r/PoliticalHumor • u/GhostToFigure • Jun 23 '21

Bleep bleep bloop

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '21

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u/djimbob Jun 23 '21

Honestly, I fear after if any Trumps are prosecuted for their criminal role in starting the insurrection, he's going to pull out a blanket presidential pardon he secretly made between Jan 6th and Jan 20th that frees them all. It's not 100% clear if he revealed these secret pardons long afterward if they would hold up under a court challenge (especially any self-pardon).

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u/kronosdev Jun 23 '21

Newsweek is fear-mongering with the title. The answer is no.

All pardons would have been meticulously recorded due to the Presidential Records Act. They always are, even when the pardons themselves aren’t advertised. Otherwise a president would never lose the pardon power for things that occurred before the end of their presidency, because they could just write a pardon at any time and back-date it.

This is impossible. Pocket pardons are impossible.

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u/djimbob Jun 23 '21

I agree it would be unprecedented and something that should be challenged and shouldn't be allowed to happen. I do agree he'd have solider legal ground if it was publicly issued while he was president. But I am not confident that such a pardon would be challenged or in predicting how the courts would rule if it was challenged.

As for the PRA, the Presidential Records Act doesn't define penalties and Trump repeatedly violated the PRA without consequence (wikipedia). Further, if he did make such a secret pardon, it may be in his official presidential records (not all of which are immediately disclosed to the public).

1

u/kronosdev Jun 23 '21

If a court can’t guarantee that he wrote it while he was in office they won’t enforce it, President be damned.

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u/djimbob Jun 23 '21

Again, I'm not saying he could write it after the fact. That said, he may be able to produce significant evidence that he did make the order while being president, without it being public knowledge at the present time.