Bruh it won’t matter.
Right? Who is gonna stop him from doing whatever the fuck he wants?
The American Constitution will stop him doing a lot of things people are scared of.
The American Constitution says that Presidents can’t accept gifts from any foreign source, and that has been interpreted in the past as a general prohibition on Presidents operating in any capacity in any private enterprise. Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust.
Not only was Donald Trump allowed to circumvent this during his first term, retaining ownership of his businesses and nominally putting his kids in charge while they pursued foreign deals, but today Trump is waist deep in Crypto, and owns a majority share of a publicly traded company whose ticker is his initials. Foreigners can (and likely do) shovel money into both. Do you think anyone will ask him to divest, like the Constitution requires him to?
The Constitution is useless unless it is enforced. It relies on checks and balances between competing branches, and right now they are broken. The only checks on Presidential power are the military (whose oath is to yhe Constitution, not to any one President) and the individual states (who retain all powers not explicitly given to the Federal government).
No it won’t.
The poster above had it right. The law only works if the will of the people make it work. Same applies to the Constitution.
Public schools in the bible belt have been teaching creationism and putting the ten commandments in their classrooms. Do you think the New Order we just elected are going to go out of their way to enforce the Constitution and make them stop doing things like that?
Be prepared for FLAGRANT violations of the Constitution in the coming years. I mean come on, the guy we just elected illegally attempted to overturn the last election and is a convicted felon.
It’s over. America lost.
The Constitution is just words on paper. Meaningless unless taken seriously and enforced by people. What people can enforce it now?
nice username
Not only did we squarely place ourselves on the path of economic/social decline for the foreseeable future, but we also just guaranteed that Trump will not be held accountable for his crimes.
We have utterly failed as citizens in a democratic society.
Buckle up. It gets much, much worse from here.
He can obviously do whatever the fuck he wants. This unfortunately isn’t even a reasonable question to be asking at this point.
Trump and his party are nazis. Nazis suck because they bring the law of the jungle into civilization.
The law of civilization is cooperation.
The law of the jungle is, can I physically do it.
Republicans basically exist to shout, burn their own house down (also yours), and celebrate. They’re going to burn the checks and balances.
The Constitutional text is very broad:
The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
So it looks rather absolute, for Fedral crimes. However, the real situation is complicated. This is just one clause in the Constitution, while the President is supposed to be bound by all of it. So, presumably, he can’t exercise his pardon power in a way that violates something else in the Constitution. If you go deeper into the Federalist papers, it’s quite clear that the Founders held that no man should be his own judge, and a self-pardon effectively does just that.
Here is a good write-up, although I do note it was written before the Supreme Court put their thumb on the scale and said he could do whatever the hell he wanted, as long as he doesn’t get impeached for it:
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-presidential-pardon-power-explained/
I expect him to do it anyway. It will be challenged, but courts will reject it due to “lack of standing” and sidestep the messy business of having to tell the King he went too far.
Basically the only answer that takes the question seriously and brings facts to the table instead of an opinion.
No president has tried it before. Whether he can get away with pardoning himself has yet to be seen. For him not to get away with it would require someone to bring some sort of court case challenging it. And to bring a case, they have to have “standing.” (That is to say, they have to have some credible justification why the self-pardoning action the president took wronged the petitioner in some way.) Which would probably require some legal argument that has never been made before.
I’m guessing Trump probably could get away with it, but given that no president has tried this, we’ll just have to see for sure.
For federal stuff, yes … probably, it’s never been tested, but the current SCOTUS won’t stop him.
Not for state crimes. Like the 34 felony counts in NY. But enforcement of any sentence (probably financial) is unclear. Also unprecedented.
Theoretically, probably not, practically, and in real life, most probably definitely yes.
It’s legally unclear if he’s able to pardon himself for state crimes. He’s the president of the United States, not the president of New York.
But I hope he tries to pardon himself for anything, just so we can get this before the Supreme Court, because I think they would side with him but I sure want to see it play out. In reality he’s in such bad health and so old that I think he’s probably going to die before he would face any prison time, so the best we can hope for is that the Supreme Court makes greater fools of themselves, or somehow miraculously surprises us and does the right thing, which I don’t expect but you know it’s theoretically possible.
