Trump said he would consider pre-emptive pardons to protect Elon Musk and other close aides should Democrats take control of Congress
Donald Trump said he would be willing to protect Elon Musk and his staff if Democrats take control of Congress after the midterm elections this week.
In an interview for the “Pod Force One” podcast published Monday, Trump said he would move to “protect” the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO if Congressional investigators targeted him.
Trump also indicated that he was weighing pre-emptive pardons for his close aides and others around him should the Democrats pursue investigations, according to Axios. It is a notion that the president has floated before to keep his team from facing prosecution for actions during the first two years of his term.
They aren’t a thing. You can only pardon a crime that’s already been commited, not for future crimes.
Also Trump violated his oath of office within 72 hours of this term beginning, so technically none of his pardons mean anything from this term and can just be reversed.
He wasn’t legitimately serving in capacity of the president since he abdicated his office by violating his oath.
Oh I looked it up and you’re right that future crimes can’t be pardoned. It doesn’t help that the media talks about preemptive pardons like they are for future crimes, when it really only means crimes that have been committed but no charges have been filed yet. https://northernkentuckylawreview.com/blog/preemptive-pardons-explained-understanding-president-bidens-family-pardons
And the only remedy for that is impeachment, followed by removal, which didn’t happen.
Yes, but it can happen at anytime, then you retroactively invalidate his past actions
The crimes have already been committed, they just haven’t been charged for it yet.
That would be interesting - if he could pardon the crimes but he’d first have to specifically detail them.
Exactly, and there’s always like dozens of not hundreds of possible charges you could bring. If they pardon the few obvious big ones, they can still be charged on all the other ones, and have a judge sentence them to serve consecutively.
They also aren’t immune to civil suits for monetary damages and other things
I don’t think he would need to specifcy them?
I pardon Elon Musk and all DOGE staff for anything and everything they did while working for DOGE.
No, sadly he doesn’t. But it would be good if it was somehow made to work that way.
It doesnt seem unreasonable to need to do that either, but at the same time it can be abused.
Like let’s say Elon committed 20 crimes in DOGE, and they’re all related in one way or another. The 20th one specifically is related to the 19th how he copied data, but its own obscure law, that everyone’s forgot about, so they pardon the 19, and then get him on copying the data to a non authorized USB stick or something because it wasnt on an authorized seller list.
So I do kind of think it needs some ability to blanket things, but also, some specificity also seems important.
scRotus says anything dipshit does is just part of his doing the job and he can’t be prosecuted for it at all.
‘to the best of my ability’ is also doing some heavy work here. he has no qualifications for office and he’s dumb as bricks. he’s doing the ‘best’ he can, doing the only thing he knows how to: lie, cheat, steal.
What I’m saying is the scrotus already set the path for executive overreach. The next president can use that to have them all killed if they wanted to Uber the same reasoning. Or just make up a pretext that isn’t explicitly stated, like that they are sitting justices who will from here forward serve in a non judiciary capacity.
The could and they should but they won’t.