If leaders abuse the rule of law to make themselves immune to it, so that they can undermine the rights of others with impunity, by what moral or philosophical argument are they entitled to its protections, once they lose power? By what grace should they be sorted by law instead of by other means?

April 10, 2026 - 21:45 UTC

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Not if we impeach him first. 🖕
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Impeachment doesn't remove the powers of the presidency from someone. Trump was impeached twice. The first time he was in office and remained there.
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It's obscene! Presidential pardons should be ended.
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Not your business. Kindly shut the fuck up.
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As a non-citizen,I'm hoping someone can answer a question.
Hypothetically speaking, if a President passes away without publicly declaring pardons, could people in his cabinet say they have a pardon? Does it need to be in writing?
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Yes. And delivered.
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If justice is denied via regular order, sometimes an angry population who has been wronged may find extrajudicial means to exact such justice. I'm not advocating anything, just stating fact.
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I'll advocate for the fact that preventing this exact thing is why the rule of law EXISTS in the first place.

Woe to those who would seek to undo it.
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‪
If the ringleader of a years-long conspiracy of the nation's highest officers can nullify the consequences of law for the conspirators, then the law is already of no consequence.
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if he's impeached by the House and the dem-controlled senate votes to convict him and he's removed from office...does he still have the capability of pardoning people before he's escorted off white house grounds? fucking absurd we have to ask these questions
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Your beautiful words are yet another iteration of that “constitutional crisis” we’ve been waiting to be defined so that anyone in power thinks it’s finally time to take action. I think we’re 10,000 crises past ‘they done burned it all down to the ground while we did fuckall.‘
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Presidential pardon should not exist. One person overruling the law is plane WRONG
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Next presidential candidate needs to fully support state prosecutors where possible and for war crimes support arresting and transferringTrump administration members to The Hague.
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Can we hit them with a bunch of state-level charges that they can't be pardoned for by Trump?
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Their actual theory of law is “i can do anything because i am a real man, but can always rely on the law to protect me because my enemies are too much of pussies to try something.”
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... I mean, they (sadly) haven't been proven wrong yet in this theory.
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Divine command theory.
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It's not a grace or favor extended to them, IMO. It's for us. We need to know that nobody is punished without being proven guilty in an impartial public forum, to feel secure in our own safety from the state in the future.
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bsky.app/profile/midnightplat.bsky.social/post/3mj62mquiks2y
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Pardons don't save you.
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1/ actually, that is a good thing.

See, once Trump pardons them, they can be prosecuted by the ICC, because the ICC will only exercise jurisdiction if the criminal's home county can or will not prosecute the crimes

(I know, the US is not part of the ICC... but Americans can still be prosecuted for
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2/ crimes in which they participate in countries that are part of the ICC -- in the exact same way that Netanyahu has been indicted by the ICC, and is subject to arrest if he goes to any ICC affiliated nation.)
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No Republican should be permitted in The Room(s) Where It Happens when it comes time to write Constitution 2.0.

Those who constantly and loudly cheat, and pronounce their willingness and intent to cheat in the future whenever they feel like it, don’t get to be among those writing the rules.
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And when they protest and go on about how they’re just concerned about “election integrity” or “state’s rights” or “great replacement”, here’s the thing:

You don’t have to care. You can laugh in their face and slam the door. Their weaponizing fair play is only doable by our own acceptance of it
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It's a good thing he never keeps his promises.
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Next Democratic president orders all these people loaded into helicopters and dumped in the North Atlantic, then awards herself a full and unconditional pardon.

Problem solved.
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Chuck Schumer: "Because they're nice guys."
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The doctrine of "Cover My Ass and I'll Grab Yours"?
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I don't think prosecution or elections are going to fix this. The legal system was not designed to deal with people with no honor or shame on this scale.

My personal preference is impalement on Pennsylvania Ave, with CCTV so everyone who chooses can witness them being consumed by scavengers.
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We'll call it Trump Video.
~
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Approved
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By height?
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"as if by height"
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Sorting by height to speed up the gallows
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We need to know their height so we can give them what Harold Godwinson apocryphally promised Harald Hardrada.
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Given that every 4-8 years, we get pardons that at least half the country understands are obscene, you'd think we could get the momentum for a constitutional amendment replacing the presidential pardon with a clemency board.
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If those pardons hold up, so should any pardons the next president give their staff for illegally handing the entire Trump admin to Tehran
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If the president does it on the course of his presidential duties, say, as part of foreign policy, the Supreme Court says it's OK!

So, not illegal. /S
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This is the moral undercarriage of MAGA: laws apply to other people, not them. The moral and philosophical argument is "I AM RUBBER, YOU ARE GLUE . . . "
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Merrick Garland has left the chat
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Idiot.
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No grace. No protection.

May all the trials be speedy and honest.

May all the ppl feel the full extent of FO while doing the FA part. With other ppls lives
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Time for some state attorneys general to get busy.
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Those who place themselves beyond the law's reach place themselves beyond the law's protection.
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But Schumer and Jeffries don't think Trump should face any consequences
bsky.app/profile/amanbatheja.bsky.social/post/3mj5f7xxqx22g
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“But Im Immune”

“Thats nice - tell it to the cellmates”
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There’s a very real non-zero chance that Trump won’t survive until the end of his term. If he were smart enough to write up pardons beforehand, we might find out what SCOTUS thinks of that.

But I’m not sure I would trust him to stick to his word in any case.
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theonion.com/aging-pope-just-blessing-everything-in-sight-say-conce-1819565036/
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Is this a tacit admission that he won’t be president after 2028 or is this a “whenever” plan?
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Last time I checked, a pardon doesn't prevent the masses from deciding to hold a piñata party.
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It may even encourage one.
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I vote for pointy sticks
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None. They are entitled to no protections under the laws they bastardized to commit illegal act. Ignore the pardons and prosecute them. Then Congress passes new laws to limit the President’s pardoning power to only crimes prosecuted before or during a President’s term.
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The people who are counting on a pardon from Trump are betting on (a) his loyalty to those who commit crimes in his behalf and (b) his body not giving out in a surprising manner before he can issue final pardons.

I would not bet my freedom on either.
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Dead on. Everyone who hasn’t had facetime within a week will be begging Fox for a segment to praise him.
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I'll guess that second term pardons are going to be pricier than first term pardons, bc trumphlation?
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the grace of Madame Defarge's knitting?
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can't pardon your way out of a drone strike
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Every week, I gain a little more understanding of Norway’s decision to put Vidkun Quisling in front of a firing squad even though capital punishment wasn’t even legal in Norway.
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Alan Moore nailed it in the 80s: "Who watches the watchers?" Reduced the problem to its essence. People in power are always corruptible, it's just a matter of price or leverage or amorality.

We're seeing - I think - the first amoral administration in American history. There removed the watchers.
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That's the great thing. No oppressor ever faces justice. That's the American way
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Let them appeal to Les Bois de Justice (aka Madame La Guillotine)
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The French figured that one out in 1789
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George Mason warned of this, I guess we're lucky we made it as long as we did.
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The very question I’ve been asking myself.
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*cough* *cough*
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Let’s ask John Roberts
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At this point I'm just going to vote for the person that promises to corral everyone involved on a small craft and launch them into permanent geosynchronous orbit
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In my opinion, the time is upon us.
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The most moderate, gentle solution is to amend the pardon powers such that they explicitly cannot be applied to POTUS, relatives of POTUS, friends of POTUS, or members of their administration.

Make them the *ONLY* individuals in the nation that those pardons cannot be applied to.
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Assume this is allowed to stand: the Trumpers may never, ever risk handing over power peacefully. They will commit any level of violence in order to retain power, fearing the consequences once they've stepped across the line.
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Exactly ! where is the motivation to hand over the presidency?

I fear martial law will be in place by the Fall. Whether Nov elections even happen is questionable. If they do what is to stop Trump et al from another Jan 6 when time to comes to swear in newly elected Dem majority in jan '27?
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@jabbanobadda.bsky.social you called it. The pardon problem.

I'd be more upset if I was actually optimistic that a Dem might get elected & even try to hold them responsible. My past experience indicates that's a no.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes WAY, WAY, WAY beyond that. I think people are truly not being imaginative enough. How about a blanket pardon for anybody who’s contributed to him since 2021? How about a blanket pardon to every registered Republican in the nation?
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On the plus side they’re going to publish a list of suspects who need to be investigated for state crimes.
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I am not a lawyer, but if a person is pardoned then they can no longer incriminate themselves and thus no longer take the fifth.
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Yes & no. Mainly no.

constitutioncenter.org/blog/do-presidential-pardons-remove-the-fifth-amendment-rights-of-recipients
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And by what right do they claim to have authority while in power?
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First things Dems need to do when they take Congress is have DC make it a (district) crime to lie to Congress.
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That not doing so would damage the rest of us. As you have stated many times,American justice can be arbitrary, unfair, and violent- but it's still the law and these depraved reprobates should be the number one focus of the next administration.We held the Nuremberg Trials once........
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Well then a pardon list becomes another kind of list.
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Ask the question all you want. I already have my answer.

The time for grace, benefits of the doubt, mercy or quarter is LONG GONE.

The KKKristofascists and their oligarchy intend to maintain and expand power over us until we revolt. They WANT revolt, which is why they've captured the military.
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It's a winner.
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I think a future supreme court needs to put limits on pardon power. There’s no way the founders included it as a money making opportunity.
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Laws are all just rules we agree to abide by. If someone is not obeying them or bending the rules in ridiculous manners to cheat then they should be punished
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Serious question - if he does mass pardons (which i think likely) - what are the options?
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President Pritzker announces that since, according to SCOTUS, the President's freedom of action must not be restrained by the prospect of any legal consequences, he will have every member of the Trump administration and every pardon recipient sent to Guantanamo?
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Just ignore them and throw them in prison or immigration detention (preferably in foreign torture gulags) for as long as possible, or until they “naturally” expire.
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The case against ignoring the pardons and the "immunity" rulings, and going ahead with arresting the wrongdoers anyway, is going to be that the consequences of abandoning the system would be even more destructive than those of permitting so much lawlessness; nothing to do with justice and morality.
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All power is subject to the duty to uphold the laws. A promise to pardon is a promise to do the opposite.
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This is not very smart. He's just set up the mother of all prisoner's dilemmas among the members of the cabinet: whoever gives a coup gets to send the other factions to jail.
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Wow, that's brilliant ! Didn't think about that. This group of losers were already evil, vicious garbage. This would really up the competition. It'll be like one of those trashy reality shows (ummm, like now, but worse)
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