And he can pardon them, without even specifying what he pardons them for. Indeed, this seems to be becoming the the norm.
The US really needs to reign in the pardoning power. There are 3 areas in particular that need coverage (I'll cover pardons by the President, but the same might apply to Governors):
1) Most pardons come with a political cost, either for the president himself or his party. The main exception is just after an election, especially during the President's last term. This could be solved by outlawing pardons during the last 6 months of a term. At minimum, morally questionable pardons should come with such a cost.
2) All pardons should specificy specifically what actions and potential crimes they apply to. They do not specifically need to be admission of guilt (as they may be for gray zone behavior that could need protection against political prosecution by the next administration), but they do need to specify what actions or allegations they apply to.
3) Congress' ability to specifically contest pardons should be clarified. Specifically, congress should have the ability to contest a pardon, if the pardon is made from personal interest, seriously undermines the rule of law or national security.
Also, since the sitting president's party may controll the Speaker seat at the time, even the NEXT congress should have a chance to start proceedings. This requires that congress retains the right to do this even if the sitting president resigns before the term ends. (Since the new congress starts before the president's normal term ends).
Taken together, the above 3 points would ensure that IF a president is seen by the general public to abuse the pardon power, voters would get one chance at voting for representatives (and senators) that promise to "restore justice".
The time to introduce such a system would be now, while there's still outrage over Biden's pardons among Republicans. Democrats would also want to go along with this to prevent Trump from abusing the power in similar (or worse) ways near the end of his term. In fact, if they're sufficiently scared of this, they may even allow an opening to impeach Biden for potentially corrupt pardon's that were granted during the last weeks of his term.
This would allow Republicans to go after Fauci, Hunter, etc, in congress by impeaching Biden over those pardons, even now, even if they wouldn't actually be able to reach a guilty verdict in the Senate without significant Democrat support.
Still, being able to run this show may be so tempting to Trump and Republicans that they may be willing to make the new law effective immediately, while Democrats
Let him keep pardoning. Sometimes the best way to set new rules is to show the limits of abuse of that power in practice.
I don't think even his packed SCOTUS would appreciate Trump overturning their judgment by pardoning recently convicted agents. They still are the people who are tasked with interpreting the constitution. Push the line too hard and they will push the line back to spite you.
In most cases, I would think the SCOTUS would point to Congress in a situation like this.
It's Congress' role to step up and provide checks and balances for a president that goes off the rails.
As long as a president has support by their fellow party members in congress to be immune against impeachment, I doubt the SCOTUS would step in.
Unless, perhaps, the actions of the president were to be bad enough to introduce imminent risk to the whole system of government. Like pardoning people who (provably) organize large scale voting fraud, etc.
SCOTUS can't impreach, but they can make sure the next BS pardon is illegal to do. They can re-interpret the law to limit pardons and deny future ones. That's the extent of their power.
But yes, it's up to congress to actual impreach/convict. The SCOTUS can just keep slapping the president if he keeps overstepping his bounds.
>Unless, perhaps, the actions of the president were to be bad enough to introduce imminent risk to the whole system of government. Like pardoning people who (provably) organize large scale voting fraud, etc.
it would be a very interesting, constitutional crisis. I'm not sure if it has anything built in for that. Even Watergate was simply going to go through the impeachment process before Nixon stepped down.
During Watergate, congress was still aware of it's role as a counterweight to the executive. Nixon would likely have been convicted if he hadn't resigned first, or at least he must have thought so, since he resigned.
But since then, congress has become more and more partisan, with less and less ability to act together in important issues. This was particularily obvious in all 3 impeachment processes that have happened since. In all 3 cases, impeachment was done without the proper bipartisan basis needed for a conviction, basically just to achieve short term political gain.
Like the boy who cried wolf, each repitition means the probability that people will take it seriously next time goes down.
And when the day comes where a president does something that really requires a bi-partisan conviction during an impeachment, congress may be so used to voting along party lines that this becomes impossible.
And maybe worse: presidents may even begin to consider such a conviction an impossibility, and act with fewer inhibitions.
The US really needs to reign in the pardoning power. There are 3 areas in particular that need coverage (I'll cover pardons by the President, but the same might apply to Governors):
1) Most pardons come with a political cost, either for the president himself or his party. The main exception is just after an election, especially during the President's last term. This could be solved by outlawing pardons during the last 6 months of a term. At minimum, morally questionable pardons should come with such a cost.
2) All pardons should specificy specifically what actions and potential crimes they apply to. They do not specifically need to be admission of guilt (as they may be for gray zone behavior that could need protection against political prosecution by the next administration), but they do need to specify what actions or allegations they apply to.
3) Congress' ability to specifically contest pardons should be clarified. Specifically, congress should have the ability to contest a pardon, if the pardon is made from personal interest, seriously undermines the rule of law or national security.
Also, since the sitting president's party may controll the Speaker seat at the time, even the NEXT congress should have a chance to start proceedings. This requires that congress retains the right to do this even if the sitting president resigns before the term ends. (Since the new congress starts before the president's normal term ends).
Taken together, the above 3 points would ensure that IF a president is seen by the general public to abuse the pardon power, voters would get one chance at voting for representatives (and senators) that promise to "restore justice".
The time to introduce such a system would be now, while there's still outrage over Biden's pardons among Republicans. Democrats would also want to go along with this to prevent Trump from abusing the power in similar (or worse) ways near the end of his term. In fact, if they're sufficiently scared of this, they may even allow an opening to impeach Biden for potentially corrupt pardon's that were granted during the last weeks of his term.
This would allow Republicans to go after Fauci, Hunter, etc, in congress by impeaching Biden over those pardons, even now, even if they wouldn't actually be able to reach a guilty verdict in the Senate without significant Democrat support.
Still, being able to run this show may be so tempting to Trump and Republicans that they may be willing to make the new law effective immediately, while Democrats