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Why the delay? Release Leonard Peltier now!
By Gloria Verdieu
Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier is now 80 years old. President Biden’s commutation on Jan. 20 is a welcomed victory in the fight to bring Leonard Peltier home. Leonard’s health is deteriorating, yet his release date is not until Feb. 18. Why the delay? Release Leonard Peltier!
The president will also urge governors to follow his lead for people convicted on state charges of possession, officials say.
(This article is gifted; anyone should be able to read it without hitting the paywall.)
Now begins the lame duck pardon party.
Every outgoing president issues tons of pardons in their final weeks in office to tie up any loose threads and appease their supporters. I for one think the president shouldn’t have the power to unilaterally overrule a duly adjudicated criminal conviction, as it spits in the face of the rule of law. Especially under an administration as corrupt as this one, the pardon is a blank check for the president’s allies to commit any federal crime they want for any reason with no fear of prosecution.
Trump pardoned Flynn who admitted he lied to the FBI, he already pardoned Roger Stone, he’s probably going to pardon Paul Manafort, possibly Michael Cohen (Cohen jumped off the Trump Train and became a registered Democrat, but he’s a bloodsucking lawyer first and foremost, so he’ll jump right back on it if the gettin’s good enough). There have been too many names, big and small, that have been charged for breaking the law to protect Trump, and like good little mobsters the ones who didn’t squeal will be hailed as heroes by conservatives everywhere. “Congratulations, you got away with it scot free!”
The most telling thing will be when Trump begins pardoning people who haven’ yet been convicted of anything. When Richard Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him before he could face justice; his pardon was purposefully broad, covering any and all crimes that Nixon may or may not have committed or witnessed throughout his entire tenure in office. It was a pre-emptive pardon, meant to stop the judicial process before it even started, and Trump will almost certainly reward his biggest cronies with these sweeping pardons; he might do it now, or he might wait until January 19th so they can go carte blanche for two months. He is printing literal “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. How far back will the pardons go? Nixon’s covered just his presidency from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, so will Trump’s pardons range from January 2017? A lot of crimes were committed by his campaign, so 2016? 2015? He and his goons have been grifting for decades, and the only limit to his pardon power is that he can’t undo impeachment, but considering he was acquitted it is irrelevant anyway. I expect some of his closest advisors, attorneys, and cabinet members will be pardoned for crimes going back well into the 1970s an 80s, crimes the media doesn’t even know about, many crimes for which the statue of limitations had already expired, but Trump will want to cover his bases anyway.
And the big question is whether or not Trump will try to pardon himself. The constitution doesn’t say he can’t, but it’s never been tested before. I have no idea what the Supreme Court would have to say about a self-pardon; it is an open secret in politics that the president is effectively above the law, but it’s not on any books so everyone can still pretend like laws matter and crimes will be punished. But if Trump pardons himself, and it is allowed, it will establish this as lasting legal precedent, meaning that every future President will be handed a blank check to commit any crimes he wants with ZERO repercussion. Their popularity would probably tank if they did something egregious, or it might fuel their base and make them more popular than ever, but however the public responds, they will be sitting pretty knowing that they’re untouchable. They can lie and cheat and steal and do things much worse than Trump already has, free in the knowledge that no prosecution can ever be laid against them. If there was ever even a question of the legality of a president’s actions, they could pardon themselves and make it disappear. They could assassinate political opponents, they could throw dissidents in prison without trial, they could cancel elections and throw away the constitution entirely because they can pardon themselves faster than the House could impeach and the Senate could convict.
Trump absolutely will try to pardon himself, though I don’t think he expects it to be successful. No, I think his endgame is just to drag out the process so long that the statue of limitations will expire while his self pardon is still being appealed. Say he committed a crime in 2016 and it has a 5 year statute; if he pardons himself and fights in the courts until 2022, the statue will expire and the pardon will be irrelevant, whether the court upholds it or not. He just wants to obstruct, to slow things down, cause as much gridlock as humanly possible so that he can coast to freedom on a raft of bloated bureaucracy. He expects the self pardon to fail, but he expects it to take so long to decide that it won’t matter.
The only saving grace is that he will still be culpable for state crimes. Of course, any red state governors will pardon him at his request, but he made the mistake of doing all his business in Deep Blue New York. Cuomo is gonna fry his ass. Trump and McConnell have been pushing through literal hundreds of Trump-friendly judges to stack the courts in his favor, so the Biden administration will have its work cut out for them, but there are enough prosecutors in enough independent jurisdictions without conflicted judges to see the entire Trump Crime Family face decades of jail time. Now, I don’t expect them to serve any considerable length, maybe a few months in minimum security before being released to house arrest and then paroled for “good behavior,” and I know that no matter what happens Trump will claim victory (he’ll either be found not guilty, or he’ll cry foul and appeal to a higher court he helped staff to get himself off), but Thank God for the 10th Amendment. States ave considerable power over the feds, a right which conservatives have been fighting for for centuries, and now it’ll come back to bite them in the ass when the other side decides to start using it. “Wait, we thought only we were allowed to do whatever we wanted... You can’t do that yourself, that’s not fair to us!”
Trump may try to call Double Jeopardy; pardon himself for federal crimes then claim that he can no longer be charged for state crimes, but I don’t think it will hold up in New York. SCOTUS is another matter; with 6-3, I’m sure they’ll find a way to protect their Golden Goose.
The entire system needs to be burned to the ground. The constitution is broken, we need a frame-off restoration, a whole new document from the ground up. It’ll never happen, but a Constitutional Convention would do wonders for this country; other countries rewrite their constitutions all the time, but America’s amendment process is completely nonfunctional by design. We need big change, and that’s gonna require some very reluctant old Liberals to shift further left and actually balance the out of control right.
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