Is there a mechanism in the USA to undo presidential pardons years later if political corruption has been proven as motivation to give these pardons?
from snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 10 Dec 18:28
https://lemmy.world/post/40009147
from snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 10 Dec 18:28
https://lemmy.world/post/40009147
This is territory I thought I would never have to think about but something stinks lately to say the least.
#nostupidquestions
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No. The power of the pardon is explicitly granted to the President in the text of the Constitution, and it provides no mechanism for reversing such pardons. It’s meant to be a check against unjust laws and/or corrupt courts, and presidents who would corruptly abuse the power for their own profit are supposed to be removed from office via impeachment—but as we’ve seen, Congress won’t even remove a president who orchestrates a mob attack against themselves as part of a scheme to overthrow an election.
Go read the actual text of the US Constitution . The answer is a quirky technical “well, theoretically yes but practically no.”
constitution.congress.gov/browse/…/clause-1/
That last emphasized line means that if the US Congress were to impeach and remove a president for bribery or a criminal conspiracy, they could also negate any pardons given to POTUS’s collaborators.
Of course, since no US President has ever been removed from office by congress’s impeachment power, and it’s uncertain if a post-term impeachment and conviction would itself pass the inevitable SCOTUS appeal, this is even less likely than the US Congress awarding a no-majoroty electoral collage vote to the other major party.
I thought the intent behind that wasn’t to revoke previous pardons, but was to prevent a president from pardoning themselves in an impeachment trial.
That's the neat part, it's worded such that it could go either way. With the current makeup of the court, impeachment proceedings would have to start with the 6 first, and then flow back to the executive if we wanted anything to actually stick.
Someone would argue framer’s intent, but that wouldn’t get them very far because nothing means anything anymore
This will go down as Drumps’ “greatest” achievement: “nothing means anything anymore”.
If MAGA were looking at it, the way they are looking at Birthright Citizenship, they would accept even the most ridiculous interpretation, if it aligns with their agenda. Dems should do the same thing, and interpret the law so that it best benefits them.
I think you would struggle to find any serious Constitutional scholar who would agree with your interpretation. “Except in cases of impeachment” is clearly a limit on what cases a president has the power to issue a pardon, not a retroactive “unpardoning” of cases after a president has been impeached. In fact the retroactive nullification of a pardon seems to fly in the face of a basic judicial principle that hold decisions to be final.
I would agree except in cases where the pardon was in support of an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Using pardons to facilitate, encourage, and cover up criminal activity seems like a reversible situation, one the courts would be enthusiastic to correct.
It means other people impeached cannot be pardoned, and that he cannot pardon himself.
Lots of people can be impeached besides the POTUS; from the VP, down to federal judges and cabinet members. He cannot pardon any of them if they’re impeached.
I never noticed that before. So if we could fully impeach him and run him out of office, all those 9/11 traitors go back to prison?
I’ve got a new objective.
Nope. Otherwise Nixon would have been unpardoned by Carter.
The president has no business undermining the judiciary in the first place.
Although I do find it strange that there is no check on the judiciary.
Like, it’s supposed to be checks and balances, but what stops the judges from passing an unjust law?
Judges have a lifetime appointment in the Supreme Court. The only way they can be removed is by all of Congress coming together and choosing to impeach one of them, and that takes years when Congress is actually functioning.
They have no authority to enforce any law. And they have no legislative powers.
Rulings have been ignored multiple times because the judiciary just has no means to enforce what the executive branch refuses to enforce
Judges don’t pass law at all. At must jurisprudence in the absence of law. Laws are the realm of the legislative.
The legislative could pass a law limiting supreme court term to 16 years tomorrow of they wanted.
They could rule that law unconstitutional and void it, though.
I was about to say that they’d have to base that on the constitution but… gestures broadly… Yeah, the current court would have to be dismantled first.
Judges don’t pass laws, but they can create plenty of loopholes out of thin air. Qualified Immunity doesn’t exist in any statute (to my knowledge), but it is a de facto legal standard, for one example.
Because there isn’t a law about it. What we need is a legislative that actually does their fucking job.
There is a law about it.
web.archive.org/…/qualified-immunity-supreme-cour…
And if the 1982 SCOTUS had been given the full text of the relevant law, then QI would have never happened. It is expressly illegal according to the full text of Section 1983
Well… yes and no. Judges can and do blatantly ignore law and impartiality. To wit: Judge Cannon, who successfully completely stymied any meaningful prosecution of orangeboi, in a series of legal decisions that were overtly partisan and biased.
web.archive.org/…/qualified-immunity-supreme-cour…
And if the 1982 SCOTUS had been given the full text of the relevant law, then QI would have never happened. It is expressly illegal according to the full text of Section 1983
web.archive.org/…/qualified-immunity-supreme-cour…
And if the 1982 SCOTUS had been given the full text of the relevant law, then QI would have never happened. It is expressly illegal according to the full text of Section 1983Whoops replied to the wrong comment.
Well, ostensibly it’s congress that passes the laws and the courts may say how they are interpreted or implemented.
If the courts are interpreting the laws against what the authors of the law intended, it is up to congress to write laws that are better and pass constitutional muster without question…
We’re at the point we are because of poorly written laws that have led to loopholes and poor implementation being taken advantage of.
technically the check for judicial was supposed to be a mix between it being a life position and the legislative branches impeachment/revocal process. The court was supposed to be an impartial non-political, but it’s been slowly slipping into a very heavily political system.
It wasn’t the question.
So?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/daa85221-5f6d-4501-885f-d2dbb7f2df64.gif">
I’m sorry, I didn’t know my tangent would offend your fragile sensibilities.
Theoretically a constitutional amendment could be passed. That would require 3/4 of states to ratify it.
in the case of constitutional amendments, this gets even more complex. Technically states have the ability to force a constitutional convention hearing in the case of a legislative branch either not bringing to the floor or denying an amendment that has clear popularity in the states.
The issue with this is that it requires a 2/3 vote of the states in agreement, and that it also requires a system that only has the bare minimums defined legally on it. It doesn’t define what a convention is, or even how many people in the state have to agree. It’s fully left on the states to decide it on an individual basis how that system would work for them.
How it would work is
That process is more dangerous because it's less constrictive. Going through the legislative branch limits it to one amendment and is a drawn out public process. At a constitutional convention the representatives can debate and pass anything they want to with the required 3/4 vote without public notice or input. I don't trust our current political system not to add corporate written amendments to the constitution if they have the chance to do so without public review.
Fully agreed its dangerous
Using traditional logic and precedent: no.
In the context of the brave new world we find ourselves in, in which the Tribunal of Six have given the president effective carte blanche to do pretty much anything so long as it’s “an official act” (where an “official act” is defined, as far as I can tell, by the president saying “this is an official act”): lots of things, including
DW or DoJ on themSeriously, it’s anyone’s guess at this point. The bones of the system are crumbling, and many have already been shattered, likely irreversibly. The only thing holding this shitshow up at this point are load-bearing posters.
After that Supreme Court decision, I believe the United States will not be able to recover a full democracy without a massive constitutional overhaul or a completely new constitution.
I genuinely do not believe the situation to be recoverable - rewriting the constitution in this day and age, with the insanely partisan politics and fascistic idiocy on full display, juxtaposed with a corporatist, neoliberal “opposition party” that conducts zero meaningful opposition is frankly a non-starter.
And even if it was possible: I don’t want a constitution sponsored by Comcast and Exxon Mobil and Amazon and Meta and X and Palantir and so on. Which, I’m sure, is probably in the plan somewhere.
They should have a new constitution. The US constitution is broken at an architectural level and can not be fixed. France has new constitutions every generation, there is no reason the US should be stuck with a court and country style document from 250 years ago that call black people 3/5ths of a person on it.
Every American should read this book The frozen republic : how the Constitution is paralyzing democracy
Sounds too legitimate.
More like the Junta of Six
I’m pretty sure that to re-incarcerate someone after they were pardoned would require a new trial, which would violate the double jeopardy clause.
Unless that person has comitted more crimes they were not previously prosecuted for. Which is not entirely unlikely if they are emboldened by having avoided punishment thanks to the backing of a corrupt POTUS. I.E. multiple Jan 6’ers. I would expect high rates of recidivism for beneficiaries of Trumo pardons.
Albeit prosecuting new crimes is not undoing a pardon, but it may achieve a measure of justice anyway.
Recidivism doesn’t have anything to do with being re-incarcerated for the thing they were originally incarcerated for.
Right, they would be subject to new prosecution for new crimes because of their recidivism. The pardoned crimes are no longer relevant to whether they end up incarcerated again. My point is that we have already seen high rates of recidivism in those pardoned by Trump, and a reformed Attorney General’s office or states can prosecute crimes that haven’t been pardoned. This doesn’t provide justice for the corruption of bad pardons, but if the end result is incarceration just the same, then that might be close enough to justice.
I think we are in agreement, I guess I didn’t phrase my initial comment particularly well.
I took OP’s wording to mean re-incarcerating them for the same crime, although it’s not explicit in that either now that I’m looking at it again. Anyway yeah let them rot, idgaf what for. They got Capone on tax evasion. 🤷♂️
No
Yes, US Supreme court says the president can order Seal teams to do stuff (if you know what I mean 😏)
Just hope the next president has a spine
I don’t know, but I would be fine if the presidential pardon was abolished. Perhaps replace it with only a stay of execution.
Nah, it can be used for good. Obama pardoned a lot of non-violent drug offenders who were gonna be in jail into there 60s due to something they did in there 20s because of mandatory minimums.
I don’t have the numbers but I’m guessing it’s been used for harm more than good.
If there’s still enough left of America to function after trump is done, I imagine the new government will come up with all kinds of new ways to undo a previous corrupt and disastrous presidency.
No. A pardon is a perfect legal exemption for a crime.
The whole point of a pardon is “we know you did the crime, but don’t think you should be punished.” It can only come about if there’s an ulterior motive, like corruption or if you agree to work with the government towards their goals, initially working on dangerous projects etc. Allowing it to be overturned later would undermine that as it wouldn’t make the danger worth it.
Nope. Trump is out to do as much irreparable damage as he can to own the Libz and there’s shit tons of nothing that a lot of people are willing to do about.
So Trumps threat to undo all the pardons Joe Biden did for his family cannot really be undone?
Correct. That’s why he tried to talk so much about the auto pen. The claim being that Biden did not even know what was being signed, so that they were ‘never actually pardoned.’ Which is bull shit, just for the record.
I don’t think so, no. He’s a fat fucking troll. He’s full of all the shit one can stuff into a giant diaper. He wants us having this discussion and not the one that’s about him fucking kids.
No, once pardoned, they’re pardoned. The thing about the people that he’s pardoned is that they are sociopaths, and they will offend again. There’s nothing stopping authorities from monitoring those people closely, and giving them the maximum sentence on something else.
OJ beat the rap on murder, but he still spent the better part of a decade in jail for something else, because he had no benefit of the doubt from society, so that’s something.
Just OJ these criminals.
I don’t think so. As far as I’m aware, it’s never come up before. The way it would play out, I think, would be something like…