Conservative groups influential with the Trump administration have pressed for the preemptive acts of clemency.
There’s a world of difference between a pardon issues to prevent malicious prosecution for non-crimew and one issued to people you’ve been instructing to commit crimes
I don’t agree with that necessarily when people cheer to lock someone up without a cause. Like if a president came forward and pardoned say all the people who have immigrated to this country for any previous issues while filing out immigration paperwork, such as typos name changes, and so on then it isn’t directly to cover for guilt, but rather to protect a group of people from harassment.
Edit then you can institute a review process and further assistance while submitting such paperwork in the future and it could mitigate witch hunts and mistreatment of people
I believe immigration violations aren’t criminal charges, they’re civil charges. That’s why you don’t get a lawyer and proceedings are in immigration courts.
A president can grant amnesty instead, which doesn’t have anything to do with admissions of guilt that I’m aware of.
The President has not been granted the power of amnesty over immigration violations.
Consider that President Obama tried a much narrower executive action to exercise prosecution discretion over immigration violations, and that still faced some very stiff scrutiny from the courts. If Obama had an amnesty power, he would have probably used it.
Presidents do have a few other levers to let people enter and stay in the country on their discretion:
Sorry I was tired, I was thinking of the Reagan amnesty, but that was an act of congress that he signed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986
Republicans have been using the pardon power to reward their political operatives from the crimes they did to help their political party.
Fascists are exploiting our laws to destroy our democracy.
Yeah I mean I believe that pardons shouldn’t really exist within the executive branch. If they are necessary I feel the process would be better if the executive branch had to send names and crimes you intend to congress with a period of say 60 days to review, a hearing date is set before congress and at the end of that 60 days the executive branch sends their members to present their “case” before congress of why they are special cases and the law shouldn’t just be updated for every individual who performs these acts, past/present/future. Then if 60% of congress votes for it it goes through, or if they vote for a 60 day extension to bring any new information brought during the executive branches testimony to their constituents to see if they need to change their stance.
So effectively that would make it so congress and the executive branch have to be in agreement to overall a finding by the judicial branch. It also should prompt a review of the laws that they had broken to make sure they are brought up to date to ensure future cases aren’t need to be heard.
I fully agree that the pardon power should not be a get out of jail card for criminals.
It’s Saturday which means there’s already too much booze in me but I want a robust system that would filter out political reward pardons, wealth/personal connection pardons and any pardon that happens only because the party giving the pardon benefitted from the crime.
Also, expand SCOTUS to take away the federalist foundation’s control over the American judiciary.
I hear what you are saying, but legally that isn’t how it works. The previous commenter is correct, legally speaking in the US. A pardon is absolutely an admission of guilt.
There are ways around this. You can submit an Alford Plea at your original trial, which again would still indicate guilt under the law, but is a way that a defendant can legally enter into the record that they are “innocent of the charges, but due to circumstances beyond their control, one will submit to the punishment.”
IANYL. I don’t know how this would actually play out inside the bureaucracy.
No a pardon doesn’t have to do with guilt. Guilt is depicted by a judge/jury or by taking a plea deal. A pardon can occur before charges are even filed, and one cannot be declared guilty until a conviction is made… Which would never come to be.
So legally yes, that’s exactly how it works. If Trump pardons Kushner for using U.S. funds and negotiating on behalf of the U.S. like Kushners lawyer recognized he was the signatory on an account holding $770 million dollars but did not make any decisions without Trump approval.
No charges have yet been brought against him. If said pardon goes through it doesnt mean he actually did anything wrong… it means he won’t have to appear in a federal court and explain where/when he turned over access to those accounts when Trump left office(he likely never did)
But in the U.S. you are innocent until proven guilty, and in such a case… He wasn’t proven guilty.