A bevy of most GOP candidates for their party's presidential nomination, with several exceptions, think their chief rival, Donald Trump, should be pardoned, and they pledge to do so if they get elected. Be careful what they wish. It makes for some very dangerous precedents which could come back to bite them or damage national security and democracy. They must be assuming that Trump has a good chance of being convicted of a federal crime to pardon him of a conviction. ( FYI: They would have no power to pardon a conviction by a district attorney as in Manhattan or in Georgia). At an Iowa GOP dinner, former congressman Will Hurd, a candidate for the GOP's nomination, garnered a chorus of boos when claiming the only reason Trump sought re-election was to keep himself out of jail. Yet untested is if a president can pardon himself.
While elections have consequences, so do precedents. Here is the scenario the GOP hopes will work, and if it fails, it won't be for the lack of trying to paint Joe Biden as just as dishonest and craven as Donald Trump. In politics, public perception is more important than evidence or facts. Just raising the prospect of mishandling classified information without ever finding any missing emails scuttled Hillary Clinton's bid for president and got Trump elected.
The shoe can always be on the other foot. Unlikely as it is, imagine if somehow the newly authorized "House impeach inquiry" into the dealings of the "Biden crime family" found some evidence or a credible witness that Biden was guilty of not reporting income from his son's business dealings. Suppose the "evidence' led to impeachment or even an indictment. Would the GOP extend the same "courtesy" to Biden as they advocate for Trump, no jail time, a slap in the hand or acquittal.or a self-pardon, or is this just a one-off get-out-of-jail card for Donald Trump? If it does not happen in current events, the precedence is on the books and someone else or some other political party could use this GOP template to justify similar actions just as we look to Watergate for guidance.
Be careful what you wish, GOP. Take a page from Watergate. If proven in court, Trump ordering the surveillance cameras and tapes to be removed is an echo of Rosemary Woods erasing damning tapes in the Nixon/Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation. Even disclosing the evidence in the indictment of Trump ordering the disabling evidence in the Mar A Lago surveillance cameras, it could backfire on Trump as public perception would consider him guilty, anyway.
The messages the GOP "pardon Trump; treat him differently than anyone else; he does not have to comply with laws. or go to jail" are sending is that any future president should not worry about any unlawful actions before as a candidate, during or after a presidency. The red carpet is now laid out for any wannabe autocrat/dictator to go and do likewise.
Aside from jail time, there are other security considerations and Secret Service problems for a president to sit in jail that are legitimate problems that the incarceration of lesser convicts would not face. Home detention or an ankle bracelet could be an alternative. He could still campaign.. A more damning deal has happened. Remember, VP Spiro Agnew, avoided jail time by pledging to resign from office as a condition of pleading guilty to a lesser crime. That, too, could keep Trump out of an orange jumpsuit and out of the Oval Office.
On CNN on July 30, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tried to split legal hairs by saying no president should go to jail for a "process crime." He inferred that Trump's taking national security documents to Bedminster, or Mar a Lago, was just a technical violation that did not deserve the same jail sentence. We have heard that from other candidates. Nothing in the current law draws that distinction or gives special treatment to a president, but there is latitude in making deals in the plea process, as it did with Agnew. Neither Pence nor Joe Biden got jailed or indicted for taking classified documents home. e.It can be argued that high officials like them already get special treatment, while there are many cases of just taking them home landed lesser employees in jail. Unlike Trump, they returned the documents when asked and were advised keeping them was a crime; while Trump allegedly lied, he produced all of them and attempted to hide them from the FBI. That is a huge difference. Wilful obstruction of justice and a coverup is a bigger deal than just taking them out of the secured facility, even if Trump thinks he could declassify them with a wink and a thought. The coverup often is the bigger deal than the underlying crime, as Nixon found out, and it cost him the presidency.
Be careful what you wish, GOP. Take a page from Watergate. If proven in court, Trump ordering the surveillance cameras and tapes to be removed is an echo of Rosemary Woods erasing damning tapes in the Nixon/Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation. Even if the evidence of Trump ordering the disabling evidence in the Mar A Lago surveillance cameras, as alleged in the recent indictment, is not upheld in a trial, it could backfire on Trump. Perceptions work are often more important in politics than proof, as illustrated by the GOP's successful attempt to derail Hillary Clinton's election with accusations of alleged crimes of her "missing emails." However, no proof was ever found of any missing emails.
.Where Trump departs from Biden and Pence is the willful element of obstructing justice. If true, the "boss ordered his employees to remove surveillance camera tapes and hide the bankers' boxes after being informed by the DOJ and FBI holding on to them was illegal, then that becomes a charge of a wilful obstruction of justice that violates other statutes and subjects the guilty offender to service jail time if convicted., Both Vice Presidents, Pence, and Biden, immediately took steps to return the secret documents after being informed by the FBI and DOJ they could not keep them, while Trump is alleged to have lied and then tried to hide the evidence of his guilt. That is the difference.
That Trump waived purloined plans to invade another country before the eyes of non-authorized visitors is terrible since he could have endangered US national security secrets. Above all, it shows no sense of his caring about the national security of the US to impress or make a political point to those same visitors. His judgment cannot be trusted. That is not the first time he has done that, either. In a meeting with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister, he let slip some secret information that possibly led to the removal of US human intelligence sources. Trump revealed intelligence secrets to Russians in Oval Office: officials | Reuters "Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017". CNN. Archived from the original on March 12, 2020. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
There is a precedent for Trump’s indictment: Spiro Agnew - The Washington Post
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