*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[MadMojoMonkey]

Cartoon villain outgoing president score: 11/10.

It's obviously being shamelessly abused by Trump right now, but I've never been a fan of the whole presidential pardon thing. What do you have judges and juries for, if the POTUS can just say "nah, set him free, I like him." Seems to just invite corruption to me.

It's meant to be a check on the judicial system.

We all know that no one is perfect, and that some innocent people will be accidentally convicted from time to time.

The intent of the presidential pardon power is to create an avenue of justice for those individuals.


Even with Trump, from what I read (not much of the whole list of pardons, mind) it seemed like most of the pardons were going to people who'd already served their court penalties - whatever jail time and fines had already been served, and the person had already been back in the public space. I don't really have a problem with these pardons - the system made them pay, and then later their slate was wiped clean. In principal, I don't object to this.

I do agree that the pardon power is abused regularly, though... and it is not used in practice to ensure justice to the wrongly convicted.

[oskar]

Even with Trump, from what I read (not much of the whole list of pardons, mind) it seemed like most of the pardons were going to people who'd already served their court penalties - whatever jail time and fines had already been served, and the person had already been back in the public space. I don't really have a problem with these pardons - the system made them pay, and then later their slate was wiped clean. In principal, I don't object to this.

In the most serious cases this is not true.

Roger Stone, Paul Manafort; those guilty of mass murder in the Nisour Square massacre and war criminal Eddie Gallagher are among some who had not served their full sentence.
There's also a long list of white collar criminals accused of fraud theft and tax evasion who haven't been sentenced yet.

There are also some random pardons of people who are apparently serving decades for selling weed that are also being pardoned. Not sure why this is still a thing. I guess Obama was too afraid of the optics of doing away with that, god bless him.

Very obvious pardons like Snowden, Assange, Reality Winner are of course not on the list.

Like many things the constitution simply did not take into account the possibility of a career criminal being elected into the highest office.
I'm not sure I'm on board with the idea that it puts a check on the judiciary because obviously here it's just being used to pardon criminals and those who slaughter non-white children. But even in the best case it seems like almost inconsequential theatre that gives the illusion that something is being done, when in reality weed is still widely criminalized and anti spionage laws are being enacted on citizens.