Trump said he would consider pre-emptive pardons to protect Elon Musk and other close aides should Democrats take control of Congress
Donald Trump said he would be willing to protect Elon Musk and his staff if Democrats take control of Congress after the midterm elections this week.
In an interview for the “Pod Force One” podcast published Monday, Trump said he would move to “protect” the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO if Congressional investigators targeted him.
Trump also indicated that he was weighing pre-emptive pardons for his close aides and others around him should the Democrats pursue investigations, according to Axios. It is a notion that the president has floated before to keep his team from facing prosecution for actions during the first two years of his term.
Yeah, pardons don’t make sense unless you believe that executives can never do wrong.
Which is a very strange belief to have as people in the process of rebelling against a king because he made decisions they didn’t like.
Pardons also make sense to correct miscarriages of justice. The justice system often leads to anomalous outcomes, and there needs to be a way to correct them.
So the pardon power should be restricted but not abandoned altogether: for example, no self-pardons, no pardons for crimes that have not been charged yet, no general pardons, no pardons for anyone who holds an Executive branch political appointment until (say) five years after a conviction.
Yeah, while stuff like this is very bad, Chelsea Manning was pardoned for the crime of leaking government secrets pertaining to the torture of prisoners in Iraq. She also had a whole 8th amendment case going on, but it would have taken many years to have a shot of freeing her on that.
Pardons however do need to be seriously curtailed, and should require that the individual have been convicted and not be affiliated with the president or their administration in any way. If President Josh Shapiro wants to pardon Elon he can go right ahead. Elon is a trump ally who was acting as part of his administration and hasn’t been convicted yet. Hell, Ford was Nixon’s VP and an elected member of the same party, if Carter wanted to pardon him after conviction that’s fine, but hell no to Ford