jpinard
2804
I’m more curious about the ketchup lol.
Kolbex
2805
No, the best case scenario is keeping someone out of the way.
Where? I’ve seen some of the planning stuff, but no calls for executions.
jpinard
2806
That was the plan in Michigan. Seriously… you had no idea? It was all over the news.
Kolbex
2807
I’m talking about DC, obviously.
jpinard
2808
parlortakes and on thedonald
I get the frustration, but I don’t really see how it makes any difference. Trump can issue a pardon in a minute any time he wants to — he need not wait for some lawyers in the OLC to type it up, it is his power. And if he sees the House passing articles of impeachment, he will do it, whether that happens today or tomorrow or next week.
And the House can’t remove Trump. They can only send the articles to the Senate. There is no indication I can see that the Senate is prepared to instantly convict him, or even to accelerate their normal process. So he is free to go on pardoning people until his term ends, no matter how fast the House acts.
I guess I trust the Dem House leadership, and if they say they need a few days to get this right, I can live with that. I’m just happy to see that they seem committed to doing it.
I am also happy. If only to let Dem voters know that this matters.
I don’t understand the “get the GOP Senators on the record” desire that some talk of. Who gives a crap what they have to say? Is a single person on any side going to be shocked when they vote to not impeach? Maybe, but it’s hard for me to imagine.
I mean you may as well ask a baby to go on the record that it shit its diaper. We can all smell the shit.
KevinC
2812
Well, it’s about the margins. The GOP just lost two senate seats in Georgia. I do think this stuff matters on the persuadable edges.
KevinC
2815
Anecdotally, I have some examples of Republicans that voted for Trump in 2016. They couldn’t get themselves to vote for Biden and the evil Democrats in 2020 but they stayed home because they really couldn’t stomach more of Trump either. So even if we don’t convince them to vote for a Dem if they can be disgusted enough by his enablers to just stay home that works too. Hopefully forcing Republicans on the record can lead to that.
Maybe I’m just being overly optimistic today because it’s Friday. :)
That is excellent. Will any of them stay home because their GOP Senator voted to not impeach Trump, though? Rhetorical question.
Ah, I see you said something about that already (his “enablers”). Apologies!
He will of course do exactly that. Nothing about tinkering with the impeachment schedule will change it one bit.
Yes, impeach him next week and he’ll have plenty of time to send out his pardon tweet. But impeach him this afternoon and … he’ll just tweet out his pardons five minutes before the Senate votes. We know from news sources that he already has a list drawn up.
Trump is going to issue a bunch more pardons and there is literally nothing that can be done to stop him.*
*Except possibly if he pardons himself: the legality of that has never been established and the DOJ issued a memo back in Nixon’s day suggesting that he cannot.
Can Biden nullify those pardons somehow? Can they be challenged?
Absolutely nothing about that in the Constitution. Just that the president can issue pardons. So, no, Biden does not have the power to undo another president’s pardons.
There are some legal arguments about whether it can be shown that a pardon was issued for a corrupt purpose, and whether that means it can be challenged, but it has never been tested. I think you can come up with clear straw an examples — the President on tape telling someone to rob the bank and then promising a pardon — but few things will be that crystal clear.
abrandt
2823
Let’s be honest, the short time left is also why so many more Republicans favor impeachment than people would expect, they know it doesn’t mean much for them.
