
Inauguration (Part 4b): Pardons (Trump)

Part 4b of a series of commentaries on the key aspects of the Inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.
Presidential pardons and commutations are usually what presidents do in the last days of their terms – mostly because they know some of them will be controversial. President Trump broke precedent with a large number of pardons for people he deemed to have been politically prosecuted. They come in two groupings – those prosecuted in conjunction with the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot and those prosecuted in conjunction with anti-abortion activism.
Based on public polling, the pardoning of the Capitol Hill rioters – especially those convicted of the most serious violent crimes – has been one of the most unpopular actions taken by Trump since his inauguration. Two-thirds of those polled opposed the pardons and commutations – especially those who violently attacked police officers.
As the only action taken by Trump in which he is underwater with the American people, the never-Trump crowd has jumped on the issue like starving tigers at a chicken farm. They keep hammering on the riot as an insurrection – even though only a hand full of rioters were charged with crimes even remotely associated with insurrection. The vast majority were charged with crimes commonly associated with riots.
Whether one approves of Trump’s pardons, they are distinctively different than many of Biden’s. Trump pardoned individuals who were either convicted, charged under investigation for specific crimes. They were not pre-emptive.
As with all presidential pardons, do the recipients need or deserve them? Most Americans – me included – believe that those who rioted should be held accountable. But what does that mean? Were the Capitol Hill rioters treated fairly in terms of pre-trial incarceration .. prosecutorial discretion … traditional standards of justice?
That is where I see justification for at least most of the pardons. The pursuit of the Capitol Hill rioters was the largest FBI investigation in American history … unusually long pre-trial detention … unusually severe charges and sentences.
That fact is best seen when comparing the law enforcement response to the Capitol Hill riot to the scores of riots that have ravaged communities … attacked and occupied government buildings … attacked, injured and killed police. Not only, were the rioters … the looters … the arsonists … the vandals not hunted down, arrested and charged, they went officially unpunished for lack of enforcement and prosecutorial discretion. In one case, Vice President Harris helped to raise funds to pay the bail for the few who were arrested. Rioters on January 6th were held in pre-trial detention for long periods. And their sentencing was far more severe than in the case of other rioters.
The rationale for the pardons was not based on lack of accountability but on fairness and equal application of the law. In the case of the Capitol Hill rioters, it was also noted that many had already served time in prison for a longer period than comparable people convicted of similar crimes throughout the nation.
Unintentional as it was, former Republican National Chairman (and GOP apostate) Michael Steele explained the difference. He drew the distinction by noting that the Capitol Hill riot “was on our turf.” It was on the hallowed ground of the Washington power elite. Far worse death and destruction in vulnerable communities as the result of minimal police enforcement and prosecution. In many cases, the police are order to stand down as neighborhoods and business are engulfed in flame. The folks in the community are not as important as the Washington elite.
In view of what appears to be an excessive imposition of justice, the Trump pardons have a reasonable rationale in most cases – whether one agrees with the pardons or not. That is the same theory that motivated Biden to issue pardons to so many low-level drug abusers.
The case against the anti-abortion activists was based on the same rationale. The arrests and convictions were inconsistent to similar situations on the left. There was also the question of the unique law under which they were prosecuted.
Another distinct difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump made it perfectly clear throughout the campaign that he intended to pardon the Capitol Hill rioters. Voters were fully informed when they went to the polls. Biden, on the other hand, outright lied about the pardon for his son, Hunter, and offered no warning about who he would later pardon.
Summary
In terms of the pardons, I tend to disagree with the actions taken by both presidents to some degree. I believe presidential pardons should be few. They should never be pre-emptive – but only granted to individuals who have been convicted of a specific crime – or at least indicted or under investigation. There should be evidence remorse or injustice.
I would not have issued blanket pardons and commutations to all of the Capitol Hill rioters, as Trump did. I would not have commuted the sentences of the death row prisoners, as Biden did. And Biden’s pardoning of his family and political allies was the worst abuse of the pardoning power in American history.
It is easy to know when the pardoning power is being abused. If it creates public controversy, it is being abused. The public will not get enraged when a pardon is granted to a clearly deserving person or group. Unfortunately, we will see the pardoning power abused in the future unless we can either change the Constitution or create enforceable guidelines.
So, there ‘tis.
So, Trump pardons good while Biden’s pardons bad and that coming from an extremely partisan opinion commentary writer who has not a single objective bone to support his judgement. Of course you write with prejudice towards Biden and manufacture stories that have him guilty of over stepping his power.
Well you have no proof for your allegations against Biden This empty rhetoric slamming Biden is your smokescreen attempting to obscure Trump 1.0 misuse of executive power and his campaign promised audacity beyond the Executive Branch’s scope and role within our government’s three established equal Branches.
Trump has managed the corruption of SCOTUS and is endeavoring to corrupt Congress with intimidation, fear of retribution, and threats to withdraw support or openly malign them in the media.
He is a scourge on all that democracy stands for, and you, Larry, know Trump 2.0 will squander our nation’s valued place as the world’s leader among all other nations.
AC … Can you read? I criticized Trumps’ pardon of violent rioters. I was okay with Biden’s pardon of low level drug crimes. On the other hand, I have repeated challenged you and others to tell me what you approve of anything Trump has done as President … both terms. And I get no answer. So, who lacks objectivity? Geez!
Horist: That’s not true; you got multiple answers from multiple people.
The Horist defense: “That is where I see justification for at least most of the pardons. The pursuit of the Capitol Hill rioters was the largest FBI investigation in American history … unusually long pre-trial detention … unusually severe charges and sentences.”
Cool; except it’s not true. Yes, it was a large investigation. Gee, Larry, perhaps there were thousands and the fools were stupid enough to be caught on tape. What did you expect? Should we have tamped down the investigation because there were too many criminals?
Unusually long pre-trial detention: prove it. You can’t because it is not true. If there was any extension, it was due to too many criminals in the docket for which you note is the largest investigation ever.
The usual “in jail” for federal offenses is 75% of defendants. The 1/6ers: 30%.
“By mid-May, at least 440 people had been arrested on charges related to the 6 January Capitol breach, according to the justice department, including at least 125 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Of 398 defendants listed on the justice department’s Capitol breach case site as of 10 May, at least 330 were listed on the site, or in federal court records, as released from custody. At least 56 of those defendants remained in detention.” The ones remaining in detention were violent, no fixed address, and other things making them high risk for release. IF Larry can show us something different, maybe his statement will mean more than Trump-myth.
Same with severe charges and sentences: PROVE IT or STFU. He can’t.
Median sentence is about 120 days — good luck with saying charges in general are too severe. I believe there is little chance that Horist can come up with many punishments that did not fit the crime and the judicial guidelines for incarceration or other punishments.
How does blind people know when they get the asses wiped properly?
Larry, Biden’s pardons’ justice questions are water under the bridge and gone. I am against letting people free in society who have committed violent crimes against persons and acts of treason. Also, Biden’s commuting death sentences to life with out parole I believe is more humane, although there is debate on the subject of life in prison being humane and whether execution is justice served for victims and loved ones.
In any event, it’s the politically motivated pardons that are an injustice to society and the victims of the pardoned. No matter what one’s position is on what happened on 1/06/ 2021 those who were convicted and sentenced broke the law, physically and psychologically harmed people, damaged US Government property, an battled with law officers in hand to hand combat. Surely just is not served by pardoning the perpetrators of such crimes.
You may opine that 1/06 was just a few people who got overly excited in the moment and their protest went a little too far The whole event is thought by you to be a garden variety riot. You totally are in disagreement with that day’s events being described as an insurrection purposed for the overturn of the 2020 election.
The facts are what what they are and objective consideration of the ample evidence supplied by video and in person first hand testimony,, absent partisan bias, history will record that the happenings on 1/ 06/ 2021 amount to an attempted overturn of an election by insurrection.
Studying the facts and assembling the case as set in a particular context from the weeks and days running up to 1/06 and Trump’s speech on the day. The nonpartisan objective view of this case brings the most rational decision of insurrection.
Trump pardoned the perpetrators who our justice system had imprisoned with cause. If you indict the American Justice System for the whole of it being under complete control and influence of President Biden you are allowing your overly strong bias against all things Biden to corrupt your judgement.
The intelligent, informed, and morally/ethically discerning individual would eschew intolerant perceptions and see facts clearly, thereby they ensure whatever amount of credibility the may have accrued with their life’s work.
Forgo animus towards Biden and concentrate on objectively seeing what is happening to this nation’s stability in every critical agency at present and the upending in dominoes falling fashion a previously secure, safe, and dependable structure that regulates and ensures a high degree of security for all of us.
A worthy argument is always in discussion, that we are always seeking to build a more perfect Union. Through this nation’s 250 year history that effort has not attained perfection, but the Founders did not foresee this human endeavor ever reaching the pinochle that is perfection. Their design made a way to govern the growing nation into a more perfect union than any nation of free people had ever dreamt of living in.
The present newly inaugurated administration through the whims and illogical interventions poses a real and serious threat to the efficient and proven past performance of current federal employees and and longterm managers who work for the government and for each of us. Overturning the national government apple cart puts all of us in jeopardy. I for one will not trust air travel after the Trump Admin sacked those person tasked with controlling aircraft coming and going through the skies over our heads. That incident in DC where a plane and a helicopter collided with all lives lost with their crash into the Potomac River. Which is a terrible tragedy for the loss of life and those left to mourn their family members and friends. But if this story was not sad enough, Trump’s response to this human tragedy to the news makes the event even more sad for our expectations for future Trump proclamations in the wake of human losses yet to come and the nation’s mourning processes.
Each catastrophe yields an opportunity for elected leaders, they have a choice to make. The leader can take the high moral and ethical road with a choice to appropriately mourn with those who have been shocked into mourning a grievous tragedy and loss. This behavior should be one’s personal from their heart response. The nation has witnessed their high office leaders responding to people’s grief in loss by hurricane, fire mass-murder, accident, death of a leader, and war deaths. At this time and in the circumstance of lives lost, Trump’s immediate response descended down the low road. He went full political spreading blame for this incident on Biden and Obama with the assumption that they and their policies were the cause. That Trump himself is in the middle of stripping agencies of long time employee and inserting apprehension and loss of capacity.
When you go about seeking to destroy, look first to Trump’s decimation of our government’s agencies in mass.
AC I guess your ac stands for active communist. Trump was in the face of the liberal and communist news network, FBI plants in the Capitol so called riots made the trouble . They were told by Piglosy and the libs in office ,FBI and others. They hate Trump because he is exposing the lefts crimes. You need to get your head on straight. Biden pre emptive gave pardons WHY. Biden and his handlers wanted to make sure their crimes are never tried or brought up. Biden crime family will one day pay.
Bobert; FBI plants; you mean like ferns? Of course the FBI was there; they go after criminals, it’s their job to.
You saying the FBI caused all those people to do all those crimes and then those same people freely confessed?
FBI is only in business because criminals are not rocket scientists. Your people are prime examples. What protestor or criminals takes flicks and then post them? Stupid ones.
Tell you what; I’ll post pics of your idiots and you post your pictures of fbi plants.
So far one pardoned 1/6er arrested on gun charge.
Another shot dead by police for resisting arrest by Indiana State police.
Illegal aliens are less criminal.
Horist loves those policies.
What a shit show
The guy shot by the police was murdered because of his political views. Lock and load people. There’s more to come
You’re loaded no doubt. You have not a clue why the guy was shot except for resisting arrest during a traffic stop. Why did you make that up? Why lie?
Wow, must be dark with your heads down in the sand that deep!
Biden was a piece of shit all the way to the last acts he did.
Biden lied to the American people all the way down to the last act he did.
From day 1 talking about him not talking to Hunters business partners down
to the last day covering the asses of all the people who broke the law for him
( Personally ) and preemptively pardoning them for their guilt soon the
be found out.
YES, 4 years of Crime with no remorse, guilt, or justice.
That is the Democrat MOTO of course.
Until Trump came down the elevator some 9 years ago, that was the Republican MOTO as well.
There is NO comparison.
I do not even consider Kamala’s guilt in any of this as she is just a waste of oxygen.
I was not a riot, it was defiant of a stolen election.
I believe Jan 6 was this nation’s Tianamen Square. Neither Congress nor the Politboro gave a damn about such protests out in the provinces. It wasn’t til it was outside their windows that they crapped themselves.
But is that even the point?
Isn’t the following the question to address:
How legitimate is a government that has to wall itself off from it’s own people?
Some of the riots started with the FBI and Capitol police pushing the J6rs who pushed back. Only the J6ers got arrested for trying to save their own lives. This is only SOME of them. The FBI and Capitol police are in on the whole set up too. This is now coming out to the public. The FBI and Capitol police think they are covering their own butts. They will be arrested for it.
I will also say that those of you who accuse Larry, know this: he is an author who puts articles out for us to read and debate between ourselves. Those of you who dispute what I say then tough! If you do not like the content of the stories, go away and stay away. You are getting ridiculous. IF you think Trump is the real criminal, do something about it instead of trying to get everyone you can to believe only YOUR SIDE! I will say, Biden was a real criminal all his adult life. IF you people love child trafficking and biolabs, you prove you love Biden and may even be in some trouble. I don’t really care one way or another. AND WAS executed before that rigged election in 2020. I don’t care what you evil ones think either. You can stay in your deranged minds for all I care. If you go – good riddance! You show no real sense anymore. Larry has a right to write any article he wants to without your idiot permission!
AF defies reality when she says: “Some of the riots started with the FBI and Capitol police pushing the J6rs who pushed back.” Uh, the Capitol was off limits to the public that day. The rioters started by a few coming in early to avoid the barricades and bust in a door. The rioters came later and pushed through barricades to doors they smashed. Yes, cops on the other sides of the barricades pushed back but it’s pretty clear that if the barricades go down, it ain’t the police breaching them. At that point it’s a free-for-all with police on DEFENSE and protestors on OFFENSE. They were trespassing.
“Only the J6ers got arrested for trying to save their own lives” except they were the trespassers attacking the police. And let’s remember how many confessed their guilt. Pardoned or not, that’s the record.
“If you do not like the content of the stories, go away and stay away.”
With all due respect: fuck you.
Frank Stetson defies reality when he refused the truth that written out for the public to read. His post above added to all the others he slams on us proves he is part of the Deep State himself because he loves crime, his life of crime and all his Democrat political criminals. I do know someone that was there and corroborated what I said above in MY post. Yes, Frank wants to be called Danger because he is dangerous and should not be allowed in public which means he would hurt somebody. There have been recordings released to the public that shows the FBI and Capitol police egging the J6ers on and even physically pushed the J6ers. SO, Frank now cannot dispute what I said which is the truth unlike his criminal lies. Do not listen or read any more of Dangerous Franks deep state reptilian lies!
Wow AF; you hate me but copy me. How does a person outside of goverment become deep state. That’s just crazy talk. She says i have a life of crime which is a lie. She knows someone there who collaborated all that she said which is a lie. No ine could have seen all that even if it happened which it didn’t, Then aagin, she spews that our leaders are dead and replaced by clones. That’s just crazy too.
“As the only action taken by Trump in which he is underwater with the American people, the never-Trump crowd has jumped on the issue like starving tigers at a chicken farm.” Yeah, it’s our sin to be upset about this. So happy you are not.
No Larry, this is an out n out sin. And you know it.
He has pardoned a child pornographer. He has pardoned a HUGE drug dealer, and look what Hoirst shit piled on me for some bags of weed, now legal. He has pardoned a bevy of seditious conspirators, some of which stood up and said, “I did it, I will do it again.” He pardoned hundred who beat on cops with anything they could get their hands on, many of which stood up and said: “I did it.” And he freed many who were just there, illegally, in the Capitol; that I could have accepted. But Horist seems to accept or defend all and blame the other side instead.
“ even though only a hand full of rioters were charged with crimes even remotely associated with insurrection. The vast majority were charged with crimes commonly associated with riots” as the author admits that it’s OK to pardon rioters. Remember, I have long said, Trump sent his army to Congress where an insurrection occurred hidden inside a violent protest hidden inside a protest hidden inside a rally all spurred on by the speakers, including Trump. Trump still calls this a patriotic act to defend against a stolen election. He uses the bully pulpit to spread that bull that Horist seems to agree with. At least he loves the polices and the pardons, well not so much but really the Democrats fault…… I mean look at Biden…. Protecting his family and friends from Trump. Not the rule of law, but from Trump, the man, the Felon King.
“And Biden’s pardoning of his family and political allies was the worst abuse of the pardoning power in American history.” Wow. Just wow. Letting a child pornographer off is better than Biden. Letting a HUGE drug dealer off is better than Biden. Letting cop beaters, seditious conspirators, off is better than Biden. Tell that to the victims, Larry. Sigh.
Two of the pardons face the law already. One for gun charges in Florida, the author’s loose gun home, and the other shot dead while resisting arrest during a traffic stop. While I don’t expect the non-violent ones to regress, we can expect to see the violent ones in the news. Larry leaves out that they are already threatening to break the law again, I guess, knowing if they do it for Trump that he will let them go free, free, free at last.
Oh, Frank, Fuck YOU! You are the sin, you and TOM! You both try so hard to destroy decent people. It is in every single post you make. Everyone except for loverboy Tom and throw in a bit of AC- sees what you are. It is not pretty! Suck it up. You lost. Live with it. Like I said, go after Trump if you hate him so much. Sue him. Have the Sheriffs arrest him. Will that make you happy? You are disgusting!
AF: thanks. That was great. Keep on keeping on.
Trump is our president. So fuck you
Seth, yes you are right. I’m fucked. Thank you. Feel better now that you got that off your chest to get your rocks off, yech.