It shouldn't even be slightly possible though.
So is it that he has a clean slate on all crimes committed up to a certain date without even mentioning what the crime is? Otherwise even if he pardons himself on one charge or more, prosecutors can arraign him on something else. There’s a lot of room for creativity there.
He runs into the issue that even if he gets a clean sheet for federal charges, he could be tried in NY for tax offenses and maybe even in DC for starting a riot.
Pretty much . The only value of attempting another impeachment or invoking the 25th would be to send tacit messages to government bureaucrats and foreign governments that they should not take anything Trump does over the next 13 days shouldn’t be taken seriously. This applies especially to the military, in case he attempts to start a war or use the military domestically.
Absolutely right. This is the unavoidable crux in which Trump finds himself. We will see the final flails of a dying presidency in the coming days due to this fact you rightly point out.
I feel if we learn from Milley et al in the coming days that Trump tried to use the military in any appreciable way domestically, that would be the tipping point for the cabinet & the 25th. Amendment.
Only precedent would be Nixons pardon, which included any and all criminal activity on a federal level during his presidency. That wasn’t issued by himself though, and never challenged in court.
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Yes it may not be so outlandish. Pence remains acting President and the Dems can drag the whole thing in congress for at least 21 days. They don't need a vote on this as it's only 13 days more to go.
I'm with you. We could be boring together.
I feel vaguely inclined to be happy an Ottawa company decides this - but in the end they're just like Twitter: they've decided that finally the balance between income and reputation damage has tilted too much towards the latter. Edit: I'm wrong actually; see @Zarlak's follow-up.
even if so, McTurtle has adjourned the Senate till the 19th, so it would require him to reconvene to even get to a vote.
I'm pretty sure the Biden camp will have been in touch with the most senior military commanders, making sure they understand that Trump is not a well man, is now little short of being an totally deranged maniac, and their new commander-in-chief takes office in a matter of days now.
From all the information available it was Pence who did all the coordinating yesterday with the DOD.
Yes, but I was talking about the possibility of Trump issuing some crazy order in the next 13 days - like launching a nuke towards Iran. I'm pretty sure the Biden camp will have been telling the military to quietly ignore any such crazy instructions.
It will take at least a couple of days to sort the formalities out and bring it up for a vote.
Can they ignore it?
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Technically, no. But practically they can do any number of things - e.g. pretend the order was never received or not properly verified, claim equipment malfunction ... prevaricate, delay, obstruct, confuse etc .... and meanwhile go back to Pence with this convincing evidence that the 25th needs immediate execution.
Pence deserves jail time. The cnut.
I thought last night was his Darth Vader moment but it turns out he's still the same spineless PoS he always was.
I think is absurd to suggest Trump leaving office with a pardon hasn't been in his plans for a very long time. Feck knows how it'll come about but we'll find out pretty soon!
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Mother wouldn't allow him to do that.
My best guess is that Pence and McCollum put an ultimatum that he either concedes and behaves in the next two weeks or is removed from the office by the end of the week.
Yesterday he said of the attack on the capitol that these "are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,”
feck me, that's the first time he's ever made a Presidential Speech and it's his concession speech someone else clearly wrote to calm shit down. Someone has obviously sat him down and had words with him and he's scrambling like feck now.
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There was a federal prosecutor saying he can do it but its unknown how bulletproof it'll be as there is no precedent for it. The courts will decide later on.
