Dem
47
GOP
53
As long as we are on the subject of Donald Trump reinventing the law at his whims, he fired up his meager social media platform to share this over the weekend:
The "Pardons" that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!
Again, we are always on the lookout that the Trump cheese is slipping off the Trump cracker. This message certainly does not help the case that he's still in command of his faculties. Or, if you prefer, here's how The Bulwark put it: "The declaration was impressive in its spectacular absurdity, wedging together blithering nonsense so tightly it could function as performance art—a turducken of lunatic conspiracy theories."
Keeping in mind that Trump was once an advocate of the notion that a president can declassify documents just by thinking about them, none of the claims here (which were undoubtedly fed to Trump by some underling) holds water. There is plenty of evidence that Biden knew full well about the pardons. Whether they were signed by autopen (which is an unproven claim) is irrelevant; in fact, they don't actually have to be signed at all. Obviously, a president cannot "void" the pardons of a past president. The only way the pardons could even plausibly be declared invalid is if Biden came out and said unambiguously that he didn't have anything to do with them, didn't know about them, and didn't want the people pardoned. But even then, they would probably still stand, as there is some amount of precedent that says that once a pardon is delivered to a recipient, it's final. And, of course, Biden isn't going to come out and say that, anyhow.
The clear message is that even those people who think they're safe from Trump's vengeance could well find themselves targeted by the Trump-led Department of Justice. Trump's got no basis for pursuing them, but that does not stop him from having people arrested and imprisoned, forcing them to hire lawyers to defend the validity of their pardons. Not only would this be disruptive for the folks targeted, not to mention expensive, but these days, it's gotten tough to find a quality law firm willing to do battle with the administration.
In a story that might, or might not, be related, Trump canceled Hunter Biden's Secret Service detail yesterday. Maybe that's part of the whole "austerity" shtick. Or maybe it's a little payback visited against an enemy. Or maybe it's meant to make it much easier to arrest the former First Son at some point in the (near?) future. (Z)