Back in January 2016 there was a lot of speculation over whether Pres. Obama would pardon Former Sec of State Hillary Clinton for E-Mail/Server-gate, (See Google Link ).
Now that Trump has the GOP nomination well in hand with a preference cascade in the North East (See MSNBC video link), Trump has said Hillary should be prosecuted for E-Mail/Server-gate, and that Democratic strategist Dave “Mudcat” Saunders is telling the Daily Caller Trump Will Beat Hillary Like ‘A Baby Seal’. It is time to again ask the questions:
1. When Will Obama Pardon Hillary? and
2. For What Crimes?
I suspect, whatever the answers to those two questions are, after January 2017 GOP Congressional committee chairmen will call her in to testify under oath, in hopes of catching her in a perjury trap.
Discuss.
I personally believe that there is a non-trivial chance that Obama may find that there are reasons to delay a change of administrations due to “conditions”. In which case, the continued existence of all the candidates in both parties would be problematical. Including Hillary.
But, assuming that does not happen:
1) post-election and pre-inauguration when there will be no immediate electoral blowback that can affect those in power in both parties. And I would not be surprised if it was coordinated with McConnell holding snap hearings and a confirmation of a certain blocked new Supreme Court Justice.
2) the same as Proclamation 4311 [Nixon’s pardon]:”pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto [insert name(s)] for all offenses against the United States”
3) If Hillary is not elected president; Bill and Hillary, separately or together, become expatriates living off of the Clinton Foundation funds and speeches to the faithful.
If she is elected, the Obama’s become expatriates to try to get out of Hillary’s range [futile].
Interesting times indeed.
Question No. 3:
Who else will Obama pardon?
Question No. 4:
Will those include IRS officials?
Question No. 5:
Will Obama’s pardons include Federal officials (minimally in the BATFE, FBI, DEA, State Department) involved in gun running to the Mexican Drug Cartels?
With [Tom Holsinger’s] 3, and 4, and 5 in play we will have what will functionally be, and perceived as, a blanket pardon of all illegal actions in the Executive Branch. Which would create both a precedent and potential carte blanche for any future Executive Branch violations of law and the Constitution.
That would have an telling effect on both the social contract and the concept of “consent of the governed”. If the part of the government that impacts private individuals the most is outside the law; what conceivable reason is there but the State’s use of deadly force to obey the law promulgated by that State?
If force is the sole determinant of governmental Legitimacy, a countering force is just as legitimate as the government if it succeeds.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
John Harrington
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Harington_%28inventor%29
I’m still not sure she will be the D nominee.
Comey still has to decide if he has the gonads to take her on.
Obama and Biden may decide to come to the rescue for her “health problem.”
It’s a very interesting year. It makes me think of 1789.
>>>>”It’s a very interesting year. It makes me think of 1789.”<<<<
Let us hope it is not 69 AD.
And she will pardon him quickly if accusations agains thim start to bubble.
Just like a banana republic.
The FBI should arrest her and then go through the usual bargaining to see what she is willing to tell them about Slick Willie.
Dearieme, I think she was always the bagman for the couple. Willie didn’t hide the Rose Law Firm billing records in the White House.
Subotai Bahadur,
We are looking an an unprecidented use of the Presidential pardon powers for a very corrupt regime in an era of easily recoverable digital records and a host of interlocking/overlapping statutory/regulatory kudzu that makes it impossible not to commit a felony.
We are looking at — minimum — the collapse of credibility of Federal rule of law.
And Trump will not be shy about using the ‘Obama precidence’ to do unto Democrats what was done to the Tea Party.
Obama is giving an American Sulla the sword he needs to rule, not govern.
And Trump will not be shy about using the ‘Obama precidence’ to do unto Democrats what was done to the Tea Party.
No one knows if a President Trump would be harder on Democrats than on Republicans. I think he might form ad hoc alliances with members of both parties, depending on the issue.
Let us hope it is not 69 AD.
At first I thought you meant an American Vesuvius, then I realized you meant four American emperors. I like the first better, presuming final loss of life.
For now, the Obama Admin will just not prosecute her.
On or just before January 20, 2017, Obama will issue, on several DVDs, a blanket pardon of virtually everybody who served in the Executive Branch or any executive agencies, between 1-20-2009 and 1-20-2017, for “any and all” crimes or misdemeaneors they may have committed” in connection with their governmental duties. About 3 million people, give or take, and quite possibly including himself.
That might make any subsequent investigations easier, as the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination would not apply. I imagine his lawyers are looking into whether there is any way to pardon them for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify even when not at risk of criminal action and the event happens after the date of the pardon. Also, any way to immunize them from civil suits.
I expect nothing less from the most criminal administration is history. Of course they will cover their tracks, they aren’t fools.
I can’t imagine her being prosecuted.They must have an agreement of some type. She’d sing in a heartbeat, wouldn’t think twice about it. Mutually assured destruction. The blanket pardon theory sounds like it might be the strategy. Alibi’s or not, Cleveland will be the place NOT to be this summer. I feel for those who cannot take vacation time and get out of town, those who own property, have to work, etc. I fear that the mob(s) have designs on that town, probably precipitated by a “sentinel event” as they would say at the hospital.
Regards this —
On or just before January 20, 2017, Obama will issue, on several DVDs, a blanket pardon of virtually everybody who served in the Executive Branch or any executive agencies, between 1-20-2009 and 1-20-2017, for “any and all” crimes or misdemeaneors they may have committed” in connection with their governmental duties.
You are not — and Obama Democrats certainly aren’t — thinking through the precedent of making that the _FLOOR_ for Trump’s use of the Presidential pardon power.
Think about it.
Bill Clinton was late for the inauguration of Bush because he was signing last minute pardons. The next question is whether presidential pardons can ever be reversed.
It is a very interesting year.
Trevo Troy has an interesting article on whether the GOP “intelligencia” has lost the base.
I think we are going to see a realignment.
There is one one going on, I agree.
Part of that turnout is new voters. Democrats, for example, are switching to the GOP in Massachusetts; that’s Trump-driven, and a bad omen for Democrats in November. Democrats’ turnout is depressed.
The Republican Party’s trials are, in no small measure, thanks to energized conservatives. It’s about two candidates, Trump and Cruz, who though battling each other for the nomination, have galvanized conservative voters, thereby isolating the establishment, something outsider candidates failed to accomplish in 2012.
Consider these Super Tuesday numbers. In 11 states, Trump, Cruz, and Carson – the outsiders – combined for 67% of the vote. Rubio and Kasich took only 32%. But there’s a big caveat.
Though Trump and Cruz garnered two-thirds the votes in Super Tuesday contests, they split roughly 28% of the bound delegates needed to win the nomination (that’s 1,237 for a majority). In all races, Trump has collected 26% of the delegates toward being nominated. Cruz has totaled 18%. (Rubio is limping along with a meager 9% of the delegates needed.)
That was a month, almost two, ago.
I think Trump might be headed for a landslide. Then the problem becomes how does he govern ? Obama has packed the DoJ with leftist lawyers worse than those George W Bush left in place when the Democrat Congress refused to conform his nominees. The result was the persecution of Senator Ted Stevens.
Trump will need some insiders with institutional knowledge to clean out the stables.
I got news for you, Mike. It will be a GOP landslide for the Presidency anyway. This is a GOP sweep year for the presidency due to structural factors. Any plausible GOP nominee will beat ANY Democratic nominee, with the GOP getting 55%+ of the popular vote and 400+ electoral votes in November.
The structural factors have been the GOP sweep of Congressional, state and local elections in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 elections, to the point where it would be difficult for the GOP to win any more such offices, plus that the economy and jobs have plain sucked the whole time. Historically this has always resulted in an overwhelming turnover of the Presidency.
Hillary is arguably the worst candidate the Democrats can put up because she is so obviously the bosses’ choice. See this article:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/27/democratic-strategist-trump-will-beat-hillary-like-a-baby-seal/
It’s not so much that a nomination of Hillary will alienate the white working class outside the South from the Democrats (about 20% of the electorate) as that this will make the alienation indelible, on the scale and permanence of how the California GOP alienated Hispanics in 1994. This was due to a combination of a disastrous strategic mistake by then California GOP Governor Pete Wilson, and inspired + entirely proper exploitation by the Democrats in 1995.
My father was one of the two California Democratic politicians who orchestrated the latter – the other was his old friend Leon Panetta, who was then President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Pop told me about this as he was doing it because he knew that would drive me nuts. ANY GOP nominee for California statewide office since has started with a million vote deficit since.
It looks like a Hillary v. Trump contest will do something very similar to the white working class vote outside the South. The least of this will be a GOP electoral vote lock on the Midwest for a generation or more.
But don’t expect much from a Trump presidency. Only Cruz understands hard it will be to change things given:
a) special interest domination of Congress
b) judicial refusal to enforce Constitutional separation of powers
c) Leftie infestation of the federal bureaucracy
Only Senator Cruz has a clue here, but there isn’t much he could do either. At best he could explain the problem to the American people. IMO the difference between Cruz and Trump is that Cruz is more likely to stop the country’s decline for a while, while Trump will only reduce the rate of decline.
IMO the problems have reached the point where only Constitutional dynamite can make things better – an Article V Constitutional convention which produces amendments declaring all Congressional offices vacant and banning past members from further federal office, requiring periodic national elections (using electoral votes) to declare all Congressional offices vacant again (“retention election for all of Congress together), and something similar for federal judicial offices. First terminate all judicial incumbents over a four year period. Then new judges either serve only a single 8-12 year term or, better, “All federal judicial offices are elective on such terms and conditions as Congress may allow, though the President may fill vacancies by appointment”. Plus periodic retention elections for the whole judicial branch together, the same as Congress.
And a constitutional amendment giving the President a line item veto.
This cannot happen, however, until a Trump Presidency fails, and probably another one like him. At that point the debt crisis will probably be on us.
IMO the difference between Cruz and Trump is that Cruz is more likely to stop the country’s decline for a while, while Trump will only reduce the rate of decline.
I think the coming collapse MIGHT have been avoided by a Romney presidency if he had been willing to do what was necessary.
I doubt it can be avoided now.
The debt bubble will never be paid off short of hyperinflation.
China is heading into troubled waters. Their ghost city economy is collapsing.
The severity of China’s economic problems””and the inability to implement long-term solutions””mean almost all geopolitical assumptions about tomorrow are wrong. Virtually everyone today sees China as a major power in the future. Yet the country’s extraordinary economic difficulties will result in a collapse or a long-term decline, and either outcome suggests China will return to the ranks of weak states.
As an initial matter, China’s current situation is far worse than the official National Bureau of Statistics reports. The NBS maintains that the country’s gross domestic product rose 6.9 percent during the third calendar quarter of this year after increases of 7.0 percent during each of the first two quarters.
Japan is dying. “A country that consumes more adult diapers than baby diapers is a nation on its way to the dustbin of history.”
Iran is heading into China territory with its collapsing birthrate.
Iranian women are voting with their uteruses.
The estimated birthrate in Iran is around 1.86 children per woman for 2013, below the replacement rate of two births per woman, according to the CIA World Factbook. However, many demographers think Iran’s fertility rate is even lower, at around 1.6 to 1.7.
A fertility rate higher than 2.1 births per woman indicates population growth.
Russia is another collapsing society.
Young Russian women are having babies at a rate of 13 per 1,000 people, roughly the same as their contemporaries in Germany or France. But those countries have demographic issues of their own, and Russia, meanwhile, doesn’t have enough young women.
The population bomb went off and nobody noticed.