, but to fail even to file charges is to announce that law and order are no more and any idiot who wants to take over will face no consequences.
Yes, that is definitely the risk, and it’s a big one.
But I think from a prosecution and state-interest standpoint, the one risk that’s even bigger is that Trump is acquitted. I simply can’t imagine the US Attorney General, or any corresponding state official, greenlighting a prosecution unless they’re really confident of getting a conviction.
I think they are. A conviction is not guaranteed, but to fail even to file charges is to announce that law and order are no more and any idiot who wants to take over will face no consequences.
Yes, that is definitely the risk, and it’s a big one.
But I think from a prosecution and state-interest standpoint, the one risk that’s even bigger is that Trump is acquitted. I simply can’t imagine the US Attorney General, or any corresponding state official, greenlighting a prosecution unless they’re really confident of getting a conviction.
I'd agree with that. As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
Without consent, not that I know of. In the federal system, a defendant can waive a jury trial, but consent of both the prosecution and the court is required. Each state has its own rules, but I don’t know of any where a jury trial can be waived by anyone other than the defendant.
I think they are. A conviction is not guaranteed, but to fail even to file charges is to announce that law and order are no more and any idiot who wants to take over will face no consequences.
Yes, that is definitely the risk, and it’s a big one.
But I think from a prosecution and state-interest standpoint, the one risk that’s even bigger is that Trump is acquitted. I simply can’t imagine the US Attorney General, or any corresponding state official, greenlighting a prosecution unless they’re really confident of getting a conviction.
I'd agree with that. As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
Essentially, no. The US Federal Justice system US is highly jury-dependent and summary procedures are much more limited compared to Commonwealth normal (UK/Can/Aus)
As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
Only trials for petty offenses can be non-jury without the consent of the accused. Petty offense is those for which the maximum potential sentence is 6 months or less. At least the Supreme Court has so ruled.
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
DeSantis is Murdoch's preference. That's why he is the likely nominee - all that free discussion points on Fox.
I think they are. A conviction is not guaranteed, but to fail even to file charges is to announce that law and order are no more and any idiot who wants to take over will face no consequences.
Yes, that is definitely the risk, and it’s a big one.
But I think from a prosecution and state-interest standpoint, the one risk that’s even bigger is that Trump is acquitted. I simply can’t imagine the US Attorney General, or any corresponding state official, greenlighting a prosecution unless they’re really confident of getting a conviction.
I'd agree with that. As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
Essentially, no. The US Federal Justice system US is highly jury-dependent and summary procedures are much more limited compared to Commonwealth normal (UK/Can/Aus)
However, until a recent Supreme Court ruling, there were places like Florida where the sentences handed down by juries on cases where the death penalty was an option were only recommendations to the judge, who could overrule the jury. So some judges threw out life imprisonment sentences from juries and imposed the death sentence instead. Let’s hope the Supreme Court as currently composed doesn’t want to allow that again.
The New York Times (May be behind paywall. Sorry) is reporting that a partner of one of the Capital Police who died shortly after January 6th is suing Trump and two other men who assaulted the officer during the riot for $10 mil.
Basically, Officer Brian Sicknick (real name) was attacked with a chemical spray by the two men during the assault on the capitol. A day later, Sichknick died of multiple strokes, The medical examiner has said the strokes were from natural causes, but the examinator also said, the chemical spray could have triggered the strokes. Sicknick's longtime partner, Sandra Garza, fired the suit on behalf of Sicknick's estate.
BTW, Sicknick and several other people who were protecting the capitol that day were honored with the Presidential We The People medals today along with some other elected officials and election clerks who refused to change the vote in their locales. .
I hadn't realized until recently that 4 police officers who were on duty at the time of the riot had since ended their own lives. I don't suppose anyone else could be held accountable for their deaths, even if only as a contributing factor.
I hadn't realized until recently that 4 police officers who were on duty at the time of the riot had since ended their own lives. I don't suppose anyone else could be held accountable for their deaths, even if only as a contributing factor.
Yes, it is a sad commentary that the officers took their lives. They had sworn to defend the Constitution and protect the Capitol. I presume they felt they failed. In reality, the people that failed was the Trump administration when they refused to send in the National Guard or the regular Army.
Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to oversee Trump-related probes in the Department of Justice, has subpœnaed Mike Pence.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Sources told ABC News that the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith requests documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The subpoena follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence's legal team.
The bit about negotiations is interesting. The subpœna could be evidence that Smith has become convinced that Pence was never going to voluntarily cooperate, but it might also be something Pence's legal team requested so that it would look like Pence was forced into testifying against his former boss.
Comments
Along with that stupid evil libertarian bastard Musk, DeSantis can make Fauci's life absolute hell regardless of the DoJ. And how can states indict Trump for federal crimes?
I appreciate that being from the UK, you have limited experience of living and working in a Federal system, but how can De Santis, as a State Governor, pardon anyone convicted of a Federal crime? (I assume that be Desantas you are intending to refer to De Santis.)
And I rejoice to hear that 1/3 the summary is footnotes. The committee has done its homework, and each of those notes is going to be an individual nail in Trump's legal coffin.
Exactly and thanks for setting it out as clearly as you have. The same applies here and similar procedures would apply in Canada.
That's not me you're quoting. And am I the one here who gets his name right?
Blanket pardons by the president have been issued in the past. For example, Proclamation 4311:
As far as I know the only restrictions on the scope of a presidential pardon are that it only covers federal crimes and that it can only apply to past actions (i.e. no pardon can be granted for acts not yet committed).
Rep. Matt Gaetz allegedly requested a pardon from Trump covering the period from the beginning of time to the present day for any and all offenses committed. While Gaetz has been implicated in the January 6 conspiracy a pardon so broadly worded would also cover the investigation into his alleged sex trafficking of a minor.
I think the whole "President DeSantis" thing is incredibly premature. At the moment he's the current Beltway media darling (what is it with the American political press and their pathological need for Republican Daddies?) without much else to recommend him. I'm remembering past examples like Fred Thompson, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They all got slavishly bootlicking press starting right after the mid-terms and then foundered as soon as the primaries started, having no real constituency among Republican voters outside their respective home states.
No it wouldn't. Canada and Australia are not identical and the nature and administration of criminal law is one of our most significant divergences. All criminal law in Canada is Federal, there is but one criminal law in Canada as contained in the Criminal Code. The provinces however administer criminal justice, prosecute most criminal offences and most crimes are tried in provincial (inferior) courts before provincially appointed judges. Serious crimes are heard in before federally-appointed justices in superior courts.
Provinces may create statutory offences with imprisonment for less than two years, but most of the time six months in the rule for so-called 'regulatory offences'. These are not considered criminal.
There is only one pardoning authority in Canada and that is the Governor General.
This is the one who scares me most, as he seems to me to be Trump cloned but with more intelligence. Probably able to do even more evil because of it.
Why are pardons in the gift of politicians anyway? The only reason I can see to desire or justify them is to counter the risk of politically-motivated charges being brought. This casts doubt on the impartiality of the justice system. If an elected person can overrule the justice system it makes the latter pointless. If judges were impartial (apolitical), there would be no need for politically-driven pardons. Get politics out of 'justice'!
Eh, any Republican presidential nominee is going to be an ideological clone of Donald Trump for at least the next few presidential cycles and there are a lot of them out there already, not just DeSantis. It's not so much that Trump has changed the Republican party, it's that he's given them permission to let their freak flags fly.
So yeah, DeSantis might be the next Republican presidential nominee, but it's more likely that nominee will either be Trump or some other Trump clone without national name recognition yet.
The American answer is that it's part of the system of check and balances. Pardons are one of the ways the executive branch can check over-reach by the judiciary.
How would that work anyway? Laws are themselves products of politics. For example, the American "War on Drugs" was/is hugely political and distorted the criminal justice system in numerous ways. Should an "apolitical" judiciary refuse to prosecute anyone for breaking laws passed by politicians (a.k.a. all laws)?
I think it's a common bit of blindness to regard the law as some kind of organic entity which just popped into existence one day without the influence of politics.
Obviously you know about this than I (a Brit) do and I accept what you say.
Laws are indeed set by politicians but (as a suggestion) maybe the bar should be set high for new laws or repealing or substantially modifying existing ones, so they'd need a supermajority requiring a governing party to have cross-party support.
Doesn't this imply that change is bad, which in turn implies that the existing (politician-derived) legal code is already close to perfect? Assuming the superior wisdom of past politicians seems like a bad idea, and supermajority requirements have historically let minority factions prevent competent governance or needed reforms.
Take Jim Crow laws for example. This legal regime enabled white minority rule in the southern United States for decades, largely by disenfranchising black Americans. I'm not sure it's pragamatic to say that black Americans could elect a "supermajority" with the votes they weren't allowed to cast or that Segregation could only legitimately be ended when enough white supremacists favored doing so as a form of "cross-party support".
There are a couple supermajority requirements in the U.S. Constitutional structure, but they mostly apply to making agreements with other countries (treaty ratification), removing corrupt officials (trying an impeachment), or changing the Constitution itself.
Trump it is then.
Thank you for that detail. I'd fallen into the trap of assuming that the Provinces were responsible for most criminal law.
Trump's tax returns are now public.
Out of curiosity, given the likelihood Trump will have multiple charges against him, which one do you think the prosecutors will go after first? What is the low hanging fruit, as it were?
Absolutely. Useless grandstanding by the Dems like the congressional enquiry. Have they got a candidate for 2024?
From my perspective the lowest hanging fruit is probably the classified documents case. That's because it's relatively easy to explain and it's one of the accusations against Trump that doesn't depend on proving intent. Whether this means it's the case that goes first (or whether charges are brought at all) is a different question, but from an ease-of-prosecution standpoint that's my take.
But I think from a prosecution and state-interest standpoint, the one risk that’s even bigger is that Trump is acquitted. I simply can’t imagine the US Attorney General, or any corresponding state official, greenlighting a prosecution unless they’re really confident of getting a conviction.
I'd agree with that. As a bit of an aside, are there any possible charges which can be tried summarily, by which I mean without a jury, without the consent of the accused?
Essentially, no. The US Federal Justice system US is highly jury-dependent and summary procedures are much more limited compared to Commonwealth normal (UK/Can/Aus)
Only trials for petty offenses can be non-jury without the consent of the accused. Petty offense is those for which the maximum potential sentence is 6 months or less. At least the Supreme Court has so ruled.
I was intrigued by the fact that he appears to have paid more tax to the Chinese government than the US.
DeSantis is Murdoch's preference. That's why he is the likely nominee - all that free discussion points on Fox.
However, until a recent Supreme Court ruling, there were places like Florida where the sentences handed down by juries on cases where the death penalty was an option were only recommendations to the judge, who could overrule the jury. So some judges threw out life imprisonment sentences from juries and imposed the death sentence instead. Let’s hope the Supreme Court as currently composed doesn’t want to allow that again.
Basically, Officer Brian Sicknick (real name) was attacked with a chemical spray by the two men during the assault on the capitol. A day later, Sichknick died of multiple strokes, The medical examiner has said the strokes were from natural causes, but the examinator also said, the chemical spray could have triggered the strokes. Sicknick's longtime partner, Sandra Garza, fired the suit on behalf of Sicknick's estate.
BTW, Sicknick and several other people who were protecting the capitol that day were honored with the Presidential We The People medals today along with some other elected officials and election clerks who refused to change the vote in their locales. .
Yes, it is a sad commentary that the officers took their lives. They had sworn to defend the Constitution and protect the Capitol. I presume they felt they failed. In reality, the people that failed was the Trump administration when they refused to send in the National Guard or the regular Army.
The bit about negotiations is interesting. The subpœna could be evidence that Smith has become convinced that Pence was never going to voluntarily cooperate, but it might also be something Pence's legal team requested so that it would look like Pence was forced into testifying against his former boss.