It’s an unanswered question, but the SCOTUS immunity ruling makes it mostly moot anyway. A President can’t be charged with crimes related to “official business.” Which specific acts count as official vs unofficial depends on the interpretation of a judge/justice, and probably gets extremely messy and inconsistent, which is why the ruling is considered problematic by most.
They can NOT pardon to protect themselves from impeachment.
MS giving HB a good deal to try to make yet another storefront relevant.
There are bad faith questions[1], (at least somewhat) self-answering questions[2], and poorly asked questions[3]. (Edit: this comm has rules. These and others are covered in the sidebar, It’s not about being too stupid a question, it’s about being appropriate for this community)
[1] “Are you still cheating on your spouse?” type questions that are meant to evoke a response rather than ask a real question that deserves an answer.
[2] is a little harder to define, but I have definitely seen a few where even the smallest amount of thought about what is being asked would make the answer obvious. (edit: I hope people aren’t just drive-by downvoting this type, but I sort of understand why they might)
[3] includes questions that have so many answers depending on factors not specified that they’re impossible to answer without writing a book covering every assumption that goes into each possibility.
It never existed.
If you make two beautiful paintings, and sell one for $1000, then decide to sell the other, but nobody wants it for more than $500, you didn’t “lose” the $500 difference.
Maybe you even told people you had another $1000 painting, then only got $500 in cash for it, so your reported net wealth dropped by $500.
At worst, you actually paid $1000, then sold for $500, but even then, the difference didn’t disappear, you just transferred it to the original owner by overpaying, or to the new owner by undercharging if the price goes back up.
Time is money.
It’s not like expensive convenience has a monopoly. If you don’t want to pay more, do it yourself.
Not going to make a top level comment since this may be considered sort of a tangent, but there is chatter about lots of White House staff asking for pardons, since they aren’t necessarily immune. The thing is, once someone gets a pardon, and they no longer face prosecution, there is no danger of self-incrimination, and the 5th Amendment right to not speak largely disappears. I.e. they could be compelled to testify against Trump.
So does Trump throw all these people under the bus by making them face criminal prosecution for his crimes, or does he make them immune and increase the risk (even if only reputational) to himself? Investigators could easily offer immunity in exchange for testimony even without a pardon. I think we know which he’ll choose, but it leaves both sides pitted against one another.
The snake may be about to eat itself.