[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

Mixolyde wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

It's shocking to hear a Republican with a spine and a sense of decency.

Clearly not a Republican, then.

Must be one of those endangered RINOs we keep hearing about.

Well this is super normal and not in any way alarming. Thread with images and whatnot.

Thread wrote:

The president's (recently pardoned) former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, shared a message encouraging President Trump to "temporarily suspend the Constitution," impose martial law and "silence the destructive media."

Well those are definitely all things that there are legal mechanisms for.

You still believe in the concept of legality where this administration is concerned?

r013nt0 wrote:

You still believe in the concept of legality where this administration is concerned?

I dunno - the courts have been doing a pretty good job of saying GTFO in the last couple weeks, no?

Lawyers Lin Wood & Sidney Powell have been sharing the same martial law suggestions.

Jonman wrote:

I dunno - the courts have been doing a pretty good job of saying GTFO in the last couple weeks, no?

For the most part, sure.

The real danger, of course and as usual, is not that he actually succeeds at this. It's that things like this rile up his base, give then even more "justification" for their increasingly batsh*t ideology, and put us all further in danger both in the present and in the future with the type of lunatic candidate that will gain mainstream support in the Republican party going forward.

Is the pardon only effective for crimes committed prior to the announcement of the pardon? In other words, can Flynn be tried for sedition and anything else he does now?

We won't know the limits until they are challenged in court.

My understanding: Flynn would have to be tried for something, attempt to use his get-out-of-jail-forever pardon as a defense, get convicted anyway, then appeal.

JC wrote:

Is the pardon only effective for crimes committed prior to the announcement of the pardon? In other words, can Flynn be tried for sedition and anything else he does now?

Thread by Sarah Kendzior sure makes it sound like he can basically crime all he wants now.

Sarah on Gaslit Nation wrote:

Michael Flynn has been given a sweeping pardon that absolves him of future offenses that 'might arise'. This is like a reverse Minority Report for pre-crime. He's getting pre-pardoned for pre-crimes.

I'm guessing it's a case of them not reading the full text of the pardon:

for any and all possible offenses arising from the facts set forth in the Information and Statement of Offense filed under that docket number or that might arise, or be charged, claimed, or asserted, in connection with the proceedings under that docket number

lemme see if I can find that phrase somewhere else...

yeah, found a pic of Sheriff Joe's pardon on Wikipedia: it's got similar language about "might arise" referencing the court case.

So I'm guessing this is just standard legal stuff, just no one's ever had a reason to pay so much attention to a pardon before to it's raising alarm bells.

Can't easily find the text of a pre-Trump pardon, but my guess would be that if there was something funky going on with this language, someone would have brought this up when Arpaio was pardoned.

The Pardon wrote:

for the charge of making false statements to Federal investigators, in violation of Section 1001, Title 18, United States Code, as charged in the Information filed under docket number 1:17-CR-00232-EGS in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; for any and all possible offenses arising from the facts set forth in the Information and Statement of Offense filed under that docket number or that might arise, or be charged, claimed, or asserted, in connection with the proceedings under that docket number; for any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction of the Special Counsel appointed on May 17, 2017, including the initial Appointment Order No. 3915-2017 and subsequent memoranda regarding the Special Counsel's investigatory authority; and for any and all possible offenses arising out of facts and circumstances known to, identified by, or in any manner related to the investigation of the Special Counsel, including, but not limited to, any grand jury proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

That's a pretty wide damned net of things he could get away with at this point, I'd say. Sure, he couldn't walk into Target and steal a TV, but yikes.

Sorry, I meant that I don't think it includes any future crimes at all. That language "may arise" pops up in both pardons, and is connected to the court case itself, so my guess is it means something specific legally.

I'm thinking maybe he can't be convicted for perjury for anything he lied about. Maybe it's if they asked him under oath "disclose all your meetings with agents of foreign governments" and he didn't tell them about meetings with agents of not just Russia but also Turkey, then they could still nail him on a perjury charge over the Turkey denial. Perjury is a crime even if it's not to cover up the crime you're being investigated for.

Like the bank shot of turning the Whitewater investigation and Paula Jones into the Monica Lewinsky story, I'm thinking?

JC wrote:

Is the pardon only effective for crimes committed prior to the announcement of the pardon? In other words, can Flynn be tried for sedition and anything else he does now?

Everything I've read about this - from the Department of Justice and otherwise - states that a pardon must be issued after a crime has (potentially) been committed, although they may not have been prosecuted for it yet. You can't "preemptively pardon" someone.

The language there is just basically saying "he is forgiven for anything he has already done that's connected to this case, even stuff we don't know about yet".

But that would also necessarily include anything related to those cases that a non-corrupt federal prosecutor would want to indict him over, which is a bit troublesome.

r013nt0 wrote:

But that would also necessarily include anything related to those cases that a non-corrupt federal prosecutor would want to indict him over, which is a bit troublesome.

sure, it's clearly evil, but I wouldn't take a reporter or commentator's word for it when it comes to it being a future pardon.

"Preemptive pardons" are a real thing, but they're preemptive to prosecution not preemptive to commission of a crime. An important distinction: the President can pardon people for crimes committed that we don't know about yet but not for things they haven't done yet.

But the legal precedent here is pretty sweeping. The President can declare a time period and say that someone is pardoned for any federal crimes committed during that time, even if prosecutors don't know about it yet. This is how Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon worked.

As far as Flynn goes, Trump has immunized him against prosecution for anything that would have been covered by the Special Council, his specific case, or anything uncovered by grand juries, but only things he's done prior to the issuance of the pardon. There's no legal precedent for being able to pardon people for crimes they haven't yet committed.

And yes, I am very aware of how flimsy "there's no legal precedent for this" is these days, but it's still the case, for what it's worth.

At this point I'm neither ruling anything in or out until it's tested in court.

The answer to "can Trump do that?" is the same as a DM's favorite answer in D&D when asked if a player character can attempt something stupid, destructive, and/or nonsensical:

"He can try."

Can't wait for when a new USAG takes office and looks into all this nonsense that Mueller found out and learns that Flynn was devouring immigrant children kidnapped from Obama's detention centers while reading state secrets over the phone to Putin (but didn't want to testify about it) and we won't be able to do a thing about it.

I continue to be impressed by how quickly they eat their own

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, whose conspiratorial program is a favorite of the president, attacked Barr in brutal terms on his show. "For the attorney general of the United States to make that statement — he is either a liar or a fool or both," Dobbs said. Dobbs then went further, suggesting Barr was "perhaps compromised." He characterized Barr as having "appeared to join in with the radical Dems and the deep-state and the resistance."
Newsmax host Greg Kelly, who has risen to fame in right-wing media circles in the last few weeks for suggesting Trump could emerge as the winner of the election, went after Barr on his show. "Some of us are wondering if he is a warrior with the Constitution or if he's just a bureaucrat," Kelly said. Kelly added that he "can't believe" if Barr "looked for voter fraud he wouldn't find any." And Mark Levin said he "regret[ted] to say" that Barr's comments were "misleading."
The Gateway Pundit, a fringe website which Trump has repeatedly promoted, published a post that said Barr had revealed himself as "totally deaf, dumb and blind." The post went on to say that Barr's "masquerade as someone opposed to the criminality of the Deep State" had been "exposed as a venal lie" and that he was a "fraud." It concluded, "You either fix the damn corrupt system or we will abandon you...Our days of tolerating betrayal are over."
r013nt0 wrote:

Can't wait for when a new USAG takes office and looks into all this nonsense that Mueller found out and learns that Flynn was devouring immigrant children kidnapped from Obama's detention centers while reading state secrets over the phone to Putin (but didn't want to testify about it) and we won't be able to do a thing about it.

Susan Collins will be very concerned, but she'll understand that Flynn has learned his lesson and won't eat babies anymore.

Not even sure where to put this now:

My Call With Ron Johnson: He Knows Biden Won But Won’t Admit It

In every conversation, we have moments where we look back and wish we said something differently. This is one of those cases. I wish I had reminded the senator that he is not just a senator for Wisconsin Republicans, but a senator for all of Wisconsin. And although the message from Wisconsin Republicans was a strong one, the message from Wisconsin itself was much clearer: It was a rejection of Trumpism, and of the politics of division and toxicity which has poisoned our communities.

Senator Johnson then asked me if I had ever been to a Trump rally. I chuckled and responded that I had not. He said that I should have gone because if I did, I would have seen that the one constant throughout all his rallies was, “the people there absolutely love America.” I reminded him that in every speech I gave as a Republican county chairman, I asked those in attendance to stop calling Democrats the “enemy.” I would say, “Democrats aren’t the enemy. We both love our country and want to make it a better place. We just have different ways to achieve that goal.” And I told him that “I would be willing to bet that at any rally Bernie Sanders or AOC held, you would see a crowd who loved America just as much.”

Johnson scoffed and said, “Absolutely not. Bernie Sanders and AOC want to fundamentally change our country. And you can’t love something you want to fundamentally change.” I disagreed and believe this is a toxic way to look at our politics. But we moved on.

Next we covered the election results. I said I was both frustrated and gravely concerned about how the GOP is continuing to advance disproved conspiracy theories regarding the integrity of the election. Senator Johnson said that he knew and accepted the fact that Joe Biden had won. I asked why he wouldn’t say so at a moment when Trump was taking a sledgehammer to the very foundation of our democracy. Senator Johnson replied that the institutions of our democracy are strong enough to withstand what is going on. This response shocked me, since it suggested that the truth was ultimately unimportant and that Sen. Johnson viewed what the president was doing as someone else’s problem.

@AsteadWesley wrote:

It really is pretty simple, when you don't think Dems are valid partners in small d democracy, everything is justifiable.

Meanwhile, Flynn is calling for Martial Law.

At first I was thinking it was that guy from Miami Vice and wondering why his opinion was important. (I think that was his name anyway!)

(Of course now I'm fully expecting someone to tell me that it IS the same guy, what with actors getting politics and all that.)

bekkilyn wrote:

At first I was thinking it was that guy from Miami Vice and wondering why his opinion was important. (I think that was his name anyway!)

(Of course now I'm fully expecting someone to tell me that it IS the same guy, what with actors getting politics and all that.)

Were you thinking of Don Johnson?

Ron Swanson > Don Johnson > Ron Johnson

ClockworkHouse wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

At first I was thinking it was that guy from Miami Vice and wondering why his opinion was important. (I think that was his name anyway!)

(Of course now I'm fully expecting someone to tell me that it IS the same guy, what with actors getting politics and all that.)

Were you thinking of Don Johnson?

LOL yes. Figures I'd get the name wrong!

Little donald is big mad that votes were counted.
video

Welcome to the law offices of Swanson, Johnson, & Johnson. We don't believe government is effective, so here is a gun, badge, & sup'ed up Barracuda to serve justice to those libs.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

At first I was thinking it was that guy from Miami Vice and wondering why his opinion was important. (I think that was his name anyway!)

(Of course now I'm fully expecting someone to tell me that it IS the same guy, what with actors getting politics and all that.)

Were you thinking of Don Johnson?

Don/Ron was just telling it like it is.

Ron always tells it like it is(n't).