Key and handcuffs

How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power

How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power

December 6, 2024

How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power

By: James Trusty

As the presiding judge scolded Hunter Biden’s attorneys this week, “The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”[1]  But what exactly is that history he claims is being re-written? Judge Scarsi was challenging the largely academic issue of whether a pardon signed at noon, for instance, protects against crimes committed on the same day at dinnertime. That is a very limited run at the notion of “preemptive” pardons, and it seems to be strictly a question of chronology. The judge did not seem to question the idea of…

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Supremely Improbable

July 30, 2024

Supremely Improbable

By: James Trusty

President Biden’s pronounced objectives for Supreme Court “reform” are improbable, politically lifeless under a particularly lame duck presidency, and motivated by transparently November-driven calculations. But even if the proposed changes are doomed from the start, they push public discourse on a couple of issues that are red meat for the democrats. The stated reforms are superficially simple ones: 1) to “clarify” that “there is no…

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Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury

July 5, 2024

Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury

By: James Trusty

The immediate and eventual impact of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in Trump v. United States is both considerable and dramatically misrepresented. The initial consequences include likely delay to the January 6 prosecution out of D.C. and the setting of hearings—in D.C., Georgia and south Florida—where the judges will be required to make  factual findings as to whether the evidence supporting the indictments reflect “official…

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