Trump Thread

[a completely inoffensive name]

And his supporters would wonder, if Trump did wrong, why wasn't he tried for it in a court of law?

And his detractors would wonder, if Trump did wrong, why wasn't he tried for it in a court of law?

Shouldn't heinous allegations receive their due process? Isn't this a profound corruption of the system, that the palm greasers can find no palm they are unwilling to grease if it unburdens themselves of accountability and scrutiny?

We need to look at the case made by Ford on why he pardoned Nixon.

Ladies and gentlemen:
I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do.
I have learned already in this office that the difficult decisions always come to this desk. I must admit that many of them do not look at all the same as the hypothetical questions that I have answered freely and perhaps too fast on previous occasions.
My customary policy is to try and get all the facts and to consider the opinions of my countrymen and to take counsel with my most valued friends. But these seldom agree, and in the end, the decision is mine. To procrastinate, to agonize, and to wait for a more favorable turn of events that may never come or more compelling external pressures that may as well be wrong as right, is itself a decision of sorts and a weak and potentially dangerous course for a President to follow.
I have promised to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.
I have asked your help and your prayers, not only when I became President but many times since. The Constitution is the supreme law of our land and it governs our actions as citizens. Only the laws of God, which govern our consciences, are superior to it.
As we are a nation under God, so I am sworn to uphold our laws with the help of God. And I have sought such guidance and searched my own conscience with special diligence to determine the right thing for me to do with respect to my predecessor in this place, Richard Nixon, and his loyal wife and family.
Theirs is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.
There are no historic or legal precedents to which I can turn in this matter, none that precisely fit the circumstances of a private citizen who has resigned the Presidency of the United States. But it is common knowledge that serious allegations and accusations hang like a sword over our former President's head, threatening his health as he tries to reshape his life, a great part of which was spent in the service of this country and by the mandate of its people.
After years of bitter controversy and divisive national debate, I have been advised, and I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States under governing decisions of the Supreme Court.
I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.
In the end, the courts might well hold that Richard Nixon had been denied due process, and the verdict of history would even be more inconclusive with respect to those charges arising out of the period of his Presidency, of which I am presently aware.
But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person. My concern is the immediate future of this great country.
In this, I dare not depend upon my personal sympathy as a longtime friend of the former President, nor my professional judgment as a lawyer, and I do not.
As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to insure it. I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right. I do believe that right makes might and that if I am wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy.
Finally, I feel that Richard Nixon and his loved ones have suffered enough and will continue to suffer, no matter what I do, no matter what we, as a great and good nation, can do together to make his goal of peace come true.
Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, 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 Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.
President Gerald R. Ford - September 8, 1974

Would we find resolution in what could be half a decade of legal battles? Could we say at the end that it was in any way a proper exercise in the rule of law?

Ford is essentially telling the American people that by closing off any option to prosecute there is nothing to get agitated over, the war has ended and there is nothing anyone can do. He was right though.

Let me ask you a question Monty. Do you believe that America has in any way gotten closure from the OJ Simpson trial?

[Montmorency]

We need to look at the case made by Ford on why he pardoned Nixon.

Would we find resolution in what could be half a decade of legal battles? Could we say at the end that it was in any way a proper exercise in the rule of law?

Ford is essentially telling the American people that by closing off any option to prosecute there is nothing to get agitated over, the war has ended and there is nothing anyone can do. He was right though.

"[D]omestic tranquility." I doubt many decisions in the name of it have been farsighted as opposed to self-interested by political actors in their own time. (Andrew Johnson, FDR's internment camps, "too big to fail".) Was Richard Nixon a warlord whose further persecution (sic) would unleash his sectarian militias to rampage throughout the country? If we had so alarming a concern, it would be a defining statement of national fragility. If we had not, then we should ask what's really going on.

There is a direct genealogy from Nixon ordering his White House tapes destroyed and promising pardons - "total pardon" - to all his close aides and officials - and the Trump virulence. There is a direct genealogy not just between sick tactics but whole sick administrations. The possibility of having mitigated this with decisive judiciousness and lucid reforms is nothing to sneer at.

Leaders need to know by heart that there will be consequences to approaching governance as though malfeasance justifies "keeping [them] in this fucking office".

They need to know scapegoating and self-preservation will go badly for them.

With time running out, Haldeman requested pardons for everyone involved. Nixon’s lawyers were opposed. “If the president grants this pardon, he will be insuring his own trial,” one lawyer said. “He will be forcing it. The public has to have a head, and if the president takes the heads away, the public will have his.”

Ford and Nixon were good friends? Ford preferred the clean stroke of instant pardon to a national inquest dogging his presidency? Ford's patrician blandishments quickly lose their patina of nobility and statesmanship.

The new president had misjudged the mood of the country. Rather than sympathy, the public and the media voiced outrage at the pardon. It seemed to be totally on Nixon's terms -- early, complete and without acknowledgment that he had committed crimes or even impeachable offenses. Suspicions about a deal surfaced almost immediately. Ford agreed to testify about his decision before a House subcommittee. His staff went to work preparing his statement.

Twenty-three years later, on Sept. 22, 1997, in a suite at the Waldorf Towers in New York, I asked Ford whether he thought Haig had offered him a deal.

"Well, I guess I was naive," Ford said. "I was naive that anybody would offer a deal, because all my political life people never came to me, 'I'm going to give you a political donation, I expect something in return.' People never came to me that way, because they knew damn well I wouldn't be a part of it. So when Al Haig comes with those six terms, I just didn't visualize him as one making a proposition to make a deal. It never went through my mind."

I continued to press Ford. Did he agree, when all the facts and conclusions were examined now, decades later, that Haig had offered a deal?

"I would agree," Ford said, "because after talking to Hartmann, Marsh and Harlow, I wanted the record clear that I did not agree to consummate. . . . So that it has to be very clear that, yes, on paper, without action it was a deal, but it never became a deal because I never accepted."

I do acknowledge it is a delicate issue. The inquisition into Richard Nixon could not be allowed to exist as a singular event, it would have to apply just as well to all actors from that point on. It would be a radical application of law that probably has not existed anywhere, and as many leftists argue cannot exist - because Law is not impartial in the end. It would have been a rocky transition to the new legal order, in which favor and priority by virtue of connections, wealth, power, or position would be minimized. It is fair to say as well that applying the strict scrutiny ephemerally and then returning to the status ante quo would be more damaging in the short term, for having tantalized the People the way.

It is worth imagining. What would it look like carried over today? It would mean levying fines or probation or something like that against Hillary Clinton for ignoring proper procedures. Beyond Clinton, it would mean doing the same to the innumerables in DC who are guilty of the same, a collective smack on the bottom. This approach is inherently more trustworthy and less partisan. Of course it hinders the discretion of politicians and prosecutors. If that turned out to be an improvement, would we be surprised? To see candidates for national offices burdened with minor convictions would be appropriately humbling.

There was about a quarter of the population that never accepted the necessity or legitimacy of Nixon's impeachment/resignation. We can expect something like that with Trump in amplitude but more intense, besides the presently-unknown numbers on both sides who are increasingly prepared to disregard final election results in the future. My opinion is airing laundry compels one to smell the roses.

But there's no such thing as "what if", so I only speculate from negative outcomes and not positive ones. At least, the only positive ones I know of have been the various third-world "truth and reconciliation" initiatives, the impact of which I don't really know.

Let me ask you a question Monty. Do you believe that America has in any way gotten closure from the OJ Simpson trial?

Unfortunately, I never bothered to learn much about the OJ trial. I filed it away as a "celebrity thing". I know that it was a significant event to a lot of people, but I don't know specifics. Even if I didn't know the first about it, I would be able to infer it was in large part a racial issue. What I know actually lends itself toward my stance. I read a piece on The Root within the last year that referred in passing to the OJ trial, couching it as something celebratory for black people not because many of them believed OJ was innocent, but because it gladdened them to see one of their own cheating the Law for once. Where is your rule of law now, conservatives? Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow.


A conscience-based politics cares less for political expediency than for moral truth. - Marianne Williamson

[spmetla]

The guilty charges against Manafort and guilty plea by Cohen in which he implicated Trump should definitely create some new tensions in Washington.

The worst hour of Donald Trump's presidency just happened
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/polit...ump/index.html

Manafort guilty verdicts will put new pressure on him to cooperate with Mueller’s Russia probe
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/...sia-probe.html

Turley on Cohen Plea Deal: Trump Could Be 'Unindicted Co-Conspirator' on Campaign Finance Violation
http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/08/2...rator-campaign

I'm really curious into what the next few days will bring, Trump was already in lash out mode from the Omaraposa book, the continuing security clearance revokal backlash. He doesn't seem to take bad news well and together with Guliani are certainly moving the goalposts for his 'innocence' on a daily basis. Will he do pardons? Fire more people?
The snowball effect of everything happening will run right into the election cycle and no doubt have a massive effect on state and local politics.

[rory_20_uk]

Frankly, I don't think anything will happen:

He'll fight any attempt at an interview every step of the way - probably for years.
Congress will do nothing that might hurt themselves. So even if there could be a successful impeachment, many will fear the backlash of the voters - who already follow the "deep state" narrative so the more evidence there is the more they believe it.
Democrats have a small window to have a candidate that stands for something before 2020 else the D man will be back and after another 4 years he'll be too old to bother standing trial.

Whether other members of the Clan start to feel the heat and then if we enter the murky world of "I'll pardon my lot, resign and get my own pardon on the way out" might be a possibility.

[Montmorency]

Frankly, I don't think anything will happen:

He'll fight any attempt at an interview every step of the way - probably for years.
Congress will do nothing that might hurt themselves. So even if there could be a successful impeachment, many will fear the backlash of the voters - who already follow the "deep state" narrative so the more evidence there is the more they believe it.
Democrats have a small window to have a candidate that stands for something before 2020 else the D man will be back and after another 4 years he'll be too old to bother standing trial.

Whether other members of the Clan start to feel the heat and then if we enter the murky world of "I'll pardon my lot, resign and get my own pardon on the way out" might be a possibility.

The problem with resignation - the external, non-emotional or psychological problem - is that Trump will be vulnerable to prompt indictment upon resignation.

Why has he spent all of 2018 running a political communications campaign to undermine the courts and law enforcement in the public eye? Because he has no formal alternative short of despotism.

His top priority is to last until 2020 and win reelection, or to have a loyalist Republican win the 2020 election.

Where have we seen this before? Wolf. Ears.

[rory_20_uk]

The problem with resignation - the external, non-emotional or psychological problem - is that Trump will be vulnerable to prompt indictment upon resignation.

Why has he spent all of 2018 running a political communications campaign to undermine the courts and law enforcement in the public eye? Because he has no formal alternative short of despotism.

His top priority is to last until 2020 and win reelection, or to have a loyalist Republican win the 2020 election.

Where have we seen this before? Wolf. Ears.

Hence he'd only do it if he had either pardoned himself or got Pence to do it for him. Can he do that? Who knows? No one thought it would ever be done.

[Husar]

Won't Trump just pardon Manafort (and Cohen) and won't that take away all the "pressure to cooperate with Robert Müller"?