Typically a pardon is granted when a conviction comes as the result of misconduct in the court, and a decision not to pursue charges comes after new evidence comes to light. Neither of these have happened over the past 6 months. Instead, the common thread is being a supporter of the Convicted Felon. That alone has destroyed the credibility of the DOJ and I’m glad a majority of lawyers have GTFO’d rather than been a party to this sullying of justice.
Well written summary of the extent the DOJ has been corrupted by Bondi. I don't agree that it's lost to us forever. The day we regain power we will start its repair and I hope the author is wrong in saying it will take generations. If she's correct, then that's a very scary prospect. A quick, although highly cynical, fix might be to use the same RIF tactics employed at the DOE and State by the Trump administration. Terminate the employments of the administration that Bondi brought in, then replace them with people who are less ethically challenged. If someone appealed their termination and it got up to the Roberts Court how could the latter reverse then what they've allowed now?
I should also mention that the whole question of a presidents ability to arbitrarily remove officers grew out of separation of powers issues dating from the Reconstruction era and the Tenure of Office Act. The question at issue was whether Congress had a say in the president removing officers that it had originally consented to at the time of their appointment. The two sides disagreed until the Supreme Court definitively settled the issue in the presidents favor in 1926 (Myers v United States). One could say that that decision was the beginning of the Unitary Executive we see today in all it's awful power.
That's a nice summary. Even so, after having seen some of the absurd violations and blatant misrepresentations of our Constitution being written by today's SCOTUS majority, I'm past saying SCOTUS justices "definitively settled" everything they purport to decide. Our skepticism should extend to issues like this, i.e., decisions favoring a president by a handful of judges who were hand-picked by a president. What SCOTUS justices have done and said about such things flies in the face of the plain text and plain purpose of our Constitution and its history.
The people who wrote and ratified our Constitution expected our Congress to behave more like the English Parliament did back then than our Congress does now. So they expressly provided for such an arrangement when they apportioned the powers of our national leaders. “All [national] legislative Powers” were “vested” in “Congress.” Art. I, § 1. Such powers expressly included the power to “make all Laws” that are “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" absolutely “all” the “Powers vested” in any part of national “Government” including any executive or judicial “Officer.” Art. I, § 8. That plain language necessarily extends to even the president's powers to remove appointees and even to pardon people. It also necessarily extends to at least some of the conduct (e.g., ethics violations) of SCOTUS justices.
Well the pardon power is in there but definitely needs to be revisited and that certainly is within congresses power to edit. But don't you worry that a slippery slope exists here? If you deflate the maximalist Executive and transfer those lost powers to Congress don't you run the risk of a tyrannical Congress rising? You run the risk of trading one monster for another. Imagine a muscular Congress run by Mitch McConnell and Johnson? What horrid laws might they pass and have the strength to override any presidential veto? I advocate abolishing both the Senate and the Electoral College as ways to restore democracy. Any other way is to maintain a machine that is manifestly broken.
I always worry about slippery slopes. As Madison (and others) emphasized repeatedly, no matter who has power, some people with any kind of power always will be willing to slide down the slippery slope and plow into and run over people below them.
Congress can be tyrannical. They also can restrain a tyrannical president. So our Constitution requires most of Congress (all House members) to run for re-election every two years and 1/3 of Senators to run for re-election every two years.
Appreciate it. Long ago president Andrew Johnson tried to remove his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton who he had inherited from his predecessor Abraham Lincoln who had been assassinated. Jobnson had been Lincoln's VP and automatically rose to the presidency to complete Lincoln's unfinished term. Stanton was a radical Republican and took a much harsher view of reconstructing the subjugated South than did Johnson who was a border state southerner himself. Johnson tried to get Stanton to resign. Stanton refused. The radical Republicans who completely controlled Congress backed Stanton, impeached Johnson, and passed the Tenure of Office Act. And we thought our politics today are lurid!
At least Congress was actually doing the work of the people back then (actually trying to support and defend our Constitution and the constitution of our nation). The election and re-election of Lincoln and members of Congress showed where Americans wanted to go and how they wanted to get there (the way President Lincoln and Congress were doing it). Johnson (a southerner and a former slaveholder) and a number of SCOTUS justices (including southerners) sought to thwart Congress. America might have been a much better place--and many Americans would have been in a much better place-- much earlier if Johnson had been convicted and removed by the Senate.
Some scattered comments. There are several schools of historians on Andrew Johnson's one term in office. The 19th century school pretty much saw him as did the Radical Republicans, a drunk, a buffoon, a slavery lover, a crypto-rebel who may have had a hand in arranging Lincoln's assassination and who wanted to restore the ante-bellum southern aristocracy to power.
In the early part of the 20th century a revisionist school arose who bitterly contested those earlier portrayals. This school made the Radical Republicans the villains, correctly pointing out that the latter were getting very dissatisfied with Lincoln and his desire to quickly heal the divided country when war ended by a more gentle way of bringing the South back into the Union. They pointed out that Johnson's cardinal sin was that he agreed with Lincoln and was impeached for his pains, they also pointed out that if Lincoln had lived much longer they were going to try impeaching him themselves! Utter nonsense I believe, that last revisionist claim.
Since the 1940s a truer, more balanced view of Andrew Johnson has been the consensus although occasionally a popular history will show up depicting Johnson as a drunken devil, although never printed by the academic presses.
Forgotten times and we have our own devil's and radical Republicans to deal with now. Republicans to worry about now.
Oh yes, definitely. All cabinet heads, including that of the DOJ serve at the pleasure of the president . It is customarily the case they all turn in resignations when a new president of a different party takes office.
We must protest on Thursday because “Good Trouble Lives On”. The memory of Troy, AL native John Lewis will be honored to have you participate in this manner. Here are signs for you to print. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/protest-signage-free?r=3m1bs
In the end, maybe that is the only legacy djt really wants - to be able to say he took America and Americans for every dime he could and then he crashed America’s standing in the world, America’s judiciary and America’s economy.
Well, Trump’s $25,000 “campaign donation” has certainly paid off! The DoJ will file cases reflecting Trump’s sense of revenge … and then probably not follow up when they’re thrown out. Only the advancement of Project 2025 - NOT Trump - matters.
Typically a pardon is granted when a conviction comes as the result of misconduct in the court, and a decision not to pursue charges comes after new evidence comes to light. Neither of these have happened over the past 6 months. Instead, the common thread is being a supporter of the Convicted Felon. That alone has destroyed the credibility of the DOJ and I’m glad a majority of lawyers have GTFO’d rather than been a party to this sullying of justice.
Well written summary of the extent the DOJ has been corrupted by Bondi. I don't agree that it's lost to us forever. The day we regain power we will start its repair and I hope the author is wrong in saying it will take generations. If she's correct, then that's a very scary prospect. A quick, although highly cynical, fix might be to use the same RIF tactics employed at the DOE and State by the Trump administration. Terminate the employments of the administration that Bondi brought in, then replace them with people who are less ethically challenged. If someone appealed their termination and it got up to the Roberts Court how could the latter reverse then what they've allowed now?
And if there’s a Dem president elected in 2028 🙏🙏 would he/she be able to fire this AG? If she lasts that long…
I should also mention that the whole question of a presidents ability to arbitrarily remove officers grew out of separation of powers issues dating from the Reconstruction era and the Tenure of Office Act. The question at issue was whether Congress had a say in the president removing officers that it had originally consented to at the time of their appointment. The two sides disagreed until the Supreme Court definitively settled the issue in the presidents favor in 1926 (Myers v United States). One could say that that decision was the beginning of the Unitary Executive we see today in all it's awful power.
That's a nice summary. Even so, after having seen some of the absurd violations and blatant misrepresentations of our Constitution being written by today's SCOTUS majority, I'm past saying SCOTUS justices "definitively settled" everything they purport to decide. Our skepticism should extend to issues like this, i.e., decisions favoring a president by a handful of judges who were hand-picked by a president. What SCOTUS justices have done and said about such things flies in the face of the plain text and plain purpose of our Constitution and its history.
The people who wrote and ratified our Constitution expected our Congress to behave more like the English Parliament did back then than our Congress does now. So they expressly provided for such an arrangement when they apportioned the powers of our national leaders. “All [national] legislative Powers” were “vested” in “Congress.” Art. I, § 1. Such powers expressly included the power to “make all Laws” that are “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" absolutely “all” the “Powers vested” in any part of national “Government” including any executive or judicial “Officer.” Art. I, § 8. That plain language necessarily extends to even the president's powers to remove appointees and even to pardon people. It also necessarily extends to at least some of the conduct (e.g., ethics violations) of SCOTUS justices.
Well the pardon power is in there but definitely needs to be revisited and that certainly is within congresses power to edit. But don't you worry that a slippery slope exists here? If you deflate the maximalist Executive and transfer those lost powers to Congress don't you run the risk of a tyrannical Congress rising? You run the risk of trading one monster for another. Imagine a muscular Congress run by Mitch McConnell and Johnson? What horrid laws might they pass and have the strength to override any presidential veto? I advocate abolishing both the Senate and the Electoral College as ways to restore democracy. Any other way is to maintain a machine that is manifestly broken.
I always worry about slippery slopes. As Madison (and others) emphasized repeatedly, no matter who has power, some people with any kind of power always will be willing to slide down the slippery slope and plow into and run over people below them.
Congress can be tyrannical. They also can restrain a tyrannical president. So our Constitution requires most of Congress (all House members) to run for re-election every two years and 1/3 of Senators to run for re-election every two years.
interesting background info - thanks!
Appreciate it. Long ago president Andrew Johnson tried to remove his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton who he had inherited from his predecessor Abraham Lincoln who had been assassinated. Jobnson had been Lincoln's VP and automatically rose to the presidency to complete Lincoln's unfinished term. Stanton was a radical Republican and took a much harsher view of reconstructing the subjugated South than did Johnson who was a border state southerner himself. Johnson tried to get Stanton to resign. Stanton refused. The radical Republicans who completely controlled Congress backed Stanton, impeached Johnson, and passed the Tenure of Office Act. And we thought our politics today are lurid!
At least Congress was actually doing the work of the people back then (actually trying to support and defend our Constitution and the constitution of our nation). The election and re-election of Lincoln and members of Congress showed where Americans wanted to go and how they wanted to get there (the way President Lincoln and Congress were doing it). Johnson (a southerner and a former slaveholder) and a number of SCOTUS justices (including southerners) sought to thwart Congress. America might have been a much better place--and many Americans would have been in a much better place-- much earlier if Johnson had been convicted and removed by the Senate.
Some scattered comments. There are several schools of historians on Andrew Johnson's one term in office. The 19th century school pretty much saw him as did the Radical Republicans, a drunk, a buffoon, a slavery lover, a crypto-rebel who may have had a hand in arranging Lincoln's assassination and who wanted to restore the ante-bellum southern aristocracy to power.
In the early part of the 20th century a revisionist school arose who bitterly contested those earlier portrayals. This school made the Radical Republicans the villains, correctly pointing out that the latter were getting very dissatisfied with Lincoln and his desire to quickly heal the divided country when war ended by a more gentle way of bringing the South back into the Union. They pointed out that Johnson's cardinal sin was that he agreed with Lincoln and was impeached for his pains, they also pointed out that if Lincoln had lived much longer they were going to try impeaching him themselves! Utter nonsense I believe, that last revisionist claim.
Since the 1940s a truer, more balanced view of Andrew Johnson has been the consensus although occasionally a popular history will show up depicting Johnson as a drunken devil, although never printed by the academic presses.
Forgotten times and we have our own devil's and radical Republicans to deal with now. Republicans to worry about now.
Oh yes, definitely. All cabinet heads, including that of the DOJ serve at the pleasure of the president . It is customarily the case they all turn in resignations when a new president of a different party takes office.
With a willing SCOTUS, this mess may take decades to unravel. She is one of the scary ones.
How many of those pardoned for J6 related crimes will end up being hired by the supersized ICE.
Lawlessness.
By now all
Except for those already imprisoned for other crimes.
Unfortunately not enough in that group
We must protest on Thursday because “Good Trouble Lives On”. The memory of Troy, AL native John Lewis will be honored to have you participate in this manner. Here are signs for you to print. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/protest-signage-free?r=3m1bs
In the end, maybe that is the only legacy djt really wants - to be able to say he took America and Americans for every dime he could and then he crashed America’s standing in the world, America’s judiciary and America’s economy.
Don’t think he cares beyond stripping the rubes of their cash.
Well, Trump’s $25,000 “campaign donation” has certainly paid off! The DoJ will file cases reflecting Trump’s sense of revenge … and then probably not follow up when they’re thrown out. Only the advancement of Project 2025 - NOT Trump - matters.
Why does it always take longer to fix things that other people break?